1.

Building Awareness and a Sense of Urgency

After an initial intake process to better understand your current state, needs, and goals, our partnership begins with a process to Build Awareness and a Sense of Urgency for DEIJ work or some aspect of organizational change. This includes developing a common language and frameworks that will allow your organization to engage in meaningful and productive conversations about DEIJ issues both in the world and internally. This stage will also engage your team in a preliminary assessment of how DEIJ issues currently play out in their individual and collective work, current strengths that can be drawn upon to address these issues, and opportunities for learning and growth. This phase will help point us in directions for the on-going work.

2.

Building Trust, Relationships, and Readiness

As we develop a Sense of Awareness and Urgency, we will also attend to issues of relationship and trust within the organization. Discussing and addressing DEIJ issues can be hard; it can be scary. Ensuring emotional and psychological safety is a critical step to individuals and organizations being ready to having open, honest, at times difficult, and productive conversations about issues of DEIJ. That same level of trust is also vital to the collaboration necessary to address issues once they have been identified.

3.

Leadership Development

An external consultant can help organizations identify issues and develop the capacity to address them. But in order for change efforts to be successful, the organization must develop its internal capacity to sustain the DEIJ and systems change work. This stage will focus on helping existing formal and informal leaders develop their equity lenses and key DEIJ and change management skills. It will also allow for new leaders to emerge. This stage of work can include workshops on specific DEIJ topics and skills as well the personal work and healing all of us need to do so we are able to “hold the space” for others and for the organization-as-a-whole to do the work.

4.

Planned Change

Developing a plan with goals, objectives, strategies, timelines, and responsibilities is a vital step in any organizational change initiative - and this stage will help our clients put together such a plan. But plans, in and of themselves, don’t produce change. According to Mckinsey & Company, “70% of change programs fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support.” Drawing upon William Bridges' Transitions Framework, this process helps organizations gain a deeper understanding of how human beings experience change and how to manage the human side of change efforts. It will also give organizational leaders (both formal and informal) concrete tools and well-tested strategies for navigating and helping others navigate the change process. Finally, it will culminate with the organization developing a Transition Plan that can be used in parallel with strategic plans and change plans in order to decrease resistance, increase buy-in, and facilitate successful change implementation.

5.

Implementation and Continuous Improvement

Authentic and lasting change doesn't come from a single workshop or program. Through on-going coaching and consultation, Equity Praxis Group can support your organization in mobilizing its intellectual, time, financial, and other resources in pursuit of implementing the changes identified in the prior phases of work. This stage is about recognizing that DEIJ work is on-going process of continuous improvement. EPG will be available for meetings with individual team members, subgroups, or to the organization-as-a-whole. This could take the form of listening sessions, serving as a sounding board, shared problem-solving, or providing training on specific issues or skills when a need is identified.