Diversity & Inclusion Efforts Can Only Blossom With Your Diligent Care

"Organizations need to treat their diversity efforts like a garden. You don't just plant it once, water a few times and ignore it." -- Kimberlee Williams

There is one thing about my house that I always hated. On the walkway to the front door is a large flower box that makes no sense. It's far away from any source of water, too big to water with a can, gets no direct sunlight and the neighborhood cats used it as a litterbox. But the worst part was, everyone who came to my home had to walk past this ugly box of dirt.

 Over the years, I stopped letting it bother me. I thought about doing something with it now and then, but I am the world’s worst gardener. When I walk through a greenhouse, I can hear the plants crying out, “Please, no, don’t pick me. I want to live, I want to liiiiive!” So other than filling it with rocks or concrete, there was nothing that could be done. I could not see any potential in that stupid box of dirt.

Then, when my husband’s father died, some friends sent us a beautiful arrangement of nine small plants, each about the size of a racquetball. It sat in our home for two weeks, then I put it out on the back porch where it got no direct sunlight, and I rarely watered it. After six months, I walked out back one day and noticed that arrangement. The plants weren’t dead. And a lightbulb went on.

 So I took the small plants from that planter to my ugly, despised flower box out front. And I planted them in that dry, loose dirt. And I hauled a garden hose from the complete other side of the house and filled that flower box with water to give these little plants a chance. That was a year and a half ago, and now -- I LOVE it!

It gives me so much joy to walk past it every day. I’m proud that the people who come to our home are greeted by it. In the past 18 months, the plants have grown so much larger, but something else has happened, too. Other plants have worked their way in, uninvited. I yank out the raggedy looking ones that are obviously weeds, but a few months ago, a broad-leafed clover showed up that I thought was pretty, so I just let it go. It wasn't hurting anything, right? 

Today, while I was out front watering (something that happens only every 4-6 weeks, since I planted desert plants and we live in LA, which is having one of the worst drought years on record), I noticed how invasive the clover had become. It completely covered the plant it originally sprouted under and was choking the one next to it. I suddenly realized what a mistake it had been to decide this invader was no big deal and let it go.

And as I angrily attacked the predatory flora, yanking it out from around the beloved little succulents, I began thinking about something Kimberlee Williams, Director of Intercultural Affairs at the Bush School in Seattle, said to me when we met via Zoom last month. 

She said, "Organizations need to treat their diversity efforts like a garden. You don't just plant it once, water a few times and ignore it. You have to tend a garden or it becomes worthless pretty quickly, either everything dies or it gets taken over by weeds." 

Who knew I would get such a ridiculously on-the-nose example of this just one month later?

Sure, I watered my garden, but I hadn't tended to it at all. I hadn't made sure that the precious elements of it, the ones that were not only beautiful, but also right for the environment they were in, had all the protection they needed to thrive. That was my job and I wasn't doing it.

If you are part of the Diversity and Inclusion effort in your organization, tend to it! 

Pay very close attention to those minor invaders (like budget cuts, mission-creep, or focus shifts away from your primary goals) that seem harmless at first, or even attractive, but that eventually overtake the original elements, stopping them from getting the chance to grow to their full potential. When you see weeds start to sprout, yank them out right away! Don't wait to see what they strangle out first. 

In fact, go one step farther and start thinking of your DE&I work like a neighborhood vegetable garden -- because when that is carefully planned, lovingly tended and diligently examined for unwelcome invasions, not only does everything in it thrive, but it nourishes the whole community, far beyond only those who planted the seeds and watered the roots.

And it will do so for years to come...