Why Workplace Values Fail — And How Leaders Can Fix Them
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“Equity is the practice of designing systems that remove barriers. So opportunity, access, and accountability aren’t dependent on identity or power.” – Yvonne Jackson
In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with resilience educator and strategic alignment consultant Yvonne Jackson on the importance of recalibrating our values as leaders.
A few reasons why she is awesome — she is a resilience educator, strategic alignment consultant, and founder of SocialEDG, a WBENC and WOSB Certified workplace equity firm. She has 15 years of leadership experience at top companies like Apple, Bank of America, and Whirlpool, she reimagined DEI through her signature framework, Joyful Equity®, which fosters inclusivity, resilience, and systemic change by replacing shame and fear with empowerment and positivity. And she leads The Resilience Reset, a 7-day course helping women and caregivers rebuild strength during uncertainty.
Connect with Yvonne and learn more about her work…
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Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Yvonne Jackson, and here is why she is awesome. She’s a resilience educator, a strategic alignment consultant, and founder of Social EDGE, a WBENC and WOSB certified workplace equity firm. She has 15 years of leadership experience at top companies that you may have heard of: Apple, Bank of America, Whirlpool, and so forth.
She’s also got her own signature framework that we’re probably gonna dig into a little bit today called Joyful Equity, which fosters inclusivity, resilience, and systemic change, and she leads the Resilience Reset, which is a seven-day course helping women and caregivers rebuild strength during uncertainty.
I’m feeling a lot of resilience. I’m feeling a lot of diversity and equity. I’m feeling a lot of that today. Uh, Yvonne, so, um, welcome to the show.
Yvonne Jackson: Thank you. No, I’m happy to be here. I’m so excited to talk about favorite topics, equity, values, leadership, relationships. This is my jam. So I’m, I’m happy to dive into this.
Russel Lolacher: It’s all interwoven. It’s so funny when I talk to people and they’re like, “Wow, relationships. What is a relationship strategy?” I’m like, “Do you have friends at home?” Like, do you… Like, it’s not much different. It is just we have to be intentional. That’s the big thing with all of this. So super excited to get into all those things, but we have to jump off with the first question I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience?
Yvonne Jackson: Um, so I’m actually gonna go with what my best employee experience because I think it really talks to leadership values, how we treat people. Um, it’s 2025, but what people don’t understand is that social, um, sh- social or digital marketing didn’t really exist in ar- until around 2010, 20- 2011. And in fact, I started doing social, um, and digital marketing around 2009, um, teaching my- being self-taught.
I taught myself everything about digital marketing and social media marketing. So when I went to go back to corporate America, um, I, I sent in my application. I was the 99th person to apply to Cintas for a job that was called digital marketing manager, which again, it, this job did not exist in 2011. And I was hired.
The, uh, the reason why I was hired is my manager said it was because of all the work that I put into learning this on my own, and also that they had this feeling that I knew how to say no, right? They hired me ’cause they knew I had the energy, the potential to say no. And when I came in, it was the best environment because again, I’m a woman.
I’m a Black woman in tech doing digital stuff, right? There’s a lot of things happening here, a lot of biases that you can assume to come. But the- Cintas, the company, they were so about promoting women in general. You know? And you don’t see that, and it wasn’t like there was this mandate or, “Hey, we’re gonna create this program for women.”
It was just built into the DNA. No, let’s support everyone, and let’s bring up the women. The few, the women we do have, let’s give them opportunity. I never, ever felt as if something about me was shifting what my managers felt, right? There was never a sense of bias. In fact, um, the leadership team, CEO, they made it a, a thing to always eat lunch in the same cafeteria as their workers, right?
Always like building relationships. We are the same. One of the things that they taught was, um, uh, what is it?
Uh, positive discontent was one of their values. Positive discontent. So it’s this idea that we will create positivity, create this environment for people to grow, but let’s have that frish- friction of discontent right there as well. That even though we may make it to this certain height, do we stay there?
No, let’s have that c- little bit of discontent that will en- enable us to move forward. And in fact, the only reason I left Cintas was because I got a full scholarship to the University of North Carolina for an MBA program. And when I told my manager, I felt so bad, and he looked at me and said, “Yvonne, um, I think that’s the best return on investment you can ever have, so go.”
So that… I just wanna show all these pieces. It was, it was from the moment I interviewed until the moment I left, right? That’s an employee life cycle
Russel Lolacher: I love that because first off, from a 2011 perspective, that is very forward-thinking, that they’re putting it into the DNA of the organization. I bring this up for, with two examples. One, very high profile and very poisonous, and the other just seems to be a logical step.
First is the DEI of it all, is ins- within your organiz- you’re saying promoting women, promoting… Now, in the last couple of years, as we both know, DEI has become this horrible thing that is off the side, is its own program that they’ve labeled some person of color to be in charge of, that… And that hasn’t worked because we’ve treated it as an other, when we both know that it needs to be in the DNA.
