There’s a moment in most inclusion conversations where someone — usually a senior leader, sometimes a frustrated practitioner — says some version of this:
“We’ve done the training. We’ve got the plan. We’ve consulted. Why aren’t things actually changing?”
It’s a fair question. And it’s almost always the wrong one.
The right question is harder: Where is our organisation actually sitting on the inclusion journey, and are we doing the work that matches that stage—or are we skipping ahead?
Because here’s what I’ve seen across more than half a decade of working with councils, TAFEs, Higher E, NFPs and values-led corporates on disability inclusion: most of the time, the work isn’t sticking because it’s the wrong work for where the organisation actually is. Not bad work. Not lazy work. Just mismatched.
That mismatch has a name. It’s called inclusion maturity.
The myth of the inclusion plateau
Many organisations view inclusion as something you achieve. You write a plan, implement it, measure it, tick the box, and move on. The language reinforces this — disability inclusion action plan, inclusion strategy, accessibility audit. All of it suggests a fixed destination.
But inclusion isn’t a destination. It’s a capability. And like every other organisational capability — financial management, risk, governance, customer experience — it develops over time through deliberate practice at different speeds across different parts of the organisation.
The reason this matters is practical. If you treat inclusion as a destination, you’ll keep doing the same kinds of interventions over and over and wonder why the needle isn’t moving. You’ll keep running awareness training in an organisation that has already completed 5 rounds. You’ll keep writing access plans that sit on shelves. You’ll keep consulting with the same community members until they’re exhausted, and then you’ll quietly wonder why no new voices are coming forward.
None of this is because the people doing the work are doing it badly. It’s because the work no longer aligns with the organisation’s maturity. The early-stage interventions don’t generate late-stage outcomes — and yet that’s what keeps being commissioned, year after year.
What inclusion maturity actually looks like
Without naming a specific framework (there are several good ones, and I use my own with clients), every credible model of inclusion maturity tracks roughly the same arc. Organisations move through recognisable stages, and you can usually tell which stage an organisation is in within about an hour of being in the building.
At the earliest stage, inclusion is reactive. Something happens — a complaint, an incident, a piece of legislation, a board member with a personal connection — and the organisation responds. The work is often well-intentioned but ad hoc. There might be one person who “does” inclusion, often alongside half a dozen other portfolios. The Disability Action Plan, if there is one, has expired or is about to. Consultation happens late, if at all. Success is measured by compliance.
At the next stage, inclusion becomes intentional. There’s a plan. There’s a budget line, however modest. Someone has been given explicit responsibility. There’s a recognition that consultation needs to happen earlier and more meaningfully. Training is rolled out. Audits get commissioned. The organisation begins to discuss inclusion in its strategic documents.
Beyond that, inclusion becomes embedded. The plan isn’t a separate document—it’s woven into procurement, recruitment, service design, communications, asset management, and governance. People with disability aren’t just consulted; they’re paid, structured into decision-making, and have real authority over things that affect them. Inclusion outcomes are reported alongside financial and operational metrics. Leaders can speak to inclusion progress without having to call the access officer in to brief them first.
At the most mature end, inclusion is generative. The organisation isn’t just doing inclusion well internally — it’s shifting the systems around it. It’s influencing supplier behaviour, shaping sector practice, sponsoring pipeline development, and using its scale to make inclusion easier for everyone else. This is rare. It’s also where the most interesting work happens.
The point isn’t that every organisation should be at the most mature stage. Most shouldn’t be — yet. The point is that the work you commission, the partners you choose, the questions you ask, and the outcomes you hold yourself to should all match the stage you’re actually in.
The diagnostic test no one wants to run
Here’s the uncomfortable bit. Most organisations think they’re more mature than they are.
I’ve sat in plenty of rooms where senior leaders confidently describe their organisation as “really progressing well on inclusion” — while the practitioners in the same room visibly tense, because they know what’s actually happening on the ground. Or the reverse: practitioners doing genuinely embedded work in pockets, while leadership has no language for it and can’t see what’s already there.
The gap between perceived maturity and actual maturity is one of the most predictable patterns I encounter. And it has consequences. It leads to investment in the wrong interventions. It leads consultants to be briefed on work that doesn’t fit. It leads to plans that read beautifully and change nothing.
