The DEI Reset: What’s Changing and Why It Matters

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Amri B. Johnson: The boxes are what keep us from engaging and getting to know who we are, not just what. And so if you take people out of their what box, that they're this multidimensional who that the difference that we see is just because we choose to see it versus seeing this person as who they are, that happens to have particular characteristics.

And I think if we did that and, obviously, there's months like Pride, there's months like Black History, et cetera. If it just drops off at the end of that month, how much was it really worth?

David Rice: Welcome to the People Managing People podcast. We're on a mission to build a better world of work and to help you create happy, healthy, and productive workplaces. I'm your host, David Rice.

My guest today is Amri Johnson, founder of Inclusion Wins. We're going to be talking about the current moment in DEI and why a focus on inclusion represents a way forward for everybody.

Amri, welcome. 

Amri B. Johnson: Great to be here, David. Thank you. 

David Rice: So first, Given the moment that we're in, it'd be a bit weird if we did a show where inevitably DEI is going to come up and we didn't talk about the elephant in the room. No pun intended. There's a lot of rhetoric though around the term DEI and what's been done in recent years.

And I find it interesting because when we spoke about this beforehand. You said something I really like, and that's that the loudest people have dominated the conversation around DEI practices, not the people who are actually doing or promoting DEI done right. And I'm curious, because there's a lot of folks trying to run from it right now, what do you think can quiet things down a bit and help people who haven't given up on it recalibrate their efforts in this new environment?

Amri B. Johnson: David, I think most people haven't given up on the principles of inclusion, of diversity, of equity. I think very few people understand that those principles are underlying DEI, so they're just looking at these three letters. And I think most of the things that they're looking at are around things that seem unfair to people who've probably historically been on the upper hand of power because of their group identity, but not entirely.

And so I think there's this kind of tension that's come up because the past few years, a lot of the efforts were focused on anti racism usually really anti Black racism since 2020. And I think that's what people equate with DEI. So the tension is not with DEI. The tension is with understanding what it means to your organization and what it is separate from the historical paradigms that have been mostly focused on social justice and affirmative action from the 60s versus the more performance paradigms that I believe are more relevant today that are about what are the individual unique attributes that a person has that they bring to the table that can allow them to matter and make their best contribution to organizational life and what is the mixture.

Similarities and differences and their attentions and complexity mean to your organization writ large. So to me, and I can explain that, but I think to me is we're talking past each other instead of with each other. We're talking about our what's versus who we are. And I think if we get to the who and we get to the clarity that we're trying to build relationship, even if we disagree, we'll move a lot further than we're moving now.

Right now it's just a cacophony of foolishness and silliness. On both sides of the so called aisle, it's not just one sided it's both sides. So they're not, they don't even realize how closely they mirror one another. They just have different ideological perspectives at this point in time. 

David Rice: Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. It has been oversimplified to say the least. 

I want to start by, talking about your focus on inclusion. So much attention has been paid to diversity and equity as part of that DEI, language. But you were headed down as an inclusion focused direction before the phrase DEI became like this hot button political issue, right?

And you developed what you call the emerging inclusion framework. I'm curious though, back in 22 when you wrote Reconstructing Inclusion, that's your book, what were you seeing in your work that made you feel like we're at this point where this is what drives us forward? 

Amri B. Johnson: I think when I wrote the book, inclusion was what I always knew, probably more than just representation.

Because to me, a lot of people have reduced diversity management to representation, and they've made it just about group identity. I never honestly, because I took my cues from some giants in this space, particularly Roosevelt Thomas, who wrote a book in 1991 called Beyond Race and Gender. Those were my cues.

And so while I understood the paradigms of old, I never thought that they actually got us very far. You focus on recruiting people from an underrepresented group, whether it be women or people from racialized backgrounds or what have you, LGBT, and the numbers go up and in some cases they might stay up for a while and there might be some folks that just build enough cachet that they hire people like themselves.

So it's the same old same that we always had, or it goes up and then it goes down. And so I think if we were more natural about our overall kind of system around talent attraction, we could probably sustain the levels of diversity that we think allow us to perform at our best levels, both cognitive as well as identity.

And so I focused on inclusion because I think if you focus on inclusion, you get what you want versus you get temporary results of what you thought you wanted. But the trade off is it's not able to be sustained. And so like for me, it was like inclusion creates the conditions for everybody to thrive. It creates the conditions for systems to be robust and sustained in a way that gets you good business results.

