*Sharla Toller is* *Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at CannonDesign in Washington, D.C.*

By Sharla Toller

There’s a significant difference between an organization saying, “We value Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in the workplace,” and adequately holding its leaders in their organization accountable for upholding that reality and driving meaningful change.

But it’s the accountability that really matters. That is what leads to sustainable and impactful change within an organization.

Our firm, CannonDesign, is a Living-Centered global design firm committed to empowering all people to flourish. As the firm’s DEI director, my role is to ensure we move the needle and empower all people to flourish. We recognize that empowerment and commitment starts within.

But how do you keep the momentum going and continually improve? What does that look like? For us, it’s been the launch of our first-ever voluntary DEI pulse survey to create reliable feedback loops to hear from our community about our strengths and areas of opportunity for improvement. We also established our first-ever DEI report card, which serves as an assessment of how leaders are performing in key areas that affect DEI outcomes in our firm.

But here’s the really important thing to note; we then use those scores to influence our leaders’ performance evaluations. Leaders are in a unique position to influence and create change at the local level, which is why we are holding them accountable. We also expect that our leaders will champion and oversee the execution of their local DEI action plans.

As much as we all hope everyone within an organization, especially leadership, will value DEI and “do the right thing,” you can’t just assume. The hard truth is that you measure what you value and with DEI we’re committed to setting expectations, gathering data, assessing it and holding people accountable. That is what CannonDesign has been unafraid to do.

““As much as we all hope everyone within an organization will value DEI and ‘do the right thing,’ you can’t just assume. The hard truth is you measure what you value and with DEI we’re committed to setting expectations, gathering data, assessing it and holding people accountable.” —Sharla Toller #PowerToChangeStories”

Sharla Toller is Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at CannonDesign in Washington, D.C. https://www.cannondesign.com/people/our-people/person/sharla-toller/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharlatoller/