…contains the procedures, policies, practices and measures your organization creates and implements through discovery and experimentation.

Let’s back up.

During a 2022 podcast interview with Augsburg University, a listener asked if we were familiar with the Intercultural Developmental Inventory (IDI) and would we recommend that an organization pair it with the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Organizational Self Assessment (OSA.) Yes, we are aware of the IDI.

Would we recommend using the IDI (measures an individual’s intercultural development) with the OSA (assesses an organization’s readiness for racial equity work)? Our answer: Individuals do not come to racial equity work from the same starting place. Neither do organizations. How you benchmark where your organization is today and the readiness of the individuals in it, is unique to your workplace.

What Do You Recommend?

• Benchmark with measures your organization already uses to assess current state for any strategy.
• Add to, modify, or reimagine your measurement toolkit based on cross functional discovery and conversation around racial equity specific to your organization.
• Organizations not accustomed to assessing current state, and which may not have a ready tool kit, start with the Antiracist Style Indicator (individual) and the OSA (organizational). Organizational advances in racial equity require both.
• Why these? Easy, accessible, no intermediaries to interpret results and they are free. Also, since the publication of The Business of Race in 2021, we’ve used both tools with thousands of professionals within scores of organizations. The feedback: they are constructive starting places.
• Growth is iterative and change is a journey. Don’t fret over the “perfect” tool. Choose one (these or others you may know of) and get going.