But I don't think that's how most people framed it. And so for me, that's how I always framed it. That's how I knew how to do it. That's what my theory of change was all about. And so I moved in that direction and I got some friction, David. It wasn't like it was all easy because some people didn't like the fact that I wasn't focused on representation of certain groups.

They thought I was selling out. You don't get it. I didn't matter that I'd done this for as long as I've done. It didn't matter. You're wrong, especially in the past few years, I've been very wrong for a lot of people. And that was okay because I knew I was in this for the long haul. And a lot of people aren't here doing this work anymore because they went after a social justice lens instead of a.

A lens that was about creating the best conditions and fulfilling the organizational mission. That's what we're all about. And I think if you are about that, this kind of silliness about anti or pro DI is. It's irrelevant to you doesn't mean people start worried and worried about what the Trump administration is doing But Trump administration is probably correcting something that in a way needed to be corrected the way that they're corrected is little throwing out the baby with the bathwater and We have to deal with it until it dies down because I don't think it's gonna be indefinite And I think if people are serious about doing this work well and doing it with their people and making sure it's accessible to everyone and prioritized properly so it can be sustained, it's a really a transformative space to be in inclusion if you're doing it with that lens and all the D and the E stuff happens when you are consistent with the I stuff.

I think we should call it I and D sometimes and E because we want to create upstream opportunity for everybody consistently. So inclusion is my jam. I guess I'll stop with that. 

David Rice: You said something that really resonated with me in our previous roles. And when I was working around DEI, I remember thinking like other people's expectations create a lot of work for me in the sense that we you'd have pride month, or something like that. Oh, one of the observance months come. And it's Oh, we got to do this big thing for this. And I'm like we don't have the assets or the resources at the moment. Couldn't we also talk about the LGBTQ community in August or September? Can we only talk about them in June or, you know what I mean?

Like, when we get our stuff together, why don't we talk about it then? And we just let the rest of the world observe Pride Month. We don't have to Be the voice on it, 

Amri B. Johnson: yeah, that's a tough one. 

David Rice: That's a tough one. And a lot of it was just like, it's okay. Like we're checking a box essentially. It's a whole bunch of boxes being created for you to check. And so I felt like sometimes I'm like, I wish people would strip away their expectations a little bit and just, 

Amri B. Johnson: david, there is no box. We create the box. The box is not, it's not real. I had somebody, I had Fred Falker on my podcast.

Fred is based in St. Louis. He has a brilliant TED talk if you look up Frederick Falker and of course, look at my podcast because that episode really goes into depth and he talks about these boxes we put or we ascribe to people, but they're not real. And the boxes are what keep us from engaging and getting to know who we are, not just what.

And so if you take people out of their what box. That there are this multidimensional who that the difference that we see is just because we choose to see it versus seeing this person as who they are that happens to have particular characteristics. If we did that, and, obviously there's months like Pride, there's months like Black History, Asian Pacific Islander history, et cetera, et cetera, all good, something to raise the level of understanding, but if we just, if it just drops off at the end of that month, how much was it really worth?

It helped some speakers, it helped some people make a little cheddar, but did it actually create a different level of understanding with each other than we had the same separation that we had before we came together around this? So if you are doing that and you're engaging with more people because of your distinctions, that's one thing.

But if you're just doing it to just celebrate that, but not bring more people in and have discussions about what that means, what it means to how I work, how I show up, the way that I see the world as a result of this particular part of my identity, in addition to the other parts, we start seeing commonalities and people get to see who people are, not just what.

David Rice: Absolutely. 

You mentioned in your previous answer, you were talking about systems a little bit in the book, you've talked about that many DEI initiatives were. Reactionary, they're cosmetic rather than systematic. What steps can organizations take to embed inclusion into their core practices? 

Amri B. Johnson: Every organization runs on systems David?

And so what systems are running right now where you might not have a lens of inclusion, meaning. Who's impacted by these systems and how much have they had input into designing them? How much have they had input into how they function, what they do, how they could do it better? What shifts they would make from their particular perspective on how this impacts them?

Let's use strategy for example. One of the biggest things that I've seen in organizations is people don't necessarily know where they fit into the bigger picture. So if you're doing a, you have an appreciative or an inclusive approach to strategy, people know why, what they do every day matters. Because they were included in the process of strategy development, which is always emergent.

