The Luxury of Indifference

When Staying Silent Isn’t Neutral: Why Companies Must Define Who They Are in Unsettling Times

At Reed Consulting Group, we have always believed that leadership is not just about hitting targets. It is about crafting a legacy that outlasts the fiscal quarter. Too often, businesses today opt for silence amid ideological storms, hoping that neutrality shields them. But when the ground shifts, when DEI offices vanish, consumer trust erodes, and executive silence signals acquiescence, quiet is not neutrality. It is a message in itself.

In 2025, sweeping rollbacks of DEI frameworks reshaped not just government agencies but corporate behavior from federal contractors to Wall Street boardrooms. Organizations once proud of their inclusive culture quietly stepped back. Yet the business world is waking up: abandoning values does not protect you. It erodes morale, fuels backlash, and compromises purpose. As executives, employees, and consumers, we must choose: Are we building companies known for what we stand for, or for what we back away from?

The Great Corporate Retreat: When Profit Becomes Cowardice

Analysts call it “scaredy-cat capitalism.” But let’s be honest. What we are seeing is corporations trading courage for convenience, retreating from the very values they once advertised as unshakable.

Picture it. A company spends $8 million on a 30-second Super Bowl commercial about nothing—just a dog, a drone, and some vague “we’re all in this together” tagline. But ask them to spend a fraction of that affirming the dignity of their workforce? Suddenly the CFO clutches their pearls. Suddenly the CEO needs three more studies before making a statement.

Or take the marketing calendar. Entire departments are laser-focused on releasing the fall pumpkin spice lineup earlier every year because apparently America cannot survive until October without nutmeg-flavored foam. But ask these same leaders to invest in an environment where employees of color feel safe, or where women do not quietly leave in frustration, and you will hear: “It is too political.”

It would be laughable if it were not so costly. These are billion-dollar organizations afraid of being too human.

Behind the Absurdity: When Aligning Isn’t Fear, It’s Choice

But let’s not mistake backpedaling for cowardice only. In many cases, this is not fear wearing a suit. It is alignment.

This is not just about saving face. It is about saving dollars by any means necessary.

Take Target, for example. In early 2025, after rolling back DEI commitments, the company’s market value plunged by a staggering $12.4 billion. Not because of an abstract policy change, but because consumers saw the erasure of their values as betrayal. That is real money and real trust lost.

Then, when CEO Brian Cornell stepped down amid weak sales, many felt a cathartic release. But Cornell was not gone. He stepped right into the chairman’s seat. It was a reshuffle, not a reckoning.

Target’s $12.4 billion loss proves a simple truth: exclusion is expensive. But here is the unsettling part. Many corporations are willing to pay that cost. They are willing to shrink their workforce, lose customers, even jeopardize the company itself, if it means staying aligned with the luxury of indifference. When Cornell was elevated rather than held accountable, the message was clear. The company was not retreating from its alignment. It was reinforcing it.

And that raises a question for the rest of us. If corporations are willing to risk collapse to align with indifference, are we willing to risk comfort to align with courage? Are we willing to build something that will outlast us, even if we never see its full fruit?

There is an old saying: “A society grows great when its elders plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” The same is true for business. The companies that will be remembered with honor are not those that cut corners when values became inconvenient. They are the ones who planted shade for their employees, their communities, and even their competitors. They are the ones who built legacies strong enough for the next generation to rest under.

And let’s not pretend parental leave is not part of the battleground. Despite decades of advocacy, only about 60 percent of large U.S. companies even disclose paid parental leave policies, and fewer provide them consistently. Meanwhile, Accenture, Levi Strauss, L’Oréal USA, and PayPal were honored in 2025 as “Leaders on Leave,” offering robust policies that actually support families.

Behind every corporate memo is a human story.

Take Maya, a project manager who had her first child this spring. She was counting on the parental leave her company promised last year. But when the political winds shifted, so did the policy. “We can’t afford it anymore,” her HR rep told her.

