Cultivating Culture As a Garden

Book excerpt: Our established practice has been to tout the benefits of diversity, equity, and inclusion without truly discussing the work that is necessary to reap that harvest. Diversity, equity and inclusion each drives good outcomes, but we cannot randomly throw difference into a culture and expect that we will be rewarded with greater innovation, decreased costs, improved service and better quality. We must cultivate our culture in order for a garden of diversity, equity, and inclusion to flourish. The garden is a metaphor that can help us understand the requirements and roles necessary to develop a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion in an organization.