It's not something that's static, but you're keeping them engaged around where we're going and why, and what do you see from the place that you sit in. Doesn't mean they're going to be in the boardroom, but it does mean that they feel a sense of ownership of that strategy. That can be for any system you have.

It could be for your systems around teams. It could be for your reward systems. What goes in there that reinforces the things that you want to happen for your culture to produce the outcomes. That you want to with your people. If you define culture as a way things are done around here, how do you create that in your organizational system?

So the way things are done around here is in alignment with what the organization needs at any point in time, and it constantly evolves and. People create that from their own hearts and minds, not just from somebody telling them what it is or something put on the wall that says, these are the things that are our culture, because we know that doesn't work.

So I think there's huge opportunity to just lead with inclusion and all your systems and for those that do org design. It's one way to do it is you're in the process of designing your organization who's involved in making contributions to that doesn't mean they tell you exactly how your execs are going to be organized throughout your organization when it comes to decision making and sense making, they need to be a part of it as much as they are part of the action taking.

So those things are coupled versus distinct.

David Rice: It's funny because there's been some cases in recent years where it really felt like there was buy in at the highest level. And it was interesting because we're finding out now that they must not have been, because like I can think of it was one major retailer.

I won't use their name. I don't want to put a bullseye on them, but right now I don't want to get a cease and desist letter. But I can remember being at like essence festival a couple of years ago and you should have seen the money they spent on like this activation that they had in there. Now you look at it and you can't just, you just feel like, okay, so that was all a vanity project.

Amri B. Johnson: Maybe it was just marketing. If that's your target and you have products that kind of cater to a particular demographic, go for it. I'm still going to go to stores that have bullseyes on them or that have, big letters on the front of the store or whatever. I'm still going to go to those stores.

I'm not going to boycott. I think some of that's silly. I don't think it actually helps the so called cause. And I've seen some people jump on that because it's beneficial to them. And some of these people, I know them well. I went to school with them. They're well known people. They're creating these boycotts and stuff like that.

But I don't think it's helpful. And so where are the companies performing at the time? Maybe not. Maybe they were really sincere about it. Maybe they're responding to the markets like their shareholders expect them to. Maybe they're just taking things a little bit behind the scenes so they don't get attacked over the next four to five years by silly people who are sitting in their recording studios, in their room, in their houses, recording videos about them so that they can make money as an anti DEI person, right?

This is all about politics. This is not about creating the conditions. This is not about organizational culture. Most of this is about politics. And unfortunately, some of the pro DEI, anti racism stuff was about politics, too. It wasn't about really creating the right conditions, because if you were doing that, you would know you can't do that in a vacuum.

We're too interdependent in the world, in the universe, in our organizations to think that, oh, let's just do it for this group and it's going to be okay and everything will be fine because they've been the most marginalized. Even though some of those people saying it were, making half a million a year.

That's not the most marginalized, that's a very much bigger group, and it has nothing to do with their skin color all, all together, right? There's some correlation, but not as much as people made of it. I'll pause there, but I think there's huge opportunity to move beyond kind of blame placing these companies, or what they're doing, what they're not, what they're saying on TV or in the news, versus What's really going on?

We don't know it's all made up. It's all kind of rage politics and yeah, I'm going to go here. Now, if I have a brand and I'm going to start losing money because of this three letters, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to stop talking about it. I'm sorry. I'm not just, Oh, I need to stand up and be in solidarity.

I don't have to be in solidarity on television. I don't have to be in solidarity on the news. I need to be in solidarity when it really counts for people's lives. And I think we'd be surprised that companies are doing that without actually having to call it DEI. 

David Rice: Yeah, that's fair. 

Now, in the book, you address the historical context of DEI, and I'm curious, how does this understanding inform more effective inclusion strategies today, because I think there's even a desire to rewrite history around that stuff a little bit, or the other thing I've seen is a lot of scorekeeping and ranting about everything from cancel culture to woke ism, cultural Marxism, virtue, signing, there's an entire subset of language that exists within the rhetoric around this topic.

And it almost seems to me like there's more effort to understand that language than what these efforts were. actually about or how they're evolving or what value they have to both business and society. 

Amri B. Johnson: Absolutely. The answer to that is there's a lot of noise. There's not very much signal. So signal takes nuance.

