Meaning ● Decentralized Diversity Governance in the SMB landscape empowers organizations to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives directly into operational workflows, fostering business unit autonomy in DE&I strategy while aligning with company-wide goals. Such governance, applicable across automation projects and implementation of new business solutions, enables SMBs to leverage unique team skills and experiences to improve problem-solving and innovation. ● Achieving operational efficiency requires integrating automated systems which respect varied employee insights; this increases business value by making solutions user-centered. ● Diversity is more effective when governance distributes decision-making power, improving inclusion and driving broader strategic goals such as revenue generation or new market penetration for growing SMBs. ● The advantage to SMBs is that this flexible approach encourages experimentation, which then accelerates learning about DE&I programs that align with business needs.