The Foreign Service Journal, June 2022

28 JUNE 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL OPM. We put a preliminary version of it up on our website in November, so people have a general idea of the direction we’re heading. We put it out to receive feedback and observations and recommendations based on the lived experience of Foreign Service generalists and specialists and Civil Service officers and contractors in this building (of which we have thousands), eli- gible family members and locally employed staff. As a result, we had over 700 contributions to our strategic plan! We set up working groups to distill and discuss and figure out what was workable, what timeline, what resources would be necessary to make some of the amazing suggestions real in this organization. We did it in a way that I believe will truly reflect the beliefs and will and desires of our workforce in its entirety, but in a fashion that brings real-world data and resources and time commitments to making sure that it comes about. I think that’s the major difference. AFSA: Could we talk a little bit more about the DEIA strategic plan that’s with the Office of Personnel Management? Assum- ing OPM approval, what do you hope to be rolling out when it’s approved? CDIO: I don’t expect OPM to make any changes, because we very closely followed the requirements they laid out. The plan captures a lot of the work that was already being done in pockets of the building. We are working fromwhat has gone before us. And frommany of our partners around the building, including the employee orga- nizations [formerly employee affinity groups], that gave a lot of support. There was a lot of support from individuals because they had the opportunity to contribute. We have a lot more input from the workforce than we had before. We are prioritizing the need for data-driven, evidence-based approaches to making changes. I believe that people will see the work. It will make sense to them. And then we’re going to have an implementing document. In fact, our organization is ahead of many. We needed this imple- menting document, because we wanted to drill down with when this is going to happen, how this is going to happen, how it’s going to be measured. A lot more information is going to be coming out and shared with the workforce, even after the strategic plan comes out. Look for the imple- mentation document that will follow it. AFSA: Great. And in talking about the importance of data, obviously progress toward diversity can be quantified to a cer- tain degree, but inclusion and the workplace atmosphere are much harder to quantify. How do you hope to assess that piece of the puzzle? CDIO: You’re absolutely right about that. And inclusion, frankly, is the most important part. It isn’t that you just let people in the room. If they still don’t feel like their views are valued and welcomed, they might not speak up, and their presence won’t make a difference at all. If they feel that they cannot add a con- trary opinion to the discussion, or one that’s a little bit outside the normative thinking, then the value of having them in the room and at the table is going to be lost. The inclusion piece really demands that we all speak up. As we look at the challenges that we’re facing around the world, it’s clear we need a wider variety of recommendations on how to address them, how to resolve them. That inclusion piece means everyone . This is something that we stress when I’m doing town halls with bureaus or embassies, or traveling and meeting with our col- leagues to talk about what these changes mean. So that nobody needs to fear that their opinion isn’t going to be valued or sought. On the survey that I mentioned earlier, the climate survey, we worked with Ernst & Young, who are specialists in this field. When I first came to the office, there were any number of organi- zations that were eager to help us spend our money on improving DEIA at the Department of State. To each and every one of them, as they gave their PowerPoint display about what they could do or what they thought we should be doing, my question always was, what does your organization look like? What have you done within your own organization? Why should I give you my money if your organization looks like I think it looks? And then I’d pull out a photo or video of their leadership to emphasize the point. And we have worked very hard on the questioning across bureaus, particularly with the Bureau of Global Talent Manage- ment, which has a lot of experience doing surveys. We piloted the survey with the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, and have taken that feedback, and are reworking some of the ques- tions to ensure that we get granular feedback from our workforce that will help us successfully attack this inclusion issue. One of the best pieces of advice that we got as we started putting together this survey was: Don’t ask any questions that you cannot We are prioritizing the need for data-driven, evidence-based approaches tomaking changes.