The System Isn't Broken ... It's Working As Designed

We often say “the system is broken” when we encounter inequity at work but what if it’s not?

 What if the outcomes we’re seeing; who advances, who is overlooked, who carries the invisible weight, are not accidents … but the result of how systems were designed to function?

 In this episode of Restless Excellence, host Tonya Richards challenges a common narrative and invites leaders to think more critically about power, structure, and responsibility inside organizations.  You cannot change a system by trying to fix something that isn’t broken. You have to understand the design first. 

 In this episode, we explore:

• Why inequity often reflects design, not dysfunction 
• How organizational systems quietly reinforce advantage and disadvantage 
• The hidden norms behind performance, leadership, and advancement 
• What it means to pursue excellence inside inequitable structures 
• The role of leaders in either maintaining, or reshaping the system 

 This episode is for leaders, HR professionals, and people-centered practitioners who want to move beyond surface-level solutions and engage with the deeper architecture of how organizations actually work.

© 2025 Tonya Richards. All rights reserved.

Restless Excellence™ is a trademark pending.

All original content produced are the intellectual property of Tonya Richards and may not be reproduced or presented as original work without prior written permission.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Restless Excellence, a podcast for people who care deeply, work hard, and are quietly asking themselves, is this sustainable? I'm Tanya Richards. I created this space because I've lived the tension between achievement and exhaustion, the tension between being capable and being completed. The tension between success on paper and something feeling off in my body. It's actually about telling the truth. The truth about work, the truth about nature, the truth about ethics, and ultimately the cost of carrying too much for too long. These conversations that we'll explore in this podcast, they aren't going to be polished. They'll be reflective and they'll be honest. And they're for people who don't want to lose themselves while building something that matters. Let's get into it. I want to start with a reframe, one that shifted something in me when I first truly understood it. And that I think is actually foundational for any leader who is serious about both excellence and justice. When we encounter inequity in organizations, the underrepresentation, the disparate outcomes, that invisible tax on certain kinds of people in certain kinds of rooms, you know what I'm talking about. The language we typically reach for is the system is broken. And I guess I understand why. Saying the system is broken implies that there is a fixable problem. That if we just repair what's broken, things will work the way that they're supposed to. But here's what I've come to believe after years of working in HR and diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at the highest levels of organizations. What I've come to believe is that most of the time the system isn't broken. It's actually working and working exactly as it was designed to work. The disparate outcomes are not bugs in the system. They are in many cases the natural output of structures that were built explicitly or maybe even implicitly to advantage certain people and disadvantage others. That distinction really matters. Not to make anyone feel hopeless, but because you cannot change a system by trying to fix something that isn't broken. You have to understand the design first. I would say I spent the better part of my career, two decades, inside organizations trying to create equity from within. What I learned, sometimes the hard way, is that you cannot create sustainable equity by working around a system without also understanding that system. You have to really be willing to look at the architecture of it all. The architecture of most large organizations was designed in an era when certain people, and I mean that specifically and historically, were assumed to be the workers, the contributors, or even the talent. The systems for hiring, advancing, elevating, and even rewarding people were built around that particular assumption. Even as the demographic reality of the workforce has really shifted dramatically, many of those underlying assumptions have not been interrogated with the same rigor, despite how much time has passed. So what you find is that you end up with performance management systems that evaluate people against norms set by a homogeneous and historical majority. You sort of end up with leadership development frameworks that describe as leadership potential, a set of behaviors and even presentation styles that are culturally specific. You also end up with networking and sponsorship patterns that continue to advantage those who already have access to the people in power. And none of this requires conscious malice to perpetuate it. In fact, the most insidious aspect of systemic inequity are the ones that feel completely neutral on the surface. The culture ad hiring criterion that invisibly selects for sameness, the executive presence, I've heard that one too many times, standard that penalizes difference, the leadership pipeline that consistently pulls from a narrow slice of the available talent. So, what does it mean to really pursue excellence? Genuine sustainable excellence, something that we talk about a lot here. What does it mean to pursue the genuine sustainable excellence when you're operating inside a system that wasn't designed with your advancement in mind? First and foremost, it means refusing to internalize the system's evaluation of you. This is really harder than it sounds. When you are consistently passed over, when you are consistently overlooked, even undervalued consistently, when your ideas are adopted after someone else says them, or when your contributions are visible to everyone except the people who control your advancement, there is a real risk that you begin to believe the system's verdict. This means that you start to wonder if you're if they're right and if you're wrong. You start to perform for the system's approval instead of operating from your own clarity. Now, restless excellence in an inequitable system requires a foundational commitment to your own self-knowledge. You really have to know what you bring before any room tells you what it takes and what you're worth. Secondly, it means being strategic about where you spend your energy. Not every battle in an inequitable system is yours to fight. I mean, that's just the reality of the situation. Not to mention that it's exhausting. Not every room that doesn't receive you needs to be changed by you. Discernment about where your presence will actually move something versus where it will simply cost you is not giving up. It's simply just wisdom. And third, this is the one that I want you to really sit with. It means building the power to create different systems, not just navigating the existing ones, but working towards the ability to build, the ability to lead, and even the ability to influence structures that are designed more equitably from the start. Now, I want to speak to those of you who hold positional power within organizations. Because if you are in a leadership role, and if you have any authority over how people are hired or even how they are developed, maybe evaluated, included, or advanced, you are not a bystander to the system. You are actually part of the architecture. The question I want you to ask is one I ask myself regularly. And that question is: in what ways are you using your position to replicate the design? And in what ways are you actively working to change it? Now, don't get me wrong. What I've said so far isn't about guilt, it's actually about responsibility. It's an invitation of restless excellence and letting you know that it isn't about being paralyzed by the scope of what needs to change, but to actually identify the specific places where your presence, your power, and your choices can make a different thing possible. Just imagine it. That might look like sponsoring someone who doesn't look like the typical candidate for your network. I've done that a few times. It might also look like interrogating the criteria you're using to evaluate performance and asking whose culture those particular criteria were designed by. Changing systems require people who understand them. Someone like you, who's a leader within that system and who actually understand the architecture. And leading with awareness of how the system actually works rather than how we like to believe that it should work. That's the beginning of really making a difference and ensuring that things are different for those coming behind you. Now I would ask you to sit with these reflection questions as we close out this particular episode. In your organization, what structures or practices have been normalized that upon your reflection may be producing inequitable outcomes? That's a deep one. Then the next question that I'll ask you to sit with until the next episode is where do you have the power to create a different outcome for someone? And have you been using that power? This is Restless Excellence.