If we want to change…

…an organization’s culture to be even more innovative, productive, reliable, and empowered, we need to intervene on, and intentionally design, the members’ everyday communication patterns.

Many DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives fail because they focus on the wrong things, like one-off trainings, awkward workshops that result in more division than unity, and top-down implementation that overlooks the realities of frontline workers.

Most importantly, these programs tend to only address individual behavior (e.g., through implicit bias trainings), operating on the assumption that if we change individual behavior, then the culture will change.

The plain fact is that individual behavior does not create culture.

Group behavior does.

An effective DEI strategy needs to intervene on group-level behavior by conditioning desired behaviors into members’ everyday patterns of communication and action. 

 Design the conversations. Design the culture. 

An empowered workforce

…can only exist when members feel psychologically safe to bring their best efforts into their work.

This becomes possible when:

  • Multiple voices are invited and integrated into decision making - diversity

  • Members trust in the fairness with which each other receives rewards, sanctions, and opportunities - equity

  • Members feel their colleagues support them, and there are clear paths toward their career development - inclusion

An effective culture integrates and conditions desired behaviors into members’ everyday communication and actions. 

That’s because conversations carry culture. 

Let’s design DEI into your organization’s culture.

Wildfire Learning’s Integrated DEI approach intervenes on–and redesigns–the core communication practices that carry your organization’s culture. Efforts to integrate DEI into everyday communication practices will likely have a positive impact on social climate, innovation, productivity, and process excellence because putting DEI into action creates the kind of welcoming, candid environment that forms the foundation for safety, innovation, and knowledge continuity.