By Janet M. Stovall, CDE
Editor’s note: This season, we asked one central question: what should leaders be doing now to prepare for what’s next? The old playbook is a liability, and the new one is still being written. This season was a curriculum for leading through chaos, with each guest providing a blueprint for how to build a skyscraper in an earthquake zone. This brief synthesizes the key themes from the entire season into a new playbook, framed around that core question.
What’s Now: Understanding the Shifting Ground
The first half of the season was about assessment—understanding the reality of the current moment. Before you can build, you have to be clear about the landscape.
- See things as they are. You can’t be strategic if you’re not clear about reality. This means understanding the difference between legal requirements and political intimidation, being honest about who holds power, and communicating with transparency.
- Stop speaking the wrong language. The social justice case for DEI, while important, is the wrong currency for the C-suite. The work must be framed in the language of sustainable business performance. If you can’t connect your DEI strategy to business outcomes, it will always be vulnerable.
- Acknowledge the trust deficit. In an epidemic of mistrust, leaders must rebuild trust with both data and authentic connection. This means creating channels for truly anonymous feedback and having the courage to be vulnerable and human.
- Know what to stop doing. The most powerful strategic move is often not what you add, but what you eliminate. This means strategically abandoning exclusionary practices, time-wasting activities, and the habit of complying with pressure before it’s even applied.
What’s Next: Building the Un-Roll-Backable Future
The second half of the season was about redesign—building a new playbook for a new reality. This is how you build something that lasts.
- Build systems, not just symbols. Rainbow flags and heritage months are easy to roll back. The work is to move from symbolism to systems, building DEI into the core infrastructure of the organization so it becomes un-roll-backable.
- Make humanity your competitive advantage. In the age of AI, the most valuable asset is human intelligence, creativity, and connection. The organizations that win will be the ones that use technology to amplify human capability, not replace it.
- Use collective action to resist pressure. Don’t let the bully take your lunch money. Isolated compliance invites more pressure. The strategic response is to build coalitions and use collective action to resist external pressures.
- Embrace the controlled burn. You can’t avoid the difficult conversations. You have to be willing to have managed, thoughtful, and deliberate action to clear out the underbrush before it becomes a wildfire.
- Lead with hope, armed with tools. Despite the chaos, the dominant theme of the season was hope. Every guest provided practical tools and frameworks, not just warnings. The message was clear: you are not powerless.
- Build for the earthquake. The ground is no longer stable. The new job of a leader is to build a skyscraper in an earthquake zone. This means designing systems, strategies, and cultures that are not just strong, but resilient and adaptable to constant change.
What This Means for Leaders
The central question for every leader is, what are you doing now to prepare for what’s next? Are you reacting or redesigning? The chaos is not going away, but that doesn’t mean you are powerless. This season provided the frameworks and the data. Now, it’s time to go build something that lasts.
