What has your ERG outgrown?

ERG calendars have a way of accumulating.

An event is successful, so it returns the following year. A committee forms around a particular need and continues meeting after the circumstances have changed. A new initiative gets added during one leadership term and is inherited by the next. Eventually, some activities become part of the ERG simply because they have been there for a while.

There can be good reasons for that continuity. Recurring events often become traditions that members look forward to, and established programs can provide some stability as leadership changes. They also carry history. Someone put time into creating them, people may have strong feelings about them, and ending them can feel more significant than simply removing something from a calendar.

That history can make it surprisingly difficult to ask whether something still belongs.

ERG leaders inherit decisions made under different circumstances. Membership may have changed since then. The organization may have changed. The people currently doing the work may have different capacity. Even the needs that originally prompted an initiative may have evolved.

This is one reason a full calendar can sometimes tell us very little about the current priorities of an ERG. Some of what appears there reflects choices being made now. Some reflects choices made several leadership teams ago.

Looking at what an ERG has outgrown can be a useful part of planning because it creates room to understand how the group itself has changed.

An annual event may still be eagerly anticipated. Another may continue drawing attendance while requiring an amount of effort that leaders no longer want to invest. A standing meeting may have served an earlier team well and feel unnecessary to the current one. A program may simply have reached the end of its useful life.

There does not have to be something wrong with an initiative for an ERG to stop doing it.

Sometimes it has done what it was created to do.

As ERG leaders begin looking toward another year, I’m interested in the decisions that rarely appear in annual reports: the things groups decide to retire, simplify, hand off, or allow to end. Those choices can tell us quite a bit about how an ERG is evolving.

A small next step

When you look at your ERG calendar, notice which activities you would actively choose again today and which ones you inherited. Consider them and if changes need to be made.