I’ve been thinking about Kellie Gerardi a lot lately. Kellie is an astronaut and we share a great love of space exploration. A few weeks ago, she was asked, “What’s your favourite part about flying on a research mission with an all-female science team?” Her answer: “That it was never planned to be an all-female mission. It just happened based on the research priorities of the mission.”

In the wake of the adjudication of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), I think Kellie’s story matters a lot. It provides an opportunity to think about the root of our malaise—and how we may still be missing the point.

At the core of our species is the profound—and enduring—presence of social stratification. If you pop by the office of your resident communications person, they will tell you about Functionalist Theory, crafted by Émile Durkheim and Talcott Parson, which theorized that we can’t help but create a hierarchy in society, in our communities, and even in our households. For generations, it’s been the unexpressed, but visually present, act of putting us “in order” as a functional purpose of society. This concept posits itself as the type of belonging where people know where they stand, where they belong, and places them in a perceived construct within their station. And it’s exactly the type of thinking you’d expect from the late 19th and early 20th centuries when considering the relationship between individual behaviour and social systems.

While this theory is as antiquated as its belief system, we can’t really deny the comfort we get when we see a hierarchical system unfold: hard workers get promotions, smart students get great jobs, and consistent teamwork is rewarded. This appeals to our sense of fairness. We find identity in putting things in order. We want our kids to go to “top schools,” bumper stickers still celebrate honours students, we reward the company MVP at the holiday party, and we want our sports teams to win the big trophy. Let’s be honest; we remain unconsciously loyal to—and compete in—systems that create hierarchy through fairness quite often—and quite subconsciously.

So, when the case is made, as it now has in corporate and political arenas, that DEI threatens our hierarchal constructs of knowing and being, it can be tempting to be alarmed.

But, perhaps, we’ve lost the thread of what we’re here to accomplish.

First, DEI can’t be the fall guy (sorry, fall person) for the failures of systemic issues or bogus policies. It’s the modern-day equivalent of pointing fingers at the most threatening outlier. It’s usually wrong, and it’s ostensively unbecoming.

Secondly, we cannot view DEI as an either/or proposition. To position that corporations or public entities are focused on either diversity or the operational effectiveness of their business is both unfair and unfounded. The pursuit of excellence—what all great, thriving businesses have in common—is their tenacious commitment to multiple objectives, with a balanced focus, executed in tandem.

Is it possible that this apex of social stratification, coupled with our comforted belief in the virtue of fairness, is what’s really driving the DEI demise? I think so. And, controversially, I’m also asking why we believe DEI policies—which can be disputed, rebuked, and disassembled—are being used in the place of ingenuity and a true desire to evolve our thinking.

Let’s use American symphony orchestras as an example: Over the last 10 years, a number of orchestras adopted “blind” auditions whereby curtains were used to conceal the identity and gender of the musician from the jury during their auditions, some even going as far as using carpet to hide any clues generated by their footwear. In the years these changes were instituted, the percentage of women musicians in the five highest-ranked orchestras increased from 6 percent to 21 percent. Given the low turnover in symphony orchestras, this increase is statistically significant.

It’s important to understand that this diversity initiative was not policy—it was the ingenuity of a strip of carpet and curtains (that were already hanging!). I love this story because of the sentiment that supports it: this was done not because it was mandated through policy, but because there was a genuine curiosity about whether something could be better because it was more diverse.

And how is it that we decided on such a narrow purview of diversity? Somewhere, we decided that diversity was something we needed to see. But what if diversity is something we needed to experience? Take cognitive diversity as an example. Diverse perspectives, shaped by different experiences and backgrounds, can lead to better problem-solving, innovation, and decision-making. A homogeneous group tends to think in similar patterns, which creates blind spots and limits creativity and adaptability—the very two factors that will fuel the next generation of our industry.

Let’s ask the question at the heart of DEI’s future: are we here to evolve our thinking or govern behaviour? The answer matters because it’s the difference between challenging all of us to be participants in a new system of inclusion that benefits all of us over the latter, which signals that we are not capable of evolutionary thinking unless we’re bent to its will. And I’d like to think this industry—our beloved, vital energy industry—is capable of evolutionary thinking in this regard.

Perhaps, at the core of this piece is a rebuke of policy as a mechanism for inclusion. Policy is vulnerable. Adaptive learning and integration are not. Where inclusion becomes “something we are” and not “something we do,” it is possible to set a trajectory forward with more stability, especially for those whose voices are still underrepresented. When we evolve and grow our thinking about diversity and inclusion—when we become curious about what it offers and what it creates—I think we begin to challenge our environment differently—and in a way that brings more voices to the table in a concert of shared success.