And they’re also looking at tech around that as well, that tech shouldn’t be an IT department. It should be the backbone of your entire organization. So for you to talk about an organization 15 years ago that looks at it like that, that is astronomically, you know, a, a beautiful thing. I’m gonna weep a little bit here.
Yvonne Jackson: Yeah, and if I may say, Cintas is the most corporate company I’ve ever worked at. The men wore ties. Everyone had to wear a tie. So it’s not about conservativeness or this or that. It, this wasn’t a, a, a technology company that had people playing tennis in the background. This was as corporate and conservative as you can be, yet they lived their values, right?
And I, I haven’t, I have really haven’t felt that since.
Russel Lolacher: It’s funny that, I mean, again, we’re going back 15 years for an anomaly that is now like, but why can’t this be normal? Why can’t this just be the norm? Which I’m having a, a, a think that this may be like the baseline of a lot of your work, is why can’t it be like this thing that was influencing me at a younger age?
Um, I love when also when people sh- share stories that are positive and from a younger time, because a lot of them will be, “I was younger, I had a boss that didn’t get any leadership training. Now I have trauma for 20, 30 years, and here I am today.”
Yvonne Jackson: I, I can’t be tricked into thinking that certain behavior is okay because I actually know what it feels like to work with, with people who care about me. So when people don’t, aren’t able to do that, I go, “Mm-mm. Mm-mm.” I’ve experienced it, so I know we can do better
Russel Lolacher: And I like that you pushed on the word feel because we corporate this way too much or we get too ROI or too, like, rigid. And don’t get me wrong ’cause there’s a lot of people that will need to know the ROI of freaking everything. But the feel, like how you feel when you come into every day influence and manages and powers innovation.
You know, h- how you, uh, you know, everything, productivity, everything, and yet we d- we remove ourselves from the feel piece. So I have so many questions. Um, I wanna start first with defining a few things. I like to set the table a bit when it comes to topics. So we’re talking about equity and we’re talking about recalibrating our values today and rethinking them.
So I guess first off, I want to understand from you, what do you mean when we’re even talking about things like values? What does values mean to you?
Yvonne Jackson: So I think for so long, values were words that incorporated how people wanted the environment to feel, you know? And it more aspirational. It’s, you know, this is… It’s mission-driven, you know. We want to… We build trust. We, um, we’re present. You… We’re, we’re curious, you know. These… But when you think about it, none of those words have an actionable behavior connected to it.
So when you go and create your, your values, you know, your, your seven top values of your company, and you say, “Be curious,” what does that mean? And when I ask, “What does that mean?” what does that mean down the line for leadership, for the managers, for the, the, the workers, all the way to the person who’s doing janit- janitorial?
Because again, everyone’s supposed to be living the v- the, the values, right? Companies put out a value, but they don’t put an action next to it, and they do not teach their teams how to use that value as a dec- decision-making tool. And that’s been the biggest shift in how I view values. I have this values workshops, workshop that I do for clients, and what I teach them is how to work through each of their values.
I’m not saying throw them out, but let’s w- w- I guide them through looking at them through the lens of, how do we use that value to create boundaries? How does that value turn into non-negotiables when things fall apart, because they will. And again, how do you turn that into a decision-making tool later on?
I believe values are fundamental in being able to navigate marketplaces and, and landscapes that’s changing at, at, at fast speeds. Because you can always go back to it and allow it to pivot you in the right direction.
Russel Lolacher: You mentioned them being aspirational. I’ve heard that quite a few times, that values are things we put on walls, they’re things we put on websites to talk about the, the place or the people that we want to be, not the ones that we are. Is that the approach, is that we need to figure out who we are? Or should it be, should we be treating values as sort of a map of where we want to be?
Because again, that’s what they’re doing, but we need actions to get there. Or are we looking at our mindfulness and doing it now and going, “This is what we need to be as we are currently”? I’m just, I’m just trying to understand, is it, should it be goal setting or should it be, you know, place setting, sort of setting the table of who we are now?
Yvonne Jackson: They should be decision-making tools. I will, I will go straight to there to say, “Skip it all out.” If your value cannot be used to make decisions, it should not be on the list. It is taking up space. So I will be, I will go on, I will go down with that ship when saying that
Russel Lolacher: I think it puts guardrails up too. I remember working in a place where we put up our values. We almost had a credo as well, and any time members of my team would come in and go blah, blah, blah, blah… Well, they didn’t say that, but they were, like, talking about what they were talking about, and I’m like, and I point.
