Good Intentions Are Not a Strategy: Why IDEA Needs a Roadmap
By Vash Ebbadi-Cook (he/they), Founder & Principal Consultant, Endura Consulting
Almost every organization we work with tells us the same thing. We care about inclusion. We value diversity. We want to do right by our staff, our clients, and our communities. We believe them. But caring about something and having a plan to act on it are two very different things, and the gap between those two places is where a lot of well-meaning IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) work quietly stalls out.
From Intention to Action
Intention is a starting point, not a destination. We regularly meet organizations that have a values statement, a land acknowledgement, maybe even a standalone equity policy sitting in a binder somewhere. What they often don't have is a plan that says who is responsible for what, what progress actually looks like, and how they will know if anything has changed a year from now.
Without that plan, IDEA work tends to live in the space between meetings. It shows up as a training here, a hiring committee tweak there, a heartfelt statement after something goes wrong in the news. All of that can matter, but none of it adds up to meaningful, sustained progress on its own. Moving from intention to action means being willing to set a goal, name what success looks like, and actually check back in on it.
Plans That Show Real Progress
A good plan does more than list good ideas. It demonstrates progress that people can actually see and measure. That means naming specific actions, attaching timelines, and being honest about what resources are needed to get there. It also means being clear about roles, accountabilities, and responsibilities, so that everyone in the organization, not just the equity committee or the one person hired to “do the diversity work,” understands their part in it.
This is a piece we want to name directly. So often, the people carrying the heaviest load in IDEA work are the very people most impacted by poor policy in the first place. Marginalized staff are asked to educate their colleagues, sit on every equity panel, and absorb the emotional labour of pointing out harm, often on top of their regular job and without additional compensation or capacity. A meaningful IDEA plan distributes responsibility across leadership, management, and every department, so that caring for the people most affected doesn't become one more thing those same people have to do for themselves.
Where's the Roadmap?
One of the most common challenges organizations describe to us is simply not knowing what “good” looks like. Without benchmarks and established best practices, it's genuinely hard to know where to start, what to prioritize, or how to tell if the work is actually landing. Are we further ahead than we were last year? Is our policy actually protecting people, or just protecting the organization from liability? Without a roadmap, these questions are difficult to answer with any confidence, and organizations can end up reinventing the wheel, or worse, mistaking activity for impact.
Building Our Own Roadmap
This is exactly why, earlier this year, Vash and Marissa completed the Foundations in ISO-30415: Diversity and Inclusion Service Management (DISM) certification through Ventura Collective, in partnership with the ISO-30415 DISM Forum.
The ISO 30415:2021 standard is the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) guidance framework for Diversity and Inclusion, and it was built to do exactly what so many organizations are missing. It names the prerequisites for a genuine, ongoing commitment to D&I, clarifies accountabilities and responsibilities, and lays out concrete actions, measures, and outcomes that organizations can actually track over time. It's scalable, meaning it's just as relevant to a five-person non-profit as it is to a large public institution, and it touches everything from governance and hiring to service delivery and supply chains.
For us, this training wasn't about collecting another credential. It gave Vash and Marissa a shared language and a structured framework to bring into our client work, one grounded in an internationally recognized standard rather than good intentions alone. It means that when we sit down with a client, we can help them move past “we want to do better” and toward a plan with real benchmarks, clear roles, and outcomes they can measure. It's part of how we try to meet clients exactly where they are, whether they're just starting to ask these questions or ready to build out a full company-wide strategy, and it's part of why we try to weave inclusion and equity into everything we do rather than treating it as a separate line item.
A Shout-Out to Ventura Collective
We want to give a genuine thank you to Ventura Collective for the work they put into this certification and for stewarding the ISO 30415:2021 standard so thoughtfully. Their six-week hybrid program pairs asynchronous learning with live weekly sessions covering everything from maturity models and the 27 diversity types named in the standard, to the 32 risk domains organizations need to consider when building an IDEA strategy.
Ventura Collective's next cohort kicks off in October 2026, and if this is a framework your organization has been curious about, or if you're an HR professional, risk manager, or IDEA practitioner looking to deepen your own practice, we'd genuinely encourage you to look into it. You can learn more and register at weareventura.com/dism-certification.
Where to Start
There is no single checklist that fits every organization, and we don't believe in handing clients a template and calling it a strategy. But we do believe that IDEA work deserves the same rigour, planning, and accountability as any other priority your organization has. That starts with naming a goal, being clear about who owns it, and building in a way to actually measure whether things are moving.
If you're wrestling with any of these questions, moving from intention to action, clarifying roles and responsibilities, or figuring out what benchmarks make sense for your organization, we would love to talk it through with you. Reach out to us anytime at info@enduraconsulting.ca.
