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Reviews
DEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing It Right by Lily Zheng
dhrutigopaluni's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.5
clear, readable, and actionable - would have benefitted from more real life examples
enehrlich's review against another edition
5.0
I've been following Lily Zheng for years on LinkedIn to get their DEI insights, and their book is even better. They call out the whole DEI industry for failing to live up to the challenge that "impact matters more than intent", because DEI as an industry has had minimal impact, and maybe even negative impact, in costing billions of dollars while provoking a backlash.
Lily instead starts from the basics of defining measurable impact outcomes for diversity, equity and inclusion, and then lays out strategies and tactics for moving organizations towards those outcomes. They also identify multiple roles necessary to drive a DEI change in an organization, for those of us without formal power and who don't see themselves as the fire-breathing advocate (I can see myself in the educator role, though).
I particularly appreciated their focus on trust as the key ingredient for change, laying out different paths for high-trust, medium-trust and low-trust environments. In low-trust environments, their advice is to get to a medium-trust environment by having leaders cede power to the advocates and follow their lead; the leaders have lost trust so nobody will follow them, so better to follow somebody else who may have that trust.
This was a clear and readable introduction to DEI work with practical and meaningful advice on how to achieve impact from DEI interventions, rather than just hoping for results based on good intent. Highly recommended.
Lily instead starts from the basics of defining measurable impact outcomes for diversity, equity and inclusion, and then lays out strategies and tactics for moving organizations towards those outcomes. They also identify multiple roles necessary to drive a DEI change in an organization, for those of us without formal power and who don't see themselves as the fire-breathing advocate (I can see myself in the educator role, though).
I particularly appreciated their focus on trust as the key ingredient for change, laying out different paths for high-trust, medium-trust and low-trust environments. In low-trust environments, their advice is to get to a medium-trust environment by having leaders cede power to the advocates and follow their lead; the leaders have lost trust so nobody will follow them, so better to follow somebody else who may have that trust.
This was a clear and readable introduction to DEI work with practical and meaningful advice on how to achieve impact from DEI interventions, rather than just hoping for results based on good intent. Highly recommended.
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