I’m like, “Does it fit within those?” “Nope.” “Then why are we doing it?” “Oh.” So again, it comes back to that no, but also it, it, it limits what we do so we can focus on what we want to do. So the guardrails were so helpful for us, to your point, that values are decision-making. I, I love that, ’cause I think it’s, it’s…
We- if we don’t have them, we’re just spinning in the wind. We’re just sort of, there’s no rigidity to what we do. There’s no focus to what we do, ’cause we do everything, and I’m like, that’s, that… We just can’t operate that way
Yvonne Jackson: And, and I believe that at a certain point when you, when some- when you tell them, “Does it match the values?” And it doesn’t, but it’s needed, that means there’s something wrong with the value. Maybe we’re missing a value or these values are no longer in alignment with where we are. So it’s… I, I’m not even advocating for static values that stay every year or across 10 years.
I believe values should be looked at at least once every year to make sure they’re in alignment with the landscape, right? M- Nine, nine out of 10 times they still are. But if you’re noticing that the marketplace, customer d- demands, innovation is taking you away from your values, that is a point to stop and consider what is it?
What’s the reason for it? And maybe it is because the values are no longer in alignment. Or not so much that they’re no in ali- not in alignment, but they’re not the most important. A lot of times you have 10 values and only three are actually necessary for any decisions in the company, right? So it’s about prioritizing those values.
And again, should they even be on the list if they’re not prioritizing decisions and, and innovation
Russel Lolacher: You talk about coaching individuals. So are we looking at this differently from a corporate perspective versus an individual perspective when we’re like, “We need…” I understand reassessing as an individual and as a corporation because we change. We have kids. Our priorities might change. Our lives change, so our values have to change.
But do we need to look at it because corporations don’t have kids. Corporations, there are other things. They’re not a human. So what is the difference in recalibrating our values be- between the individual and the corporation?
Yvonne Jackson: I think there is much difference. I think the difference is in how long it takes. When we’re doing it for ourselves, what is that? You know, we get a glass of wine, we get our journal, we sit down, you know, we sit down and think, or maybe it’s a friend group and we, you know, we’re doing it. We’re, you know, we’re talking through it, crowdsourcing it together.
It can take a day, a week, a h- a, a vacation, right? I lo- I travel to recalibrate my values. What happens when you turn it into a corporate place, suddenly there’s 10 people, not just me and a friend, right? There’s 10 people, three teams responsible for creating values. And most companies, I will say it takes them up to six months, if not a year, to build out their values or redefine them.
And that’s wild because if it takes you a year to redefine your values, the c- the world has already changed. And again, to my, to my point, the values should be aligned up at any given time. So what I’m a fan of, especially with my workshop, and I’m also building out this values, uh, tool, is how do we shorten the span of time necessary to realign our values?
Because if not, nobody will do it, right? And that’s why it takes us six months to 12 months, and then it just falls apart, and eventually you get seven values that everyone’s only meh about, but they’re tired of the exercise. So I think it’s respo- it’s, it’s meant for everyone, but when you have 10 people, three teams doing it, it can get exhaustive, and I’m really into how do we cut that down, right?
So that it can be done in a week. It can be done, you know, at, at, at an offsite, right? So we can go on with our lives and, and do our business.
Russel Lolacher: Why? Why? Why do, why should we be doing this? Because there’s obviously a danger to doing this or you wouldn’t have a workshop or you wouldn’t have a career. So there is a danger to not realigning them. What, what are we worried about?
Yvonne Jackson: Um, I think most people are worried about accountability.
Russel Lolacher: Mmmmm。
Yvonne Jackson: Values. Boundaries. Non-negotiablers..Dec- them being decision-making tools, that falls into the land of accountability. And right now, and you’ve probably been… You know, the people you talk to, a lot of leadership teams are trying to figure out how to hold their leadership and managers accountable, matching it up to either their, you know, bonuses or performance ratings.
There’s all these ways they’re trying to do it, but it’s not really working. Right when they get to the point of implementing it, it stops, and it just sits over to the side, and it’s because no- people are afraid of being held accountable. When you say, “My gut instinct is my reason,” no one can hold it against you when it fails, right?
You know, if you say, if you say it’s, “Well, you know what? At the time, this is what we thought, and, you know, this was…” It’s just a very… No one can be held accountable versus if you have a value mirror in front of you you’re saying, “Hey, we should be using these, these as decision-makers,” your initiatives, your project that you’re trying to get leadership approved may get denied because it doesn’t match up with the values of the company or our c- or their customers.
And no one wants their things denied, so let’s… No, let’s hide values ’cause values are the mirror to my, my, my, my promotion, right? To, to my bonus, uh, to my, to recognition, and to me getting funding for my projects, which is a whole nother area where I, I, I’ve landed with my business. I’m, I’m working on creating technology tools to guide values as well as to take our initiatives and strategies and, and figure out how feasible they are within minutes versus months.
So again, accountability, right? If you’re held accountable, um, you don’t get everything you want, and people don’t like that.
