Leading in the Post-Floyd Era

The Cost of Doing Nothing About Race in the Workplace

The murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, opened floodgates to address systemic racism in all aspects of culture — policing, education, voting rights, healthcare, housing patterns, wealth creation, religious institutions, media representation, the arts, and organizational work life.

Responses from non-profit organizations and corporations during this time of racial reckoning were especially swift. Many organizations issued strong antiracism statements, formed listening sessions with BIPOC workers and ally sessions for White employees to address the impact. Organizations provided antiracism training and unconscious bias education for leadership and the entire employee base, and hired DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging) officers and consultants to create effective strategies with accountability measures.

A lot of transactional measures were put in place that established a strong institutional message about racism and even moved the DEIB needle in the right direction. However, the transformative work necessary to change organizational culture doesn’t happen through transactional measures. Deep culture change is relational and not transactional. Given the historical racial baggage and the many present-day active forms of resistance to even discuss the tenets of racism (take Critical Race Theory as an example), these transactional measures simply create a step and repeat banner for progress that is tantamount to doing nothing. We are merely stepping in place.

Leaders Doing Nothing

Leaders who manage systemic racism in the workplace by a series of related transactional initiatives are leading by stepping in place. Despite the beautifully crafted missives on racial equity from leadership (generally written by Communications Department), the newly appointed (or now given high profile) diversity officer, promotions of BIPOC to a few positions of influence and even more BIPOC promotions to positions with dubious titles and scope of responsibilities, and despite metrics woven into the overall strategic plan, the organizational culture remains the same and the race work of the organization never gets accomplished.