The same week, she watched the company roll out a $12 million ad campaign featuring drones delivering lattes. Drones. Delivering. Lattes.

Maya is not a headline. She is not in a lawsuit. She is one of thousands of employees now asking the quiet question: Do I still belong here?

The Sadness of Silence

What hurts the most is not the press release. It is the silence that follows.

Silence in the town hall when employees ask if their company still stands for inclusion.
Silence when a new parent emails HR to ask if leave is still covered, and the reply is a clipped policy update.
Silence when whole departments for DEI, culture, and belonging vanish from the org chart, and no one at the top says a word.

That silence echoes. It tells employees: We are not willing to fight for you.

And it is not just internal. Consumers hear the silence too. When Target rolled back DEI, the backlash was not just financial. It was emotional. Loyal customers felt betrayed. Black shoppers, LGBTQ+ families, allies who once trusted the brand all realized the company was not neutral. It had chosen.

For one Black mother of two in Minneapolis, Target was not just a store. It was her employer, her community, the place she felt proud to represent. “We said we were a company that saw everyone,” she told a colleague quietly after the rollback. But when her department disappeared overnight, the pride went with it. She still clocks in, still does her job. But she no longer wears the logo with joy.

Multiply that story by thousands, and you start to see what silence really costs. It is not just $12 billion in lost value. It is the erosion of belonging, the fraying of trust, the slow bleed of hope.

And here is the truth we rarely say out loud: this silence does not just affect profit and retention. It affects mental health. Employees know the political atmosphere is tense. They read the same headlines as everyone else. Pretending nothing has changed at work only deepens the anxiety. It asks people to smile while carrying the quiet weight of wondering if they still matter. That dissonance is exhausting.

The Beauty of Courage: Companies Defining Who They Really Are

Here is the good news. Silence is not universal. Some leaders have decided that values are worth more than fear.

When the administration rolled back DEI frameworks in January, many companies quietly fell in line. But not all. Microsoft, Apple, Accenture, Levi Strauss, and PayPal doubled down, publicly reaffirming their commitments to DEI and parental leave. They were not chasing headlines. They were anchoring themselves in who they have always said they are.

And it is paying off. Accenture’s CEO Julie Sweet reminded stakeholders that “inclusion fuels innovation.” Microsoft expanded paid parental leave in 2025, while Target was cutting theirs. Levi Strauss issued a statement declaring they would not walk away from equity work, regardless of federal policy. These are not acts of charity. They are acts of courage that build brands employees want to join and customers want to support.

Because the truth is this: legacy is not built by the loudest critic or the cheapest exit strategy. Legacy is built by consistency, especially when it costs something.

We are living in a moment of definition. Companies do not get to hide anymore. They are showing us who they are through their silence, or through their stand. And for leaders, employees, and consumers, that is actually liberating. It gives us a chance to choose.

Legacy Beyond the Noise

Legacy is not built in boardrooms when the cameras are on. It is built in the quiet decisions that reveal who we really are.

Right now, the easy choice is silence. It costs nothing. But the lasting choice, the one that will echo five, ten, even a hundred years from now, is courage.

Courage looks like paying a fair wage when no one is tracking you. Courage looks like offering parental leave when your competitors cut it. Courage looks like refusing to erase your people for the sake of politics.

We are all, in our own ways, whether as executives, employees, or consumers, shaping the companies we choose to build and the legacies we choose to align with. And when future generations look back, they will not remember the quarterly reports. They will remember whether we stood for something real when the ground shook.

So let the world call this the age of fear. Let them say companies are shrinking back. But let us choose differently. Let us define this moment as the time we stood firm, built with vision, and carried dignity forward.

Because in the end, silence does not outlast us. Courage does. And if we choose it now, if we anchor our businesses and our partnerships in it, what outlasts us will be nothing short of beautiful.