Russel Lolacher: I, I think we forget a lot of the humanity behind this too, because if leaders are not held accountable, the trust erodes within the organization because you can get away with stuff. You never have to meet a deadline. You never have to get any impact. You just have to deliver a thing, and if you don’t, okay, keep moving.
We keep confusing responsibility with accountability, and it drives me nuts.
Yvonne Jackson: And I just want to sit this statistic here with you. Do you know that 75% of all projects, especially consultant projects, fail?
Russel Lolacher: Not surprised.
Yvonne Jackson: 75 per cent of projects fail, don’t work out. That is, to me, such a… Where’s accountability? We know off the bat 75% of everything. Where- how are people still, you know, being promoted, leaders may have them making millions of dollars a year, when 75% of what you do fails, right?
So my reason for looking at values, um, looking at how we decide and prioritize what projects get done and, and, and, and funded is because I believe that number should be shorter. There’s no reason with all the data we have, innovation, AI, that we should be failing that much, and I, I think there’s an, again, accountability lens of, like you said, things just get watered.
The- just get, they get thrown away. Next year we forget that that happened. We’re onto the next thing, when we could be improving year over year, right? And that’s really, if you get down to it, that’s what then the investors want. But we, we can’t do that ’cause we’re afraid. We’re in a fear zone.
Russel Lolacher: So I want to connect the dots for that because we’ve talked about ac- operationalizing values, we’ve talked about accountability. How do we do that on a day-to-day consistency basis where values have been established and recalibrated, but we need to reinforce them? So what are the actions we’re taking to ensure that they’re operationalized?
What are the actions we’re focusing on?
Yvonne Jackson: I think at the, the very beginning of it is let’s just take how we do values right now. Again, there’s a typically this committee who comes together, they go back and forth, they prioritize, they get exhausted. That’s literally what happens. Um, the values go nowhere. What I have seen is that one day after they decided on the top seven values, they have a meeting with leadership.
They get 10 minutes in the leadership meeting to showcase their values. “Yay, we did it. The team has the 10 values.” Leadership asks no questions. It’s just, “This is it.” And then at that point, maybe there’s an email, maybe there’s a video, ’cause now people just video everything. A video is sent down the t- the, the chain that everyone has to watch as part of their learning and development of what our new values are.
And that’s it. That is literally the, the life of the… There’s nowhere else from the- and nothing else that the values ever… Oh, I forget there’s the poster.
Russel Lolacher: Right. Can’t forget the poster
Yvonne Jackson: So that’s all we have. So how do we change that? One Leadership, you should be giving it more time. If they aren’t on that committee doing it, 15-minute conversation with the team isn’t enough. They need their own training and coaching around what values mean. So I think it’s values coaching for leaders. They should know if… Especially if another team put it together, they should unders- be the first ones understanding how value aligns, right?
How does, how, what the non-negotiables of that value are, what are the boundaries, how we can use this at decision-making. They need to know that. Just speaking it to them, that’s, at that point is completely failure. Then we move it down to the regular team. Again, managers. Are managers being trained to understand how to use those values, right?
Again, if you just give them a poster on the board, they’re not being told how to do it. For me, it’s take… The first step is taking that val- the values and strategically, again, looking at it, saying, “These are the type of boundaries that are created. Things that, you know what, we just won’t do. Like, if the world changes, if the administration changes, guess what?
This part of our business doesn’t change.” And non-negotiables. “You know what? If this happens, if our customers send us emails mad about X, Y, and Z, we already know what our non-negotiables are. If this doesn’t fit in there, we can do it for them.” Right? And then again, is, is it a, can you make decisions on it?
People need to have those written down, those examples made for their organization. Then you share those behaviors with your teams, and then you can actually see action happen. But until you break down your values beyond a, a fuzzy word and one-sentence description, you will not be able to use them. So for me, it’s actually defining, redefining your values.
If you do that and then train your team on how that looks at from a behavioral standpoint, you’re solid. I wish I had a more magical pill for you, but that, it really comes down to defining and, and coaching and training.
Russel Lolacher: Hey, I’m a sucker for defining coaching and training as we we, we started… We have to define what we’re even talking about ’cause we throw out so many words in the workplace, leadership, diversity, and yet we never define any of them. We just assume you know what they mean when we’re like, “Are we singing from the same song sheet here?”
Which makes me think, if I’m working on a team, if, or if I’m a leader in, within the organization while working on teams, and I’m getting these new values, they’re being recalibrated, they’re being adjusted every couple of months, what if I’m sitting there in my own values and they’re not aligning? Or they’re not, or they’re close but not there.
Are we adjusting and adapting to suit them, or are we doubling down on our own and going, “Maybe this is somewhere I need to go somewhere else ’cause it doesn’t fit for me.” ‘Cause I’m worried about adaptability versus, you know, resistance.
