Who We Are Leaving Out
I've spent most of my career asking "How do we make this work?"
It's the question that drove my early years in operations and project management. No matter what got thrown at us, the answer was always the same: we'll figure out how to make it work.
I was good at it. Really good. I could MacGyver a solution out of duct tape and determination, rally a team around a half-baked plan, and somehow get us across the finish line mostly intact.
But here's the thing I didn't realize until embarrassingly recently: I was asking the wrong question entirely.
The most important question isn't "How do we make this work?"
It's "Who are we leaving out?"
This shift hit me hard while reading Tiffany A. Yu's The Anti-Ableist Manifesto. She poses a simple but revolutionary question:
"Do you have everything you need to fully participate?"
Not "Can you make it work?" Not "Is this manageable?" Not "Can you just push through?"
Do you have everything you need?
I sat with that for a while. Because the truth is, most of the systems I've helped build work beautifully - for people just like me. People who don't need accommodations to show up. People who can sit through back-to-back meetings without it wrecking their day. People whose bodies and brains are considered "standard issue."
For everyone else? Those systems ask people to contort themselves into shapes that were never designed for them in the first place.
We wouldn't ship software that crashes for 40% of users. We'd call that a failure. A liability. Something to fix immediately.
So why do we build workplaces that only work for 60% of people and then act like it's everyone else's job to adapt?
Every time we design for the "typical" user, we're making an active choice about who matters. And who doesn't.
My DEI work taught me to ask "What voices are missing?" when decisions were being made. That's an important question. But it's not enough.
Because if someone is in the room but doesn't have what they need to engage meaningfully—if they're navigating barriers the rest of us don't even see—we've already failed. Their presence doesn't mean inclusion. It just means we've checked a box.
The deeper question is: "Do the people who ARE here have everything they need to fully participate?"
Not just show up. Not just survive it. But actually participate.
That's the question I should have been asking all along.
Now when I think about any system, process, or meeting, Yu's question comes to mind: Do you have everything you need to fully participate?
It changes everything.
It means asking whether the all-hands meeting really needs to be a video call, or if some people would contribute more freely in writing. It means questioning whether "just hop on a quick call" is actually quick for everyone, or just convenient for you. It means noticing when someone goes quiet and wondering if it's because they don't have something to say, or because the way we're asking makes it harder for them to say it.
It means building systems that don't require people to shrink, mask, or work twice as hard just to keep up.
Here's what I'm sitting with now: Most of us aren't intentionally leaving people out. We're just building from our own lived experience and assuming it's universal. We're asking "How do we make this work?" when we should be asking "Who does this not work for… and what would it take to change that?"
The difference between those two questions? Everything.
So I'll ask you what Yu asked me: Do you have everything you need to fully participate?
And if the answer is no, or if you're not sure, what would it take to get there?
