By doing so, he made an important leadership decision. Folks like Tracy Chou at Pinterest and Leslie Miley at Twitter have publicly expressed their views on the lack of diversity in tech, demanding more transparency and better, more inclusive practices within company policy and culture. As underrepresented engineers from name-brand companies, their voices have been critical to the movement to increase awareness around these important topics. However, it’s undeniable that Mark Zuckerberg’s voice is one of singular influence and imitation across the tech community. When he unequivocally demands more from his employees, the rest of Silicon Valley sits up straight.

Incidents like those that occurred at Facebook call for sensitive decision-making and those decisions and stances set a precedent for other tech companies in the valley. There are important messages to take away from the Facebook wall incident and Mark Zuckerberg’s memo last week.

Firstly, you don’t have to have all of the answers on hand in order to demand a higher standard. Zuckerberg is white, male, and in many other ways represents the overwhelming majority — and he doesn’t have yet a detailed, fail-proof plan for eliminating future similar type incidents at Facebook or shifting the diversity tech landscape successfully. Nonetheless, those considerations are not preventing him from using his platform to frame the conversation and underlining certain behavior as unacceptable. In order to lead in the diversity space, you don’t have to have all of the expertise or be able to speak the language perfectly. You just need to be willing to align yourself as an ally, and be willing to learn along the way with everyone else.

Secondly, people listen to what important people have to say. In the days following Zuckerberg’s memo, news outlets published and wrote about his response and others across the technology field voiced opinions and solicited reactions from their co-workers. As Facebook moves forward with the town hall meeting, there will be more conversations happening at that company and beyond, and the discourse will inevitably advance. We witness that when the people who hold power unabashedly put their stake in the ground, it helps all of us generate the fuel for conversations that potentially instigate important shifts later on. We at Year Up only developed our practices fifteen years ago and we are far from arrived. We have been working on our own diversity and inclusion practices. We’re learning a great deal, and getting some things right, but there will be more road to travel. Responses like Mark Zuckerberg’s inspire us to delve into deeper conversations about our own practices and think harder about ways we can improve.

Lastly, precisely the same talents and instincts that have led to success for many tech leaders are applicable to disrupt the diversity conversation, too. We see it on display here. Not having all of the answers, yet learning, pivoting, relentlessly iterating along the way until you’ve broken through on the solution — — isn’t that what the Valley is all about? The lack of diversity issue is as urgent and as impactful as any problem we’ve set out to solve in the industry and requires the same urgent and unrelenting approach from its leaders. The skills Zuckerberg employed in his response are observable across tech leadership in spades and we hope his methods are contagious. So, to other CEOs across the technology community: use your voice, platform, and influence to be gutsy for your employees, for your users, and for your communities, as you’ve already proven you can do. If unions of taxi drivers don’t intimidate you, why would this? With a slightly different frame, you could move the needle on an implacable challenge.