Yvonne Jackson: Yeah. So one of my clients, uh, when we were having the workshop, they were like, “Okay, so what happens if I need all the values are, are enablers and need to be, you know, looked at at the same time,” right? They were like, “Ah.” And what I’m saying is, again- Look at that when you’re going through a project, just pick that one value that you think matches up.
If you believe one, this is all of the… If you have six core values that you’ve defined, at least one of them can be used as a decision-making tool, right? And again, the value isn’t meant for you to follow along. Use that value to decide if your action is wrong. So for that manager who’s looking at this and they’re like, “Hey, there’s this value of, um,” what can we use?
Um, let’s see, what do people say a lot of times? We’ll just use curiosity because it’s always the thing, curiosity. When we look at curiosity, the decision filter on this and, and other things is, or the, the, the non-negotiable is we will not use this value to keep things spinning forever, right? We will not use curiosity to ensure that we don’t make decisions quickly, right?
It’s about them realizing that the, the value isn’t, again, just about what we do, but it goes back to the, the boundaries. If curiosity value is gonna hurt your team, don’t… No. No, it’s, it’s not the right time and place for it. So yes, you can throw it out. You can throw it out, but because you’ve already said that curiosity is not allowed, al- is not used to allow us to not be held accountable, right?
Those things are actually part of the process of defining it. You already have those lists of what it cannot be used for and what it can. And if that value is h- detrimental to what you’re doing in your business, throw it out for the mo- time being. That’s not something that… We don’t care about curiosity for this initiative and it’s okay.
Does that make sense?
Russel Lolacher: It does because I know a lot of executive that will be very precious on certain words going, “No, curiosity has to be in there. We are a curious company.” N- n- no. Like the actions are not meeting what you’re saying. I know you love that word and you want us to be that and you think we’re that, but your perception versus reality isn’t aligning.
And I think a lot of senior leaders get lost in, to your point earlier, aspiration or their own version of identity for the organization versus what we’re trying to do.
Yvonne Jackson: Right. No, sometimes the whole point of having those, those non-negotiables and boundaries set in advance when defining it is for this exact situation. For you to go, “You know what? This value is not helping us out for this project. Maybe for something else it is, but for this one, no. No. It’s keeping us from moving forward quickly.
We’re not being able to pivot, and people are using it as an excuse not to do the work or not to…” You know what I mean? So, or not to make a decision. And then, but again, guess what? The value did what it was supposed to do. It, it, it actually did what it was supposed to do. It sparked conversation, it sparked realignment, right?
And it allowed them to move forward
Russel Lolacher: In, in larger organizations, would you say that there should only be like three va- I’m not saying a number ’cause numbers, it shouldn’t be specific, it shouldn’t be. But it, it, to your point, it can be too many and it can be too few, but you’ll know it when it’s right. Should there be more than one set of values for an organization?
Because I’m thinking it from a cultural standpoint. We’ve got one culture that people say, but then there’s like 1,000 subcultures within the organization. Values at the top, or should there also be values within each that align with the larger? ‘Cause I’m thinking of mission, vision, purpose, that sort of thing.
Should we be splintering it or is that something that actually helps an organization?
Yvonne Jackson: No.
Russel Lolacher: Okay. Perfect
Yvonne Jackson: The reason why is ’cause I, I see this, right? I just recently seen this at a company that I’m working for. There’s leadership values and, or principles, then there’s values over here, and they, and they, they’re just named different things, and then they have the team values. No. Uh, uh, h- then you have 10 different decks, right?
When you go to present to leadership in a team over what your company values are, no one knows which, which values to use. Is it the principles? Is it values? Is it team ones? It’s, it’s just confusing. Stick to just a few. Honestly, the s- the sweet spot is three to five. ‘Cause again, the world is moving too fast for us to have seven values.
If you have time to come up with sev- seven values, you aren’t working on what’s important, which is delivery and results. Three to five, right, is the sweet spot because then you can actually deeply define them. Imagine going through this exercise with seven to eight values. No. Three to five. And again, if you need to shift them, you will know, right?
If you have seven, you’ll never be able to know which value is no longer working for your company. But that being said, when you’re thinking about, you know, how many, uh, um, and h- how all the different teams go, there is something for at a team level understanding values, but what that’s called is, is team norms, right? It’s not about creating a m- more values for your… at the team level. It’s about having a conversation about what is our, are the social norms, our team norms that we care about.
For some people, those norms can be, “Hey, we ensure that everyone gets an opportunity to speak.” Our norms is we don’t, we don’t yell, ’cause, you know, there are cer- certain industries that yelling is just kinda part of the game, right? There are cert- You can still create norms. In fa- in fact, the s- research says that teams that are able to, um, co- co-create their own set of norms and behaviors are the most successful.
