"Ok… can you remove your items from your basket and place them onto the conveyor belt please?"
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy / Racial Equity statement following the death of George Floyd in 2020 — check.
External Diversity, Equity and Inclusion / Race Equality audit commissioned — check.
External Diversity, Equity and Inclusion consultants commissioned — check.
Staff training sessions booked with "solutions" to key Diversity, Equity and Inclusion / Race / Sexuality / Religion issues in two sessions or less — check.
If you are a trust leader or school leader, this may be a little uncomfortable to read. I want you to sit with that discomfort for a moment.
What have you actually bought?
The DEI supermarket is full of well-packaged interventions. Shiny. Reassuring. Ticked off the list.
But here is the thing about a supermarket shop: you can buy all the right ingredients and still not know how to cook.
The policy sits in a folder. The audit report is on a shelf. The training happened on a Wednesday. And on Thursday, the culture was exactly what it was on Tuesday.
Because Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — done well — is not a product. It is a practice.
It requires leaders who are willing to examine their own assumptions, not just commission someone else to examine the organisation's.
It requires structures that are actually interrogated — not just described.
It requires the kind of sustained, unglamorous work that doesn't produce a good quote for the newsletter.
I work with leaders who are genuinely committed to getting this right. And I also work with leaders who have confused activity with progress.
The difference, in my experience, is not intention. Most leaders want to do better. The difference is willingness — willingness to be uncomfortable, to be wrong, to go slower than feels productive, and to keep going when the urgency has passed.
The DEI quick fix exists because urgency is real, complexity is hard, and it feels better to do something than nothing.
I understand that.
But the conveyor belt keeps moving, and the items keep piling up, and if no one is asking "what are we actually building with all of this?" — then the shop will be full, and the culture will be unchanged.
What would it look like to stop shopping and start cooking?
