Moments arrive that expose the gap between the qualified leadership we claim to value and the leadership we actually choose. It reveals a quiet truth many people have understood for generations. The most vocal critics of equity initiatives have never been defending merit. They have been defending the informal networks that protected mediocrity as long as it maintained familiar and loyal faces. What some call “traditional hiring” was never neutral. It was an unwritten system built on relationships, favoritism, and a confidence that one could rise simply by being liked by the right people.

Across institutions, we are witnessing what happens when organizations elevate people whose greatest skill was proximity to power rather than preparation for responsibility. The consequences appear in decision making that lacks discipline, management that lacks coherence, and leadership that cracks the moment conditions become complex. These failures are not accidents. They are predictable outcomes of a culture that treated charm as competence and loyalty as qualification. It is a culture that insisted it was upholding high standards while repeatedly staffing key roles with individuals who had not typically demonstrated excellence beyond their social network.

For decades, critics of diversity, equity, and inclusion claimed that these initiatives were antithetical to merit. They suggested that any effort to broaden opportunity must necessarily lower standards. Yet the last year has offered the clearest counterpoint imaginable. When institutions choose leaders based on connections rather than ability, the results are far more damaging than anything imagined or aruged by the opponents of equity and opportunity. The instability, confusion, and ethical lapses we have seen across sectors, especially politics, tell a story that no slogan or Foxnews segment can erase . Performance does not improve when hiring narrows and ignores diversity. It declines.

What DEI critics missed is that equity and opportunity frameworks were never about replacing talent with tokenism. They were about expanding the definition of talent to include the people who had been earning their place all along and had new and different skill sets. They were about building structures that forced organizations to ask better questions about needed competence, preparation, and capacity. In many fields, the most effective teams usually soar when institutions actively resisted the instinct to hire in their own image.

Why?

Combating Groupthink: Hiring in one’s own image (affinity bias) often leads to teams with similar perspectives, which can result in confirmation bias and groupthink. As an idea often attributed to Winston Churchill notes, “if two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary”. Diverse teams are better at checking assumptions and considering a wider range of possibilities.

Enhanced Problem-Solving and Creativity: Studies show that diverse teams tend to be more innovative and better at complex problem-solving because they bring a broader array of experiences, knowledge, and approaches to the table.

Psychological Safety is Crucial: For diversity of thought to work, leaders must create an environment of “psychological safety,” where team members feel safe to speak up, express dissenting opinions, and disagree without fear of retribution.

Challenging the Status Quo: Actively resisting the natural instinct to hire people we can comfortably relate to forces organizations to embrace different viewpoints, which is a key driver of organizational success and adaptability.

Improved Performance: Organizations with greater diversity often outperform their less diverse counterparts, as diversity impacts everything from recruitment to overall organizational culture and effectiveness

Equity and opportunity initiatives have brought rigor to processes that once relied on gut feelings and personal comfort. They introduced discipline where informality once reigned. The irony that has unfolded in real time is that equity and opportunity work did not weaken institutions. It clarified them. It required organizations to articulate the skills leaders actually needed for organizational success instead of assuming that cultural and social familiarity equaled readiness. The result was stronger hiring, broader pipelines, and a leadership culture less prone to collapse under pressure. These gains became visible when contrasted with environments that rejected equity practices and doubled down on the old model. In those places, the shortcomings became impossible to ignore. For example, recent presidential cabinet secretaries and law enforcement official appointed for loyalty instead of competence find themselves almost wholly unprepared for the complexity of their roles, and their failures rippled outward to the people they serve.

People sometimes argue that the collapse of an organization is a sign that everything is broken. A more accurate interpretation is that the collapse is evidence of what was already true. Sustainable success is not inherited. It is built. It requires experience, self-reflection, and the ability to manage conflict without losing your way. When hiring prioritizes anything other than demonstrated ability in multiple areas, cracks form at the foundation. Over time, those cracks reveal themselves through scandals, mismanagement, and public dysfunction. That dysfunction becomes an unexpected lesson about merit. It shows that the story we have been told about who is most qualified has always been more myth than measurable fact.

There is a generation of young workers and leaders watching these patterns unfold and drawing their own conclusions. They see the stark difference between institutions that recruit intentionally diverse and those that recycle the same narrow circle to make everything great again. In my leadership classes, i am proud to hear and read students’ work recognizing that equity and opportunity work is not cosmetic. It is structural. It forces organizations to consider a wider range of perspectives, strengths, and lived experiences. It elevates people whose success depends not on being connected but on being capable. That shift creates leadership ecosystems that actually perform better, not because of ideology but because of competence.

One of the hardest truths to accept is that mediocrity often rises easily. It rises when the process rewards compliance over creativity. It rises when people fear challenging the status quo because their careers depend on pleasing those already in power. It rises when organizations confuse comfort with quality. What looks like stability is often just stagnation. Equity and opportunity interventions disrupt that stagnation by inserting accountability where none existed and by refusing the assumption that talent and creativity is concentrated in any one demographic group but is dispersed.

We are living in a moment where the emerging consequences of protecting and promoting unearned power and privilege have become impossible to hide in public life. Institutions that are resisting equitable hiring are wrestling with leaders who lack the skill to navigate complexity of the modern world and the humility to recognize their own limitations and deliver almost daily ineptitude and public embarassment. The contrast between that dysfunction and the steady performance of diverse, merit-driven teams has become its own form of evidence. This change in the national tenor is evidence that equity and opportunity does not dilute excellence. It reveals it.

The lesson is not subtle. Institutions and nations thrive when they treat equity and opportunity as a responsibility rather than a reward. We thrive when we recognize that talent is widespread, opportunity is not, and the role of hiring is to close that distance. Equity and opportunity work builds systems that elevate people who have actually prepared for the moment and bring unique and important talents to the table. The failure of the alternative exposes itself every time a leader chosen for familiarity and sycophancy rather than skill performs poorly under the weight of the job. If anything has been proven in the last several years, it is that the cost of protecting mediocrity is overshadowed by the successes of pursuing equity and opportunity. Only one of these approaches was ever truly invested in excellence.

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Julian Vasquez Heilig is a nationally recognized policy scholar, public intellectual, and civil rights advocate. A trusted voice in public policy, he has testified for state legislatures, the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, while also advising presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. His work has been cited by major outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and he has appeared on networks from MSNBC and PBS to NPR and DemocracyNow!. He is a recipient of more than 30 honors, including the 2025 NAACP Keeper of the Flame Award, Vasquez Heilig brings both scholarly rigor and grassroots commitment to the fight for equity and justice.