IDEA Without Illusion: Holding Purpose When the World Pushes Back

Written By Lisa Shoko

The work of inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-racism—IDEA—was never designed to be easy. But in 2025, it feels especially exposed. There’s a growing sense of unease, shared by practitioners across sectors and geographies, that the world is shifting beneath our feet. And not toward progress.The landscape we work in has changed—and keeps changing. If you're doing IDEA work, you've likely felt this shift viscerally. Many of us are navigating organisations where change feels constant but incoherent, and where progress is demanded without adequate investment. In these conditions, it’s easy to feel like the work is slipping through our fingers.

To hold purpose in this moment, we must name the conditions we’re working in. VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) and BANI (brittle, anxious, non-linear, incomprehensible) aren’t just abstract frameworks—they help describe the systems that make IDEA work feel harder than ever. It’s the reality of working in systems that were never built to hold equity work well in the first place, and are now under pressure to evolve without the structures to

And yet, the call to lead, advocate, and repair remains. In fact, it’s never been more urgent.

In this blog, we explore what this means in practice. Not in theory, but for those of us inside the work—coordinating, challenging, supporting, responding. What does IDEA leadership look like when both the internal and external environments are unstable? What helps us stay purposeful?

Why VUCA and BANI Matter

The VUCA and BANI models offer language for the chaos we often feel but can’t always name.

• Volatility is seen in the rapid change of policies and leadership. Think about the sudden removal of IDEA roles in major organisations—one day, there's a strategy; the next, a restructure wipes it out.

• Uncertainty dominates when teams are unsure if their IDEA initiatives will be funded next quarter, or whether speaking up could put jobs at risk.

• Complexity is baked into systems where exclusion is not one person's fault but everyone's responsibility, yet accountability is no one’s priority.

• Ambiguity lives in the silences: when commitments to "equality" are made without a shared definition or meaningful plan.

Now add BANI:

• Brittle systems look strong until pressure is applied—like when institutions cancel race equity training the moment public opinion shifts.

• Anxiety runs high among staff afraid to say the wrong thing, and leaders worried about reputational damage rather than systemic change.

• Non-linearity shows up when a small comment on social media goes viral, derailing months of strategy.

• Incomprehensibility reigns when long-standing IDEA champions suddenly retreat, or when values-based work is labelled "divisive."

What This Means for IDEA Work

When systems are volatile, our strategies are constantly interrupted.
When they are anxious, trust collapses.
When change is non-linear, old models of success no longer work.
And when things feel incomprehensible, people grasp for certainty—even if that means abandoning equity altogether.

IDEA work doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s affected by everything else happening around it—staff morale, leadership turnover, political shifts, media pressure, restructuring, financial uncertainty. If we pretend otherwise, we risk creating strategies that look good on paper but collapse in practice.

Instead, we’ve found it more helpful to build IDEA work that is responsive, relational and rooted. That means shifting away from only asking “What should we do?” and instead also asking “What do we need to hold onto in order to do this well, even when everything else changes?”

How Do We Hold Purpose?

1. Stay Rooted in Purpose
   In complex times, clarity matters more than certainty. Be explicit about your core purpose: what is your IDEA work really trying to shift? Keep returning to it when things become messy.

2. Design for Adaptability, Not Permanence
   Static plans won’t survive brittle systems. Design EDI work that can flex, evolve, and respond to feedback. Focus less on perfect policies and more on strengthening relationships and reflexivity.

3. Understand the Environment Before Acting in It
   Don’t ignore backlash—understand it. Prepare your leaders to respond with courage and transparency. Use tools like culture diagnostics to ground your strategy in the real experiences of staff and service users. Don’t assume the issue is a “knowledge gap”—often, it’s about culture, hierarchy, or fear.

4. Make the Invisible Visible
   In incomprehensible systems, silence grows. Be intentional about naming the structural and cultural dynamics shaping what’s possible. Name resistance. Name risk. Name hope.

5. Look After the People Doing the Work
   Brittle systems break people too. EDI practitioners are often carrying both strategic responsibility and emotional labour. Create peer support spaces. Protect reflection time. Push back on over-responsibility. Remember, resilience isn’t personal—it’s collective. This isn’t optional.

Returning to Principles

At Venekai, we don’t position ourselves as fixers. We’re not here to manage perception or tick boxes. Our work is about creating the conditions for equity to be understood, held, and sustained—even when circumstances are challenging.

We draw on strategic frameworks like BANI to understand the systems we’re working within, but we root our practice in principles: transparency, justice, critical thinking, and care. These aren’t soft values. They are the strongest things we have when things are uncertain.

Final Reflection

There is no IDEA strategy that makes this work simple. But there are approaches that make it more honest, more human, and more likely to last. It’s tempting to interpret slow progress or rising resistance as signs that you’re not doing enough. But sometimes, the most radical act is staying in the work with integrity. If you’re navigating VUCA or BANI conditions, you're not alone. The work is hard because the systems are hard. That’s not a reason to stop—it’s a reason to be more deliberate, more discerning, and more anchored in the why.

You’re Not Failing. The Conditions Are Tough.

Need a space to map your EDIA strategy against current threats?
We offer facilitated sessions, flash scenario planning, peer circles, and reflection guides tailored to shifting contexts.

📧 admin@venekai.com
🌐 www.venekai.com