You can't listen all the time. You have to listen as much as you can pick stuff up, but not dial in too much, just almost you ever see one of those. Designs that they look one way, like they look like squares, but if you look deeper in your peripheral vision, you'll see the circles like underneath, you almost have to look like that, like seeing stuff that you can't see by being completely focused on it because it comes in very subtly.

And so there are people out here that are sending more nuanced signals. And that's what I think it's hard for people to pick up on because the noise is so heavy right now. So I encourage people to move towards understanding signal. That means dialing to a few people that are just able to give you nuance and they don't seem to have How do you say it?

They're not benefiting from making something wrong or Right. I could probably benefit from making DEI right. Or defending DEI In a way, I don't do it because principally is principally whatever you call my principles and the way I practice is the way I practice. If you're just focused on the noise, you'll have the pro DEI and the anti DEI, and it will seem like these polls are completely separate.

They're completely apart, but if you really look closely, it's the rhetoric that's completely apart. It's one kind of arm of rhetoric that makes everybody racist and one arm that makes everybody stupid because they believe in DEI or discriminatory or illegal or however you want to frame it. But there's no real understanding of what each other means.

So I think historically that's been the case because of the paradigms of civil rights and social justice. I don't think it actually works. And I think if people understood the principles underneath inclusion, underneath diversity management, as Dr. Thomas called it, they'd be like, oh, that's reasonable.

And every client that I've had when I've Gone through that process like that within the emergent inclusion system framework, or within the inclusion system work that I wrote about in the book, people are like, Oh, so it's just a set of skills and tools that allow me to create the right conditions for people to do their best work.

That's reasonable. There's layers and dimensions to that, but the polls, they're not the signal. The polls are just the polls and their noise. And if you keep listening to them, you'll think DI is going to never come back again. It's going to die. Literally, as some people have said. And on the other hand, you're like, yeah it's going to die because of anti, for these anti DEI people.

None of that is true. It's all an incomplete framing. And if we start to reframe about what we want to create, those conversations are moot. And I think companies that are dedicated to this, they get that. And that's the direction that they're moving in. 

David Rice: When we were talking about this beforehand, we were in agreement that the vast majority of folks who are the loudest critics of the work have never actually done DEI practice, right?

They typically aren't involved in leadership or org development, but being contrarian on this, like you mentioned, has paid some folks really well, right? Still is. But even in recognizing that we can also recognize that there is room for criticism and you think DEI folks need to be open to that. Talk to us about why that is and how HR and DEI folks can better apply feedback to respond to criticism around these efforts.

Amri B. Johnson: I think DEI people that practice this work, should be beacons for dissent. What do I mean by that? You're not in a feedback loop that allows you to understand whether what you're doing is resonating with the majority. And even the silent majority that might be like I'm not quite sure if this works for me.

We didn't want to listen to that. And if you said anything, you were a target. And look, David, I'm what they call Black. And I would criticize it, and I would get attacked by people that are supposed to be my colleagues to the point where I think some of them ostracize me. I don't know for sure, but they definitely don't interact with me that much.

Now, that was fine, the ones that are Signal, I've seeked them out. I don't think we've done a good job at taking that dissent in and saying, Hey, what can we do to get better? And I think that level of humility, that level of ability to. master listening in such a way that you can be like, wow, I get that. I get that.

That could put you in that space versus you don't understand what this is. You don't know about the history of slavery. I was like, people know stuff, right? If they don't know the history of slavery, it's not up to you to teach them that unless they want to hear about it or they want to learn about it, or you can give them a resource that might be helpful.

But you can't make them wrong for disagreeing with your approach. And I think that's where we have an opportunity to say, yeah, that approach might not work with this group. It might work with another, it might make one feel good. Some of it's going to be effective. Some of it isn't if stuff's not effective, stop it.

But what people did is when they start seeing it ineffective in the DEI space, they made people wrong for it being ineffective. So it's wrong because you don't get it or you're racist or you're homophobic or you're sexist or whatever people hurled at people versus saying, wow, tell me more. There's a woman that talks about calling in and I don't think we, we called in because calling in is all about relationships.

Are we creating and building the relationships that allow organizations to flourish. Contrariness and conflict doesn't allow organizations to flourish, relationships do. And if you want to build relationships and you want to move closer and have more contact and connection, you can't spend a bunch of time making people wrong and you have to be willing to put your own ego down or put your own opinions or perspective down and take the perspective of another so that you can see ways in ways that you otherwise wouldn't be able to.