The thing is, we don’t wanna confuse norms with the values, right? Norm, the team norms is how we treat each other, what we’re going through based upon how we know how we all act, because we know our behavior. So there is a difference between team norms and value setting, and I think that is w- the space where I would con- I would put things.
Russel Lolacher: I, I like that a lot. I’ve, I’ve even been through a few exercises where they’re like, “We should have our own team vision.” I’m like, “N- no, because then there’s two visions in the organization. There’s the one the, for the whole one, and then you have your own. That makes no sense.” It should be informed by, but there is only one vision, there is only one mission, even if they get adjusted, and then the values, I think, fall within that as well.
That’s why I love the term norms. I went in the purpose statements, like what is our purpose to support the vision and mission? And what were our… We did a credo as well, which, or sort of a manifesto, which was very much to your, to the norms. Like, this is who we are, this is what it’s like to work with us as a team, but they are all informed by the vision and the mission and the values of the organization
Yvonne Jackson: Yeah, yeah. We, we, it’s basically like how do you ask? You know, like, y- so there’s, there’s a difference. And also what happens is, you know, you, we mentioned the word equity a few times at the beginning of this, is that when each team has a different set of visions, visions, right, and values, um, then an inequity comes in.
And the reason why this is not great is because what happens is certain or certain teams are doing really great, other teams are not. Right? And, and so no one c- is understanding why is that technology team is having a great time over there? Not that they shouldn’t, but what’s going on? What we should be doing is looking at that team to see what norms they’ve set, and then we leverage that across the other teams to go back, right?
So that’s also if you, if you allow everyone just to do everything, you’re not able to really pick up on what to change, because people are in their silo just having a good time, right? But it… But when you do pick up on that, the g- idea is to move those values back up, ’cause obviously it’s doing better than what it was at the top.
So that’s my other caveat for that.
Russel Lolacher: Yeah, I, I love that as a teachable moment almost because unfortunately bad leaders will look at that and go, “Oh, that’s just a unicorn. That’s just an anomaly. They’re just, they’re different.” I’m like, “No, that is an opportunity to pull from and learn from.” So I’m, I’m so glad you highlighted that. But you also led me to where I was sort of going to next, which is what about the values that are, well, there’s a bit of charge behind them.
Um, right off the bat we were talking about DEI and before we got into this conversation, DEI and then there’s diversity, equity, and inclusivity and, but that seems okay, but DEI just triggers people. But they’re important as values. These are, especially equity. So what do we do with those words that we know have value but know will be triggering to people within the organization based on outside influences, based on worldviews, that sort of thing?
Yvonne Jackson: Right. So, uh, I have to, like you, when we started off, you were talking about, uh, you know, vocabulary’s very important to you and defining things. So when I look at the words DEI, in fact, at the beginning of the year, I had a full service DEI agency, right? Um, what I found, especially at the be- around in January, February is, again, DEI started getting a lot of this honestly hate, right, towards it, it being ripped apart.
I’ve always looked at DEI as separate words, diversity, equity, inclusion. You know, creating equity because that’s how innovation happens. Um, celebrating diversity because also that’s how innovation happens. And, uh, and then inclusion because people are human and they feel, right? They need a sense of belonging.
So for me, at, at first I was like, “Do I need my company be, to be a DEI company?” And what I realized was, no, what I wanted to do was embed celebrating people in equity, inclusion in the processes and values. And at first I thought, is, is that me selling out? That I’m, I’m shifting where they lie? And no, I think that for certain companies who have been into the DEI game and it’s working for them, keep whatever you have.
Obviously, you know your market, you know your employees, you know your customers, right? Do not make any changes. Hold those words up high. For those who are trying to navigate spaces where nonprofits, companies that get money from federal, right, those that are impacted by anything the administration might say or, or like- Consider looking at how equity, diversity, inclusion gets embedded into your entire company.
For instance, the space that I’m working at around right now is talent management. So it’s not about us building out DEI strategy, right? Even though the company is all about equity, but… And, and, and diversity. Um, they have ERGs. But it’s looking at their performance r- rating, um, process, right? It’s looking at their return to office program.
It’s looking at all the things they’re doing through that equity lens, right? Doing… And not just looking at through an equity lens, but doing research, because it’s been five years since COVID when it really picked up steam. We actually know the data on what motivates engagement, what motivates performance, what happens when you return to office or you stay remote, right?
How… I want people to care more about embedding it into their entire business than having to keep this word alive, right? For me, equity stay- joyful equity stays in my value system, even though I’m technically not in a DEI company. But do you know that I do the same work for my clients that I did when I did DEI?
It’s just, it’s just, it just looks a little bit different. When people wanted DEI, they still wanted processes on performance rating. They still wanted me to come in and look at their return to office policies. It’s the same work, but I don’t want people to get caught up in words if it’s going to sink the ship.
