by Michael Stuber || 31. May 2023 || Editorial

Same same and no impact? The harm of imported ‘best’ practices

DE&I experts see both a need to consider vast local differences in what to address and how, and a huge attractiveness of global ‘best practices’ followed by an eagerness to import them. But: What to copy and what to tailor – and to which context?

The DEI Trilogy ‘Stop polarisation & exclusion’ – part 3: The power of contextualised relevance, e.g. Spain

Tailoring DE&I to a local context, e.g., by using local language, addressing local topics or showcasing local examples seems to serve an obvious purpose: Making DE&I relevant, relatable and applicable for people on the ground. However, does local language provide more relevance than, e.g. industry-specific framing or function-focused approaches?

It appears that the development of DE&I, coming from the U.S. and entering Europe via the U.K. created a geographical lens and preconceptions.

The origin (and historic) bias in DE&I

Managing Diversity was first crafted in the U.S. as a positive alternative to legally driven EO/AA activities and as an umbrella framework to create synergies across thematic silos. This head start combined with a high level of activity and the advantage of English as lingua franca seem to have established an eternal perception of being more advanced than most of the world. Ironically, the UK as a creator of huge historic burdens all around the globe has also benefitted from the positive Anglo-Saxon stereotype. In both the U.K. and the U.S., Race and Gender dominated the Diversity agenda for a long time, also due the former (and current) civic movements in these areas.

The global topical biases in DE&I

Race and gender are examples to understand global differences and similarities: For Race, most people intuitively understand that the local context has strong impact on the framing and dynamics of the concept – and few see global commonalities. For Gender it’s the opposite: Most assume that gender dynamics are very similar everywhere – especially in the workplace – and explain varying gender gaps with societal or legal differences.

The example of Spain: inside out power

Relating DE&I to the specifics of your country, region, company, business unit or function can create an unexpected amount of energy. For it answers the ‘why’ in an intrinsic way and avoids relying on external drivers (which can create a feeling of being forced or obliged as opposed to seeing positive reasons).

I followed this re-thinking idea for ‘Diversity in Europe’ in the 2000s and repeated the tailoring for dozens of clients and even more business, functional of regional entities – and it works.

As I observe an increasing excitement about international ‘best practices’ in particular from the Anglo-Saxon world, I contributed to the EU (and Spanish) DiversityMonth by using Spain as an example for how to create a tailored base for further DE&I considerations and development.

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Making DE&I work – literally

This example is much more than a country case. For in most of our projects, we see a need to create more DE&I relevance than an existing high-level tag or storyline provides. These global corporate business cases and references to organisational identity and values are powerful and foundational – but not sufficient in helping business, regional or functional managers to develop action plans for their entities.

Warning indicators from your organisation

Understanding if your stakeholders feel empowered and encouraged to own the diversity agenda of their entity can be done by listening. The following statements should be warning signs as they illustrate a distant perception and a lack of relevance.

“Diversity is great for creativity – so many ideas”
“Our DE&I management is so successful – they have won awards”
“DE&I is a key asset in our employer branding”
“It’s good to know DE&I improves our overall performance”

If you have noticed these or similar reactions, please share them with us so we can either include them as examples or comment on them.

The power of contextualised relevance

The ENGINEERING D&I approach to establishing a solid reason-why leverages our combined strength in insight-based, international and innovative thinking. For every geography, business area or function we have supported, we were able to connect DE&I to their specific agenda or priorities. We hence created a base for new momentum and, with the help of unconscious bias reflections and gap analyses, eventually supported the design collective and individual roadmaps. We were told that some of these carried on for over a year.

As organisations have developed large-scale, centrally co-ordinated and streamlined DE&I strategies, helping operating entities to design tailored approaches is key to achieving the traction everyone is looking for.

Ask us to know more about our programmes and methodologies in this area.