David Rice: In your writings, you emphasize the importance of moving beyond either or thinking and DI work. Elaborate on this for us a little bit, this concept and it's significant in creating inclusive environments. 

Amri B. Johnson: I talked about a little bit dichotomies are not how organizations work because organizations are complex systems.

And so complexity doesn't work on either or things are always emerging. Things are always. Coming into play. Sometimes they come into play in our conversations. So there is no either, or there is no us in them. All of that is an illusion in your mind, similar to the boxes that I talk about. I talked about with Fred Falker, these either or dichotomies are at best incomplete and at worst harmful.

So if we are thoughtful to say, hey, either or, and if maybe, possibly, perhaps what's What am I missing? You actually come out with something that people can get their arms around that they co create it with you and you don't have the kind of what my mentor Howard Ross calls conversational networks of contention.

You have camaraderie and relationship, even in. Difference, and then disagreement, you still can have that. And that's why I think either or thinking isn't helpful or it doesn't work. 

David Rice: Couldn't agree more. Reminds me of something I read recently, this young guy was, he's freaking out about what's going on in the U.S. right now.

And he's talking about how his family has basically told him that he's ruining social events and that cause he's always bringing up politics. And he was like, is anybody else. What are you doing and how are you handling this? I'm like, you should probably just write to your congressman or go to a protest or like something that will make you feel like you're doing something about this.

But you don't always have to be the one in the room when you're at a social event to bring it up. You can leave space for other people. And, it's either we're talking about it or we're doing nothing. It's no, that's not necessarily the case. You know what I mean? There's a lot of different ways to take action.

Amri B. Johnson: I think I remember this line from Bob Marley. He said, one man is walking in a billion man is barking. And there's a lot of barking going on a lot, not a lot of walking and being who you are in the space of creating some type of transformation, rightness. Which a lot of people want. And I like to be right.

It's one of my favorite things, but I know it never has transformed anything. And so if you want to transform something, being right, won't get you there. Being principled will, but being right will not. 

David Rice: There's a growing emphasis I would say on belonging as being distinct from diversity or inclusion. How do you see the relationship between belonging and measurable business outcomes? Like how can HR and DI folks communicate that? This isn't just new terminology but more of a fundamental shift in approach. 

Amri B. Johnson: Yeah, I think a lot of people took on belonging on the Maslowian kind of space over the past several years. There's been quite a few books written about it. I think it's great.

I think people need to feel like they're a part of a community, part of something bigger than themselves. And I think when you look at it like that, like I'm a part of this thing and that's what I was talking about earlier, when you build systems with inclusion in mind, belonging becomes normative because it means that you feel like you're a part of this thing and you're creating the relational kind of skills of what I call relational fitness in our emergent inclusion framework.

To be able to sustain that, to build rapid rapport, to be able to build connection, to be able to put teams together and make things happen and know how to deal with any tension and complexity that comes with people being from different perspectives, backgrounds, etc. I think belonging is important in that matter.

It's not as easy to measure except for through engagement surveys. I think it has to be coupled with mattering because mattering is a little more agentic to me because you feel like you matter because your contribution matters what you're doing, not just who you're being. I think being is great belonging and being go hand in hand, but mattering and agency go hand in hand.

So when people can belong and matter. Great. If people just have to choose one, I think most people would choose to matter because that means their contribution is respected, their contribution is acknowledged, their contribution is making an impact in the places that they want to make an impact, particularly in organizational life.

David Rice: This has been excellent. I could talk to you about this stuff all day, but unfortunately we do, we're out of time for the episode. 

But before we go, I want to give you a chance, to plug what you're doing, what you have going on, where people can find you, all that. 

Amri B. Johnson: I'm on LinkedIn, Amri B. Johnson. Inclusion Wins is my company, inclusionwins.com. We have a Substack under the name of my book, Reconstructing Inclusion. And you can find that on Substack and other podcast channels that you frequent. We'll soon have a free webinar series that will happen pretty regularly called The Emergent on My Emergent Inclusion Framework.

So that will be coming up soon. You'll see that come up so you can sign up with that. If you read any of my blogs, we'll come back to you. If you sign up and you'll get a chance to be a part of that. Those are the main things. And I hope that you connect. I'm totally looking forward to it. 

