Are We Too Busy for Equity?
/by Clare Nolan
Since launching Engage R+D in 2017, my colleagues and I have been thinking about our role and responsibility as evaluators and consultants in advancing equity. Our organization supports many aspects of social change, from broadening health access to supporting social movements to strengthening early childhood systems, to name a few. A common thread links these endeavors: they seek to address disparities in opportunities and outcomes that persist due to a long and devastating history of racism in our country that systematically limits opportunities for some groups while protecting the advantages of others.
Addressing these disparities is what draws most of our team members to our firm. I’ve spent a lot of time over these past two years listening to our consultants’ ideas, questions, and struggles about how equity shows up—or doesn’t—in our work. I’ve learned a lot from these exchanges, and they’ve challenged me to reflect on my own role and responsibility in this work—as co-founder, as a white cisgender female, and as a human being. One of my biggest learnings has been that in order to support positive social change, it’s important to understand how and why inequities impact the communities in which we do our work, as well as how these same forces affect the people who make up our team.
Below are some personal reflections on how our organization is grappling with equity in our practice and what we are learning in the process. While these are from my own perspective, they are deeply informed by conversations with my colleagues, individually and together.
Equity is an ongoing conversation
As a virtual organization, we routinely come together for purposeful, dedicated occasions to connect in person and discuss our work and development as an organization. Equity is a recurring theme at our retreats, and the range of perspectives and experiences our team brings both enriches and challenges our thinking about how our work can advance equity.
Some of our consultants are eager to start incorporating equity into evaluative practice, while others are hesitant about the emotional burdens of this work. Some question the readiness of clients to actively engage with culturally-responsive, equity-driven evaluation practices if they have not actively embraced diversity, equity and inclusion more broadly in their organizations. Others question their personal readiness to lead equity-related conversations with clients.
Our conversations about these issues have at various times felt uncomfortable, inspiring, disheartening, illuminating, and refreshing. But most of all these conversations have felt necessary and important. Our team is exploring how we can support not only our clients, but also each other, in responding to deeply rooted social issues that mark our lives in both personal and professional ways. We are discussing the kind of culture we need as an organization to effectively hold this work.
Equity is an evolving conversation not just at Engage R+D, but in the social sector more broadly. Many of the people and organizations we work with are also asking substantive questions about their role and responsibility in advancing equity. Regardless of whether you work at a nonprofit, foundation, a government agency, or school, there’s a good chance you are wondering what more you can do to create a more just and equitable world.
But are we too busy? (Hint: NO)
Here’s the thing—while many people desire to do more about equity, it can be hard to know exactly how to make a difference. And the reality is that the busyness of our personal and professional lives can sometimes interfere with the need to grapple with this challenge.
Equity needs identified by our team
Individual – feeling comfortable bringing our whole selves to work, managing the emotional labor of equity work, grappling with feelings of privilege.
Organizational – affirming the depth of our equity commitment, cultivating an inclusive culture that honors one another’s individual needs, adopting equity-aligned operational policies and practices.
Consulting – identifying promising opportunities to advance equity with clients, building our comfort and skill in leading equity-related conversations outside our organization.
As consultants, we work in a fast-paced, deadline-driven profession shaped by white-dominant norms. Meeting the needs of clients and their community stakeholders, working effectively as part of internal teams, and keeping up with the latest trends requires more than passion. It takes many hours of hard work. I’ve learned that incorporating a stronger focus on equity in this mix feels daunting for some of our team members, particularly when it involves having tough conversations with colleagues that don’t always culminate in clear-cut answers and agreements. It can be tempting to push this work aside in favor of daily things that need to get done—responding to emails, finishing that time-intensive report, getting ready for the next big meeting. In fact, our team identified “time and space” as major barriers to cultivating the kind of culture we believe will help to address our equity needs.
Our team members aren’t the only ones who are busy. Nearly every organization we work with at Engage R+D experiences similar challenges. There is so much important work to do—helping people access needed services, building team and organizational capacity, and garnering resources to sustain critical social change work. Our clients crave time for reflection and connecting more deeply with one another and the communities they seek to help. Norms emphasizing urgency, perfectionism, and harmony can hamper both our and our clients’ desire to be more intentional about equity.
