TrailBlazers: How Top Business Leaders are Accelerating Results through Inclusion and Diversity

Chapter 5. Accountability for Results

Hard Impact from the "Soft" Stuff

The more successful the inclusion and diversity effort, the more likely you're able to use quantifiable metrics to assess progress. Over the years, I've often been quoted as saying, "The 'soft' stuff can have a hard impact." We particularly believe this to be true with regard to inclusion and diversity efforts—which must yield tangible results to the organization.

But, in order for them to do so, systems and processes must be in place to assess whether these efforts are having the intended effect. The easiest way to determine accountability for results is simply to begin with the end in mind. Therefore, we must answer the question: What outcomes are the inclusion and diversity efforts expected to yield?

Trailblazers follow a defined process to ensure that any accountability efforts are holistic and systematic, and can be embedded in the organization.

What gets measured gets done; or, as the CEO from a company not represented here would say, "What gets measured gets improved." As with any strategy, metrics are essential to determining progress; this is no less the case with inclusion and diversity. For many years, the only metrics many organizations utilized were equal employment opportunity and affirmative action numbers: hiring, advancements and promotions, adverse impact, and terminations. This became the source of much confusion since inclusion and diversity measurements were almost always and solely defined ...