DEI Journey Step 3: DEI Strategy Development
Once you have gathered your benchmark data, the next step is to create your organization’s DEI strategy. This is the time to prioritize goals, determine key metrics for success and create a DEI strategy that aligns with your organizational goals. Senior leadership involvement in the creation of this strategy will be crucial for future buy in. Your strategy team should be representative of key positions within the organization. One tool that can be used to discern which goals to prioritize is the SWOT analysis.
The end result of this work will include your DEI Vision, Mission, Strategic Priorities, Key Focus Areas and Communication plan.
Next Steps
- Check out the video from Charles Belo to find out how to create a winning strategy!
- Use your data to complete a SWOT analysis to find out your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
- Determine the overall organizational goals and determine which DEI priorities match the overall goals
- Determine short term and long-term goals based on your analysis.
- Determine who will “own” DEI implementation and goal achievement.
- Research change management and determine obstacles to your strategy.
Next: DEI Journey Step 4 – DEI Implementation Strategy
Charles Belo
Hailed as a “soft skills jedi”, Charles Belo has more than three decades of experience with the federal government, the last decade of that time has been exclusively as a diversity and inclusion practitioner. Known for his very personable and disarming style and demeanor, he has been recognized as a skilled inclusion consultant who makes nearly any topic easy to discuss, regardless of who’s in the room. This U.S. Air Force veteran is also a career professional in national security analysis, mentoring and coaching, and professional networking.
True to and proud of his native North Carolina roots, Mr. Belo never meets a stranger. A proven dynamic, energetic and engaging speaker and facilitator, Mr. Belo is regularly sought after by organizational leaders and workforce teams to provide a variety of diversity and inclusion related workshops, facilitate brainstorming sessions and “power-hour” discussions on such topics as unconscious bias, fostering inclusion on teams or in the workplace, approaching cultural competency, open-mindedness and psychological safety, and others.
Mr. Belo holds a degree in Government and Politics from University of Maryland University College.