Beyond the Backlash

INSIGHTS AT THE INTERSECTION OF INCLUSION, ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL RECRUITMENT AND GEN Z

VOLUME 20: The Backlash Was Real. Did the Collapse Have to Happen?

By Greg Almieda, CEO and Founder, Global View Communications (GVC)

Political pressure played a real role in the DEI retreat of the past two years… how much of one is still up for debate. But pressure alone doesn’t explain why so many programs folded without a fight. The uncomfortable part leaders keep avoiding: a lot of what collapsed was already hollow before anyone applied pressure to it.

Here’s the pattern. A company makes a bold public equity commitment. Comms writes the press release. Leadership nods along in an all-hands. But nobody adjusts headcount, nobody builds real measurement systems, nobody gives the DEI lead a seat where budget decisions actually get made. The ambition was genuine. The infrastructure never existed. So when the pressure came, there was nothing load-bearing to defend, just a slogan with no scaffolding underneath it.

That’s the pattern worth naming: high ambition sitting on top of skeletal structure, invisible to leadership, unmeasured, uncoordinated with the rest of the business. It’s not a failure of belief. It’s a failure of build.

So what does a load-bearing DEI strategy actually require? Four things, in sync:

Ambition: a strategic vision specific enough to survive scrutiny: why, in what, and for whom you’re driving change, and how it ties to business value, not just optics.
Structure: real governance (who has decision rights, who’s accountable) and real resourcing (budget and staff, not a 10% add-on to someone’s existing job).
Stakeholder engagement: leadership that champions the work when it’s inconvenient, not just in a press release, plus employees who are genuinely engaged rather than just aware.
Enabling infrastructure: measurement that tracks outcomes, not just activity; systems that actually run day-to-day operations; a communication strategy that can articulate value internally and externally, consistently.

Ambition only holds if what’s underneath it is real.

So where do you start? If you’ve already done a recent internal assessment, don’t shelve it; pair it with a PESTEL scan (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal) so you can see where outside pressure and internal weakness are hitting the same spot. That overlap is where the next attack lands hardest.

If you haven’t done an internal assessment recently, skip straight to PESTEL. The outside environment is driving more of what happens to these programs than it has in years, and it’ll tell you faster where your four pieces are exposed. Either way, the goal is the same: know which of your four supports is thinnest before something outside your walls finds out for you.

Stop asking “how do we talk about DEI now.” Start asking “was ours ever built to last.”

— Greg

Catch up on past issues: globalviewcomm.com/newsletter

Interested in submitting a guest column for publication? Contact greg@globalviewcomm.com for more information.