Beyond box-ticking: Why true DE&I is a mindset, not a metric

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) aren’t just ethical imperatives, they’re strategic advantages. Organisations that leverage different perspectives are better positioned to innovate, adapt to change, and solve complex problems. Diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones in decision-making, creativity, and market insight. They bring fresh ideas, challenge assumptions, and spot blind spots that a single perspective might miss. Simply put, DE&I isn’t optional – it’s critical to resilient, high-performing organisations.

Yet, despite growing awareness, many organisations approach DE&I as a matter of policy and statistics. Targets are set for representation, and progress is commended in annual reports. While these efforts may be well-intentioned, they risk becoming a way of ticking boxes without shifting the underlying organisational mindset. So what needs to change?

Beyond the numbers: Culture over compliance

What got organisations to where they are today may not get them to where they want to go tomorrow. True diversity isn’t measured after the fact – it’s a culture actively cultivated. It’s a mindset rooted in curiosity. A willingness to expand what’s known, challenge assumptions, and seek out perspectives that may feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar.

One helpful way to understand DE&I is through the lens of lagging and leading indicators. Lagging indicators measure outcomes that have already occurred. A diversity quota, for example, tells you who is currently represented (a snapshot of the past). This can be useful for tracking progress, but it doesn’t shape what happens next or create conditions in which diverse talent can thrive.

Leading indicators, by contrast, are predictive. They signal the likelihood of future outcomes by measuring the conditions and behaviours that precede them. In DE&I, this means looking at the cultural drivers: whether diverse perspectives are not just present, but meaningfully integrated into decisions and processes. Leaders who focus on leading indicators ask: “Are we building the conditions that enable different voices to shape our future success?” This is why DE&I cannot be reduced to numbers on a dashboard. It must be rooted in culture and choice.

The consequences of overlooking diversity go far beyond missed opportunities for innovation. They can pose serious operational and ethical risks. Take pharmaceutical trials as an example. If trials are conducted predominantly on a narrow population (often white, male, and from similar socioeconomic backgrounds), blind spots emerge. Homogeneity, while comfortable in the short term, creates dangerous limitations in the long term.

Questioning the system, not the person

It is human nature to gravitate toward people who think and communicate in similar ways. However, this can lead to cookie-cutter teams where expectations are standardised. When someone struggles to fit this mould (perhaps because they prefer collaborative problem-solving in a culture that prioritises individual outputs, or because they thrive on experimentation in an environment that prizes predictability) the assumption is often that the problem lies with the individual.

A mindset of curiosity flips this perspective. Instead of asking how to “manage the person,” leaders can ask what within the system prevents that individual from thriving. The goal is not to force people to conform to rigid structures but to question how those structures can become more flexible, opening possibilities for everyone.

Cultivating curiosity in practice

The challenge, of course, is how to translate curiosity from an abstract value into a lived practice. In many organisations, routines reinforce familiar thinking, encouraging leaders to rely on what they already know. To truly benefit from diversity, these patterns need to be disrupted. Cultivating curiosity requires deliberately changing context and creating experiences that pull leaders out of the narrow confines of their usual responsibilities and into situations that reveal new perspectives.

Practical approaches could include:

• Role reversals or temporary immersion in another team or function
• Future-oriented scenarios, imagining how the organisation operates in ten years
• Stepping into the perspective of customers, competitors, or colleagues from other functions

Strangeness is not a distraction, it’s the point. These experiences jolt leaders into seeing assumptions they otherwise take for granted.

Curiosity is also inward-facing. Leaders need to examine their own assumptions, biases, and habitual responses. What feels “natural” is often shaped by context and culture. Reflecting on these patterns helps identify missing voices, systemic barriers, and hidden opportunities. In this way, curiosity becomes a direct tool for advancing DE&I, surfacing gaps that metrics alone cannot reveal.

From insight to action: Standing in the result

Curiosity and the concept of “standing in the result” work together in creating an inclusive culture. While curiosity expands awareness and surfaces overlooked perspectives, standing in the result asks leaders to act today as if the inclusive, equitable organisation they aspire to already exists. It’s about translating insight into tangible action, rather than waiting for perfect conditions or policies to align.

By envisioning the organisation at its most equitable and innovative, leaders can identify missing perspectives, assumptions that exclude talent, and structures that need to change. Standing in the result then transforms these insights into deliberate actions: adjusting processes, modelling inclusive behaviours, and empowering teams to act from possibility. Roadblocks are no longer barriers. They become opportunities to experiment, learn, and reinforce inclusion.

In practice, this could mean questioning standard operating procedures that unintentionally favour certain ways of thinking, redesigning meetings to accommodate diverse communication styles, or creating spaces where underrepresented voices feel safe contributing. Curiosity identifies the gaps; standing in the result ensures leaders take proactive steps to close them. Together, they turn DE&I from a compliance exercise into a lived, systemic reality, where diversity is not only visible but actively leveraged to drive innovation and performance.

The importance of “invisible” diversity

Discussions around diversity often focus on visible characteristics such as gender and ethnicity. Yet some of the most powerful drivers of innovation come from less visible forms, particularly neurodiversity. With an estimated one in seven people in the UK being neurodivergent, it is highly likely that most teams already include individuals who think and process differently.

Overlooking this aspect of diversity is not only a missed opportunity; it is a business risk. In our next article, the focus will turn to neurodiversity specifically, exploring how leaders can move from awareness to action to create workplaces where every thinking style has the opportunity to thrive.

If you want to explore how curiosity and inclusive practices can transform your organisation, get in touch to discuss strategies that turn DE&I from policy into performance.