Dei Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing It Right

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Zheng is the first practitioner I have seen use an organizing framework to meaningfully and measurably impact change in organizations! And some organizations did ride the wave of Black advocacy to change decision-making practices, to change DEI initiatives and so on and so forth. But there's a particular concept I talk about in, now I'm forgetting which chapter I talk about it in, but there's a particular concept in my book that I bring from the sort of social science, cultural psychology work. Zheng recommends leaders with formal power put skin in the game by making commitments with consequences, and creating and empowering stakeholder groups to hold them accountable. Using their signature decisive and direct voice, Lily Zheng delivers an accountability-centered and immediately actionable road map to building a more equitable and inclusive modern workplace.

And then leaders in positions of power try to recalibrate and regain equilibrium with as little action as possible. So someone that you should absolutely follow, listen to, learn from, and just tune into the dialogue around you, Lily, because it is, it's awesome. I love the questions and solutions offered at the end of each chapter and their belief in an always-learning approach.

Their emphasis that we need everyone continues in the next chapter, where they identify multiple roles necessary to successfully drive a DEI change in an organization. The pressure is getting intense and the hierarchies are so old, they're so ancient, and they have not really been revisited, challenged. I think what's going on in the US at least, and in some parts of Europe, and to some extent the world, though I think it's most concentrated in the US, is that society is becoming less and less tolerant of power distance in the sense that it's less and less in society for people to say that certain social groups are better than others.

DEI Deconstructed analyzes how current methods and "best practices" leave marginalized people feeling frustrated and unconvinced of their leaders' sincerity, and offers a roadmap that bridges the neatness of theory with the messiness of practice.Zheng utilizes a great combination of academic and corporate terminology and approaches as they unpack the reasons why current DEI strategies don’t always work. A common recommendation is for recruiters to note the demographic representation their organization lacks and look for identity-based communities with that representation. As someone who works in the DEI space I think this book is a really good introduction to this type of work.