Gain clarity on your organization's vision and mission. Determining your organizations strategic assets, abilities, and passions and what those mean for your particular lane in the work you seek to do.

When we create organizations we often think that identifying a purpose is enough. People come to our institutions with many ideas for how to execute on that purpose. It is important to set up a set of institutional beliefs that guide strategy. Your values then become an extension of those beliefs and how you know you are living to them or not. As well as highlighting the kinds of trade offs each belief guides you to.

Each institution should be clear on its guiding principles for managing talent. This comes with a set of commitments the institution believes it is making to each and every employee and a set of commitments each and every employee is making to the institution the day they come on board. This clarity allows for a clear partnership with boundaries and upfront expectations.

Each institution should be clear and ready for how they will handle conflict internally. Especially principled conflict where everyone has strong beliefs on the outcome. Running a multiracial/multicultural institution requires a set of norms that support conflict as a strategic place of friction between the individual and the institution as well as the individuals and each other. Working on the same issues does not mean a totality of overlap in beliefs or experiences and thus creating a charter with guidance for conflict and expectations for conduct is deeply necessary.