Prioritizing time and space for equity
During our most recent team retreat last October, we spent time thinking together about what kind of culture we want to cultivate as an organization. We considered what it takes to make time and space for equity. Our discussion that day led to a few realizations that may have relevance for others confronting similar challenges:
Mindsets matter, and we need to make ours more explicit. There’s no question that many things keep us busy in our professional lives. But is busyness the only thing standing in our way when it comes to equity? Mindsets also play a powerful role in shaping our beliefs about what’s possible. For example, it’s easy to gravitate toward things that feel comfortable and we know how to do well given dominant culture norms. Being intentional about equity, however, challenges us to think differently about our consulting work, to have conversations that may feel uncomfortable, and to try new and uncertain approaches. There’s no “right way” to advance equity and odds are we will make mistakes as we go. Mindsets that value pushing past comfort zones to encourage growth and that favor curiosity, experimentation, and learning over perfectionism offer an important avenue for making progress. We often focus on external factors that interfere with our equity intentions. The truth is there will never be more time in the day, and it’s up to us to make shifts that allow us to prioritize equity.
We also need to carve out intentional time and space for equity. Ideally, Engage R+D consultants will embed equity so that it becomes a regular part of how we do our work. Organizationally, we believe getting there, however, will require setting aside organizational time and space to think through how we can advance equity in evaluation. This can be hard given the busy pace of client services, and the fact that this work is rarely covered in project budgets. That said, it is necessary if we are to truly make good on our organizational commitment to equity. So far, our organization has approached this by making equity a central focus of our in-person retreats. We have also taken steps to consider the role of equity in determining which project opportunities we pursue and how we design, staff, and manage proposed projects. Reflections on equity are also embedded in post-project debriefs. Moving forward, we have committed to piloting an internal learning community focused on applying equitable evaluation principles in our consulting projects and to launching peer coaching circles as a mechanism for deepening the ways we support one another in this work.
Equity is a “journey” but that isn’t an excuse for not moving forward. The word journey is commonly used to describe organizational equity efforts. It generally refers to the fact that each organization’s “destination” may not always be clear, and the path along the way can feel non-linear and slow. At the same time, the term can also be used as cover for slowing things down when perspectives begin to diverge and conversations get difficult. In these cases, it’s important to remember that for many people, change can’t wait. To achieve equitable outcomes in our society requires that we hold ourselves accountable for moving forward knowing that the work will be hard. I’ve learned that leaning into tensions and discomfort can lead to greater growth and a deeper understanding of what our organization needs to make progress. And I’m grateful to several of my colleagues that recognized this before I did.
Balancing the work through connection
Engage R+D’s “journey” thus far has taught me that embedding equity in our consulting and organizational practices is important and hard work. Each of our consultants brings a unique set of experiences, needs, and aspirations when it comes to advancing equity, a richness of individual perspectives that makes our consulting work stronger. There is both beauty and complexity in how these perspectives intersect and how they diverge, and the process we use to weave them together. Overall, we are learning that our organization is not too busy for equity, and that it requires commitment not just from leadership, but also from each of the individuals who make up our team.
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As an organization, I believe we are learning how to balance the hard parts of this work by supporting each other, by remembering that we are always learning, and by making time to connect and have fun. We make time to do things that foster closeness and cultivate a foundation for doing harder, deeper work together. For example, our recent retreat incorporated bubble soccer, a sunset walk on the beach, and a fabulous Peruvian dinner at a restaurant owned by the family of one of our senior consultants. As a virtual organization, we also enjoy using Slack to share personal and work accomplishments, trade fun evaluation jokes, and discuss things we have in common, such as our collective love of the Muppets.
In addition to learning from my colleagues, I have learned a great deal from reading other organizations’ accounts of their equity journeys. I hope others find value in this reflection. Personally, I am excited to see us take our next steps. Onward!
This blog post was originally published on the Equitable Evaluation Initiative blog.
