Building meritocratic and equitable organizations is a complex yet critical endeavor, as many corporate leaders have come to realize. It requires effective talent management systems to attract, develop, and retain qualified and motivated individuals — key drivers of organizational success. In my book, The Meritocracy Paradox, I caution that certain organizational efforts to foster meritocracy and excellence in organizations may paradoxically deepen inequities and unfairness. And I have presented evidence of three key findings — along with their related warnings — that highlight what I call the meritocracy paradox.

The first warning is that simply having organizational processes in place to hire, evaluate, and promote the best does not automatically guarantee fairness. In fact, any talent management process can be subject to bias and inefficiencies, and there is a risk that, rather than fostering excellence and opportunity for all, people-based management systems may actually reinforce or create advantages for certain groups over others.

The second warning is that emphasizing meritocracy — whether implicitly or explicitly — as the foundation of hiring, promotion, and reward practices may backfire on women, racial minorities, immigrants, and other historically disadvantaged groups. When individuals believe their organization is meritocratic, they may be less likely to recognize and correct for biases in their decision-making. This can lead to unfair treatment of certain individuals or groups and, inadvertently, exclude candidates whose skills and talents merit inclusion.

The third warning is that there is no universal agreement on what merit actually is. Even managers and executives with similar training and experience within the same organization often hold differing views. This lack of consensus on what constitutes merit or talent can ultimately derail efforts to build a truly meritocratic organization.

The encouraging news is that fostering true meritocracy in the workplace does not entail an extravagant amount of time or resources but rather a strategic and intentional focus on debiasing and improving talent management processes.

Taking action is essential. But pressure to act often leads companies to implement generic solutions — such as diversity and implicit bias training, blind selection and hiring, tweaks to job posting language, and the use of AI recruitment tools, all of which have been shown to have limited effectiveness — without first diagnosing the organization’s specific challenges or needs.