Detour Spotting: Recognizing When The Work is Being Avoided
Culture change is challenging and many of us find ways to avoid the most difficult or painful parts of it. This is not always conscious or malicious. More often it is quiet and self-protective.
Learning to recognize patterns of avoidance and resistance in yourself, in your team, and in your organization is a valuable skill. The detours tend to look different depending on who is taking them and what stage of the work you are in, but a few show up consistently enough to identify directly.
Intellectualizing instead of reflecting personally. This detour looks like engagement but functions as avoidance. It sounds like: analyzing systemic issues at an abstract level, debating definitions, or academically discussing concepts without ever turning the lens on directly actionable tasks. Intellectual engagement with this work is genuinely valuable, but it becomes a detour when it substitutes for the harder question: what does this mean for how we show up, and what do we need to change?
Deflecting with "but what about..." This pattern redirects attention away from the specific issue at hand by introducing a different, often broader concern. "But what about class?" "But what about all employees, not just some?" These questions are not inherently wrong as intersectionality is real and important, but they become detours when they are used to avoid engaging with a specific, concrete challenge rather than genuinely expanding the conversation. Watch for deflection that consistently moves the group away from accountability and toward abstraction.
Performing engagement without changing behavior. This may be the most common detour and the hardest to identify in the moment. It looks like enthusiastic participation in training, nodding along in meetings, using the right language, and expressing genuine-sounding commitment, while nothing about actual behavior, decisions, or systems changes. Performance without follow-through is not neutral. It consumes organizational energy, raises and then dashes employee hopes, and over time produces deep cynicism about whether any of this work is real.
Treating disagreement as a reason to stop. Disagreement is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is often a sign that we are at our learning edge. When individuals or organizations treat disagreement as a signal to pull back, slow down, or redirect, they consistently stop just before the most important work happens. Building an organizational culture that can sit with a disagreement and treats it as information rather than emergency is itself a form of progress.
Sudden urgency about other priorities. When culture and inclusion work starts to get genuinely challenging, it is remarkably common for other priorities to suddenly feel more pressing. Meetings get canceled. Leadership attention shifts. The work gets quietly deprioritized in favor of things that feel more comfortable or more concrete. This detour is particularly worth watching for at the leadership level, where it can effectively stall an entire organizational effort without anyone explicitly deciding to stop.
Focusing on the "easy wins" indefinitely. Early culture change efforts often start with visible, relatively low-stakes actions such as updating language in job descriptions, acknowledging a heritage month, and adding a value statement to the website. These steps have real value as starting points. However, they become detours when they substitute for deeper work indefinitely. When organizations cycle through the same accessible activities year after year while avoiding larger structural changes, difficult conversations, and accountability mechanisms, you can erode your efforts.
Waiting for perfect conditions. Waiting for the right moment to do hard work is one of the most reliable ways to ensure it never happens. Some preparation is essential but the search for perfect conditions is often a sophisticated form of avoidance. The organizations that make the most progress are not the ones that wait until they are ready. They are the ones who started honestly, from where they actually were.
What to do when you spot a detour:
The goal is not to shame or call out individuals, but to keep the organization moving forward with honesty and care. When you notice a detour pattern emerging, identify it directly but without accusation: "I want to make sure we are not stepping around the harder question here. Can we come back to..." Building a team culture where this kind of gentle redirection is normal and expected is itself a significant achievement in cultural change. It means the organization has developed enough trust and shared commitment to hold itself accountable.
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