353: Behind the Shiny Objects: Real Inclusivity in a Changing World with Katryn Wright

You might remember Katryn from episode 292, where we dove deep into the behavioral blueprint for inclusion. Well, a lot can happen in a year—or in our current case, since the wild ride of the 2026 election—and the DEI landscape is shifting beneath our feet. I’ll admit, when I first started this work ten years ago, I thought we could just shout from the rooftops that inclusion matters and everyone would just magically get it. But as we look at the headlines today, it’s clear that "shiny object syndrome" has left us with a lot of noise and not enough real, systemic change.

Katryn and I sit down to unpack what global leaders are actually doing right now to push past the performative and get to the heart of what makes workplaces genuinely fair.

Key Themes from the Conversation

• Moving from Noise to Systemic Change. Organizations frequently focus on highly public, performative declarations of inclusivity rather than restructuring the underlying processes that perpetuate bias.

  "Organizations were doing a lot of the shiny stuff... doing what we would call noisy things, right? Proclaiming, saying, being public... but obviously that not necessarily translating to real-world change." — Katryn Wright

• The Problem with Unconscious Bias Training. Treating broad, one-size-fits-all training modules as a standalone solution is ineffective and can create artificial metrics that trigger cultural backlash.

  "An awful amount of money was spent on something that the science shows is... ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst." — Katryn Wright

• Inclusion as an Aspiration, Not a Default Value. Framing inclusion as a predefined company value mistakenly implies that the work is already complete, whereas framing it as an ongoing aspiration invites employees to actively participate in closing the gap.

  "When we talk about inclusion as a value, it is not as effective as when we talk about inclusion as an aspirational goal... it suggests that we've been missing a trick to be bringing people on as much as we can." — Katryn Wright

• Precision and Data Science in Workplace Fairness. True progress requires identifying the exact inflection points in employee experiences—like hiring, promotion, and retention stages—where disparities emerge, and applying targeted behavioral interventions.

  "Let's go and be as precise as possible about changing behavior in that exact situation... when we are able to be as precise as possible about which specific behaviors need to change, we can get to those outcomes." — Katryn Wright

Actionable Takeaway for Listeners

Stop trying to de-bias your entire team all at once with sweeping declarations. Instead, pick one specific process in your daily workflow—whether it's how you audit resumes, run performance reviews, or distribute project assignments—and analyze the data to find where the equity gaps lie. Designing small, targeted interventions at precise moments is how real cultural evolution happens.

Follow Katryn at https://www.morethannow.co.uk/