What I want them to do is embed it into their business, and you can do that
Russel Lolacher: So let’s keep going with equity as a value, e- especially from a corporate perspective. What does that look like when we look at artifacts within the organization? I say this meaning like onboarding, performance reviews. How do we– What questions are we asking or what are we putting into the process to ensure that equity is part of the employee journey?
To your point earlier when you said you actually loved the job from the beginning to the end, and you were seen, you were valued, you felt encouraged, motivated for the entire span. Because right now, a lot of organizations checkbox. “Oh, we did onboarding, right? Yep, they got their i- they got their, their sign-in, their login.
Sure, we’re done. We’ll see you when you quit.” Like, it’s very much this other of, of this relationship. So how do we embed things like equity as an example within that journey?
Yvonne Jackson: All right, so I’m gonna use my own framework for this, okay?
Russel Lolacher: Do it.
Yvonne Jackson: So I just ran the word equity through, um, again, a system that I created. And again, we’re looking at it from, we’re gonna recalibrate the word equity to what it should mean in this world, right? So the equity, um, I call it the value compass, and what I did was I designed it to take in different parts of information around your value, but also it has a, I call it a context bank that has information on what’s happening in society in 2025.
It actually brings in workplace trends that are occurring right now and in the past that could be, could impact how your values should align, and it also brings up things around equity, historical discrimination, systemic issues are put in this context bank. So before it brings you the boundary non-nego- non-negotiable, it’s already looking through it from an equity lens in, in, in general.
So I just want people to understand that’s what it does, um, but it’s not considered equity tool. So I ran val- the value equity. So the recalibrated definition of equity that it brought back to me is that equity is the practice of designing systems that remove barriers. So opportunity, access, and accountability aren’t dependent on identity or power.
That’s not a usual DEI statement of how we describe equity, do, is it? Usually it’s like everyone should all have, get along and have the same things. But because it’s looking through this lens of, you know, uh, this lens I’ve created, it’s saying, no, this is a practice of designing systems that remove barriers.
Every company needs that. That’s not a, a, a just a company who believes in DEI or threw away DEI. No, that, that’s something that everyone can sit behind. The boundaries for equity is that equity can’t live only in statements or representation metrics. If your system still re- rewards sameness or proximity to power, you’re out of alignment.
So that’s where the boundary is. It’s great that you have equity, but if it’s only, you’re only ha- that recalibration only lives in a statement or in, uh, or in that, what is it? Every year they have their diversity report that goes out. Y- you’re doing it wrong. Equity needs to be changing, you know, the s- the company.
The non-negotiable of equity. No decision is considered complete without asking who benefits and who bears the cost. If that question isn’t asked, equity wasn’t part of the process. Think about, that’s a simple question. Again, most people think if they need to build equity, what do we need to have a whole day workshop?
This is just saying, before we do anything, y’all, as a team, as a leader, ask who benefits and who bears the cost. Again, works for any company. And then the decision filter on equity is when faced with a policy, a partnership, or promotion, does this reinforce existing inequities, or does it just redistribute, redistribute access and opportunity?
That’s the decision filter, right? It… The idea, again, is we don’t have to make it about sh- them versus us. It’s about how does e- equity fit in any company, ’cause that’s the whole goal of equity. And so that’s how I’m, I would tell people to enable equity. Ask that question. Who benefits? Who bears the cost?
Know that if it only sits and lives in statements, even after you’ve done all the work, it’s not good enough. And again, if faced with a policy or partnership or promotion, does it reinforce inequity, or does it actually redistribute access?
Russel Lolacher: What does, to wrap us through the equity conversation, so equity is a value. It is something we’re prioritizing. We’re asking all these questions. What is the perfect state? I put air quotes in perfect because nothing ever is. But what is the perfect state of a company that has gotten this right? What are they looking like?
How are they acting? What is the benefit here?
Yvonne Jackson: The perfect state comes down to metrics. Perfect state is your retention numbers. Your turnover rate has decreased, okay? Your turn- turnover rate. When you are doing your e- uh, ESAT or satisfaction surveys, the numbers are going up. If you’re seeing that communication’s falling, you’re seeing that, uh, uh, uh, sentiments like, as, um, purpose and happiness are falling, you know equity is not in, in this equation, right?
You just know it. If, uh, most people, the word wellbeing is one of the sentiments on their eSatisfaction. If the comments that you’re gathering through your survey scores are saying, “I don’t feel good about this. I don’t like things,” equity is not a part of it. The other place in which you can know that equity is not working is in your succession plans, right?
Your leadership promotion, those numbers. Looking at who is being promoted. Do you have a success- succession plan in general? If you don’t have a succession plan at all, again, equity is not happening. There are metrics that companies are tracking every day that will inform you of whether or not equity exists.
It doesn’t just have to be because someone was like, “Ah, I don’t feel like I belong.” No, look at the lum- numbers. Look at, um, coming into an organization, uh, what I realize is that tenure impacts people’s satisfaction rates. Most companies come in, your first one to two years, you’re geared up for the mission of company.