If you want a quick gut-check on where your organisation actually sits, ask these five questions — honestly:
- Who in the organisation can speak with authority about inclusion progress, beyond the named inclusion lead? If the answer is “no one really,” you’re probably earlier in the journey than you think.
- When was the last time an inclusion-related decision changed a budget allocation, a procurement outcome, or a senior recruitment process? Inclusion that doesn’t touch resources doesn’t shift culture.
- Are people with disabilities paid for their expertise, or asked to volunteer it? This is a stage marker. Mature organisations don’t expect lived experience to be donated.
- If your inclusion lead left tomorrow, what would persist? If the honest answer is “very little,” your inclusion work is in the hands of a person, not a system.
- Do your governance documents — your strategic plan, your risk register, your annual report — make sense without the inclusion plan bolted on as an attachment? If inclusion only lives in its own document, it’s not yet embedded.
You’ll notice none of these questions is about whether you have a plan. Plans are easy. What’s hard is what the plan is connected to.
Why this matters for what you commission next
If you’re a council, a TAFE, a higher-ed institution, an NFP or a values-led organisation thinking about your next phase of inclusion work — a new DIAP, a strategy refresh, an audit, a governance review — the maturity question should sit underneath everything you do.
Because the right consultant, the right scope, the right deliverable, and the right success measures all differ depending on where you actually are.
An organisation at the reactive stage usually needs help building basic infrastructure: a credible plan, foundational consultation processes, a budget conversation, and executive sponsorship. Bringing in a consultant to design a sophisticated co-design framework at this stage is overkill, and it will probably fail — because the surrounding system can’t yet hold what’s being designed.
An organisation at the intentional stage usually needs help connecting the dots: turning the plan into operational reality, embedding inclusion into existing governance, elevating consultation from advisory to authoritative, and building the data and reporting infrastructure that lets leaders see what’s happening.
An organisation at the embedded stage usually needs help on systems-level questions: how to influence the supply chain, how to shape sector practice, how to use scale to shift the dial more broadly. The work looks less like a plan and more like a strategy.
If you’re commissioning the wrong stage of work for where you actually are, you’ll get one of two outcomes. Either you’ll get something that’s beautifully designed but can’t be operationalised, because your system isn’t ready. Or you’ll get something that feels safe and familiar but doesn’t move you forward — because it’s the same intervention you’ve already done three times.
Neither is good value for the public money or the community trust that funds this work.
What to do with this
If you’ve read this far and you’re nodding, you probably already have a sense of where your organisation is. That sense is usually right. The harder bit is naming it honestly and choosing the next piece of work accordingly.
A few practical starting points:
- Before you scope your next inclusion project, get clear-eyed about your current stage. Not the stage you’d like to be at. The stage you’re actually at.
- Resist the urge to skip stages. Embedding inclusion takes the time it takes. Organisations that skip from reactive to embedded without doing the intentional work in the middle almost always have to circle back.
- Choose consultants and partners whose work matches your stage. Someone brilliant at foundational DAP development isn’t necessarily the right person for embedding inclusion into governance. Someone brilliant at systems-level work will struggle in an organisation that hasn’t yet built basic plan infrastructure.
- Build a quiet, honest diagnostic conversation into your governance rhythm — not a public scorecard, but a real assessment of where the organisation is, what’s working, and what’s not yet in place.
The organisations I see making real progress on inclusion aren’t the ones with the most ambitious plans. They’re the ones who know exactly where they are, are honest about it, and commission work that matches.
That’s not a glamorous insight. But it’s what actually moves the dial.
Work With Me
This is part of the Making Inclusion Work series, written for leaders and practitioners who want their inclusion work to actually stick. If you’re thinking about your next phase of inclusion work — a DIAP, a strategy refresh, an audit, or a governance piece — and you’d like a confidential conversation about where you’re sitting and what would genuinely move you forward, I’d welcome the chat.
If you’re ready for your inclusion work to stick, email me at hello@ainsleehooper.com.au
Services: DIAP development and review · Governance and committee reviews · Co-design and stakeholder engagement · Disability Inclusion Outcomes Framework™ · The Inclusion Lens
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