The three-legged stool for measuring an effective corporate racial equity plan
By: Manu Juneja
Tags: Framework, Racial Equity, Diversity And Inclusion, Corporate, Leadership

What is the three-legged stool?

Simply put, the three-legged stool is a framework for what a corporate racial equity plan should consider; the three legs of the stool are a basis for companies to evaluate, build & deploy a successful race & ethnicity strategy.

Today most if not all companies are trying to gain momentum on their racial equity journey. In writing this piece, I take the hypothesis of generosity (thanks to Brene Brown!) and assume that everyone is trying to do the best they can — and perhaps they just need someone to hold up the mirror and ask the right questions.

My intention with this three-legged framework is to hold up the mirror.

It is imperative that the framework has three legs — else it will fall like an unbalanced stool. Together the three legs stand up a well-crafted, genuine corporate racial equity strategy.

Each of the legs have building blocks that make the legs stand up so that they meet each other boldly at the top. I have stated the building blocks below as questions — I do this for the sake of simplicity & understanding.

First up, Leadership:

The racial equity strategy starts at the very top. It is the CEO’s job to set the tone and to address the issues of inequality within and outside their company from their own seat.

It is the CEO’s individual social responsibility (ISR vs. CSR) to make racial equity their priority. This is the starting point, the only point from which one can start to make progress & hence leadership is the first leg of this three-legged stool.

The building blocks under Leadership are:

Do you have sponsorship from the CEO to address issues of racial inequality & to create opportunity within & outside the company?

Why does CEO sponsorship make a difference? For one, the CEO has a powerful voice — they can use their voice to shake the system, to shine light on what’s right and what’s wrong. Further, the CEO’s voice serves as the green light to their team(s) that they can be transparent in sharing data and targets and that they have permission to create a wholesome strategy that addresses the root cause(s)1 and ultimately bow-tie this plan with accountability. Once the leader is all-in, other building blocks are:

Has your company identified the problem(s) and the root causes 1 re. racial equity within your company? In this problem-solving journey, it is critical to maintain transparency about what you discovered along the way.

Have you released your workforce race & ethnicity statistics? Do you have aspirational targets and have you shared these?

Have you made a visible internal/external commitment towards racial equity?

Second is Strategy:

Once the leadership has set the tone and communicated their commitment, it is time to formulate a strategy. This is area where Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) professionals live. Living here is important because this is the engine that runs the machine.

Within strategy, each of the blocks listed below are important — but like a jenga tower, you may slide a block in or out based on where the problems lie and where you aspire to be. The building blocks include:

Do you have facilitated forums, 1:1s, peer groups etc. to encourage ‘active’ listening across different racial & ethnic groups?

Are you educating colleagues to drive meaningful & transparent conversations, awareness, empathy & ultimately ally-ship across races & ethnicities?

Are you enabling the creation, support and alignment for race and ethnicity-aligned employee resource groups (ERGs)? Further, are you investing in their leadership, providing direction, budget, resource and ally sponsors to support the ERGs?

Is there a multi-pronged approach to address inequality across the spectrum? Based on your industry, this approach could consider your supplier base, philanthropic grants, clinical trials, brands, marketing, talent management, diverse talent partnerships/recruitment etc.

These blocks feed into each other and they can be sequenced from “active listening” to “multi-pronged approach,” but there is also merit in thinking of this as a recurring loop i.e. going back up to the very first step (active listening), if the current approach is not leading to progress.

Third comes Accountability:

This is the third and, in my view, the most under-rated leg of the stool. I often hear colleagues say that DEI work makes so much noise, but not a lot of meaningful difference (this can be true if the view is short-term or if the building blocks are not set right or if the legs are unbalanced). But, consider if you can change this equation with Accountability. Ask yourself:

Are your senior-most leaders accountable for race & ethnicity outcomes? What is the implication of over or under performance on these metrics?

Do you have an independent accountability body to monitor racial equity progress? Consider what works for your culture — this body could be an unbiased employee-led group or a senior-leader led council or even a group of external advisors.

Holding senior leaders accountable to DEI metrics isn’t widely popular. Some will also argue that if leaders are held accountable, it might force wrong decisions — e.g. did your company hire 10% more ethnic colleagues in the last quarter because leaders had a goal to meet or were these diverse colleagues actually talented hires? The question is valid, but the angle is wrong. It assumes a zero-sum game. It is no different than saying that when companies make profit, consumers lose. This couldn’t be further from truth.

In closing, I quote Martin Luther King Jr. : “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

So, my question is — are you able to see the whole staircase in this three-legged framework? If yes, what blocks will you consider using to measure your corporate racial equity plan?

Why this post: My intention with this article is to contribute, in the littlest way I can, to support DEI practitioners (like me) who are passionate and continually looking to develop. If you have made it this far, please know that I sincerely intend to seek YOUR thoughts, correct and evolve my thinking as I continue to learn. If you choose to engage, I thank you in advance for your conviction that together we can be better thinkers & problem solvers.

Notes: The racial equity plan is only a slice of the pie within the full DEI strategy. The above framework can be easily replicated for the other slices of the pie or for the whole DEI strategy. I think Leadership and Accountability will still hold, it’s probably the building blocks of the Strategy leg that will need to change. What do you think?

1 How to Promote Racial Equity in the Workplace (hbr.org)

*Views expressed here are my own*