You’re doing great. Three to four, you, you know, you’re moving up. Well, there is a five-year cliff for every single company, especially now in 2025, where suddenly it drops. Look at your numbers. Do you have a five-year cliff of satisfaction? If so, equity. Look at equity. So I mean, for me, it’s not, it’s, it’s literally looking at the numbers on the dashboard.
But that’s to this point. If equity only lives in statements, only lives in your dashboard and doesn’t come out of it, you’re gonna see it in the numbers. You’re going to see it in the numbers
Russel Lolacher: Also reinforces the fact that this is… We need to operationalize our check-ins and our recalibration as well, to your points earlier, because w- it, this is not gonna depend on your annual survey that you do once a year or two years and then maybe do something with the results. And even if you did, by the time you do the survey again, the world, to your point earlier, has changed astronomically, including your employees
Yvonne Jackson: Right. There is definitely right now one of the, um, action plans I have for an organization, a tech organization, is there is, uh, manager check-ins. It’s also, a lot of companies, what they did is they have development plans that they create. They even have systems for it. You go in, you say, “Hey, this is what I wanna work on.”
And then you tell the system, you know. You put it in so your manager knows. Well, you do that work, but the man- y’all may never sit down and actually have a conversation about it. The manager may never, ever review it. So it’s also, there’s some accountability and mandates that need to come to that. You have these tools in your organization.
You’re paying 100,000 to a million dollars a year for employee engagement tools, but are your managers actually going in there, reviewing what, what your people want, what they’re saying about their careers, and then having those conversations? And those conversations should be happening quarterly, let alone the c- the conversations with management and leadership that people don’t always talk about, right?
Because it’s the management team that’s actually holding down the fort and making everything work. They’re the direct leaders, right? Who are ensuring everyone feels belonging, they’re engaged, they’re being innovative, and they often have a disconnect with leadership. So the, it has to have a regular flow.
And one of the other pieces, again, that I’ve seen is succession planning is something that companies are really struggling with. So when you think about, you know, people being promoted, getting new opportunities, when succession plan is put on the sidebar every single year, what are you gonna expect?
People are gonna become disengaged, people are gon- morale’s gonna fall, and you’re gonna start seeing equity disappear, let alone diversity disappear across the organization
Russel Lolacher: Well, we want the good stuff. We don’t want the bad stuff when it comes to leadership and our value calibration. So I wanna wrap it up by asking a, a question on next steps. So a lot of that is a lot more than people can just bite off right now. It is, uh, okay, tomorrow I need to take that next step to even start having these conversations, to sign up for courses and workshops, but I need to mindset shift or whatever.
What would you recommend somebody does just tomorrow to sort of start heading in that right direction of relooking at their values?
Yvonne Jackson: I would say for them, I would take… ‘Cause it’s all about connecting it to real-world scenarios. I’m one of those people that when I was in grad school and you gave me a simulator, I’d fail it because it’s fake. I don’t know how to pass fake simulations for anything. But real-world things that I’m working on, oh, I got it.
So take a project right now that you’re struggling with and put it against your values. Ask yourself, do any, well, how can any of these values support it, right? Pick one value to support that project that you’re struggling on, and start asking to yourself what questions does this value actually invoke that I need to be thinking of in, in regards to this?
Again, when we use the question of equity, it was who benefits and who bears the cost? There’s more questions we coulda came up for those values. Um, other value questions is, um, have we, for, like for curiosity, one of them could be have we asked enough of the right questions to see the full picture? I would say pick an initiative you’re struggling with, grab a value, and just start listing questions that that value should bring up for you, and you’ll start to see a whole different conversation, right?
You’ll start to see some missing hoops in how you’re looking at that project, and I think that’s the first step, just for people to understand how powerful values are. And once you see from just that one brief, you know, uh, ex, uh, description or whatever questions you come up, then go and look at all your values the way I’ve come up with.
And hey, if you want a workshop, I got the workshop, right? Um, is looking at each value, asking what non-negotiables does this create for me, right? Asking what boundaries does this set so our team doesn’t go like this all the time every time the world changes, and how we can use this value as a decision filter.
That’s really what it, what I think it takes. It’s just starting very small, not big, but people need to train their muscle of using the values, and I bet you nine out of, nine out of 10 people have not even looked at their values today. So for me to ask them just to go grab a value, that’s actually a big step, ’cause I know they probably have never done that before.
Russel Lolacher: That is Yvonne Jackson. She’s a resilience educator, strategic alignment consultant, and founder of Social Edge. She’s got a framework that reimagines DEI that you really need to be paying attention to called the Joyful Equity. Thank you so much for being here today
Yvonne Jackson: All right. Thank you. Thank you very much.