David Rice: Excellent. And the second thing is, we have a little tradition here on the podcast where you get to ask me a question. So I want to turn it over to you and you can ask me something, anything you want. 

Amri B. Johnson: So David, you were in the diversity space in a place that had a huge impact on a lot of companies for a long time. What's shifted and did you see this shift coming when you were there and what do you think we could do different now in this space as a result of what what you saw and what we're experiencing now in the At least in the U.S. discourse. 

David Rice: Oh, yeah, it did. We definitely did see it shift, right? Like when I first started, it was 2021. And I think that collectively across the board, most people were very much On board, they believed that this was at least something that they should be doing if they weren't already doing it.

And you got the sense of a lot of enthusiasm around it. And then within the space of just a couple of years, you get enough Ron DeSantis talking, you get enough, you get Trump out there saying enough wild things and it starts to shift and it did start to get shift. Internally more difficult for the people that we were working with, right?

Like they were getting more pushback. They were getting more resistance. And it was coupled at the same time by a lot of critiques from people that DEI was supposed to benefit, right? Because they weren't seeing it. It wasn't actually translating to anything meaningful in a lot of cases. And. Once that started to happen, then it started to become like, when we got into 2023, the rhetoric had become much, much stronger now, Fox news is talking about it constantly now, every network is got to have some kind of debate about it and you could see there was a wave coming of running away from it.

And my thing with it was, is you cannot let those loud voices, like we talked about, and the people, these dissenting opinions quite literally change the language of what you've been trying to do. Don't let them define it, and then in the culture, it's on their terms. We're keeping too much of this internal, then we've got to control the narrative a little bit better because like we said, it got reduced down to being solely about race.

It's affirmative action 2. 0, right? They love to say things like that. But we know if you were on the ground, you know that's not the case, right? This work, it benefited veterans. Parents, aging people, because you were talking about ageism, it benefited people of different religious backgrounds.

Amri B. Johnson: Everybody is part of the mix. Yeah. 

David Rice: You could find yourself in one of these groups real easy. You know what I mean? But the thing is none of that was really at the core focus of the narrative and we let them redefine it is essentially what happened. I think that was a big mistake that everybody has to learn from moving forward is, you cannot let what is essentially an effort to move towards ensuring fairness.

At its base level, what are we working towards? We're trying to create a fair and just workplace society. Not even, I use just but and we're trying to move in a direction where these things aren't defining people so much as their potential, as their skills.

And so we just lost the battleground in that sense of like letting people control the language and make it about what they wanted it to be about and not what the work was actually supposed to be about. And it was something that was incendiary and that they could run an entire campaign essentially behind.

Amri B. Johnson: I appreciate that response. You saw it coming. I think we both did. Now it's time to, to pivot and not even pivot, but just like to actually deepen. I think what I heard from you just there is, all right, some people captured a particular narrative, it's incomplete, I can take their argument as deep as they can, I can say all the negative things that they're saying, and then I could basically, I can undo it.

I can say, okay here's this, here's what I heard from you. I don't think we're doing that. We're just flailing another kind of insult back at people instead of dissecting that narrative and acknowledging the parts that are true to me. That's the opportunity. Yeah. 

David Rice: Yeah, I agree. I think now I keep telling everybody, I'm like, we as a society are bad at community building, we just don't do it well, right? Like we're just so individualistic and we just, we, this is something that we have to learn and get better at. And if we get better at it, you can understand, you will never agree with a lot of these opinions, but you can start to understand what shaped those opinions and why those people have been influenced to think that way.

None of us, I wasn't born with my perceptions and my opinions either. I found that out because I had lived experiences and the people I was surrounded with were of a certain way of thinking and the same is true for them. And then how can we like unpack that and help them see a different way?

Amri B. Johnson: Yeah. Yeah. 

David Rice: That's what we've got to figure out. 

Amri B. Johnson: That's it. 

David Rice: I know I'm preaching to the choir here. 

Amri B. Johnson: No, but I, we're on the same page and I'm, I appreciate it. 

David Rice: Oh, that's awesome. 

Amri, thank you for coming on. It's been great. I really enjoyed having you. 

Amri B. Johnson: My pleasure. Thank you so much, David. 

David Rice: All right listeners, if you haven't done so already, if you're listening to this podcast for the first time, be sure to go on over peoplemanagingpeople.com/subscribe, get signed up for our newsletter.

Until next time, build some community, make those connections, empathize.