Diversity leads to better decision-making

In the last hundred years society has become more inclusive, although it is far from being perfect. Fewer are the days when sexes, nationalities, ethnicities, religions and classes are forced to ghettoise into insular and homogeneous communities. This general shift towards inclusivity, arguably much quicker in some places than others, has happened concurrently with an exponential leap in the world’s standard of living. I believe the relationship between the two is more than a coincidence.

Good decision-making is founded on access to a wide range of perspectives, which take into account the good of the whole. Business, amongst other things, is a decision-making process.  Decisions can be taken alone, of course, but in general they are the work of a group or committee. When a committee gets together to make decisions, it is often an exercise in analysis and debate, which usually concludes with agreement on directions to follow and actions to take. However, it does not necessarily follow that because all or most of the people in the group have agreed on a course of action that they are in fact making the right decision.  Groupthink is not an oracle of wisdom. Good decision-making is more than just about having a rigorous process, it is also about those involved in the analysis and debate. The broader the range of experiences the people in the committee have, the better decisions the entity will make. Expanding the diversity of the decision-making group will widen its available basin of wisdom. Lack of diversity, meanwhile, serves to limit the number of different experiences that can be drawn upon in the decision-making process. For example, if the steering committee that governs a company is comprised mainly of people who share the same gender and socio-economic background, who went to the same schools and studied the same subjects, who live in similar neighbourhoods and hold the selfsame religious or moral beliefs, it stands to reason that their decisions will be reflective of those experiences and those experiences alone. Although most companies start from such a place, the question it begs is whether this is still sufficient going forward or is there a better way?

In my experience, limited inputs invariably lead to limited outcomes. An insipid by-product of homogeneity in the decision-making process is the enshrinement of our corporate “sacred-cows”. The pull of the status quo is so strong that it stops us from questioning the premises on which our decisions are based. It is what Rudyard Kipling called “The God of Things as they Are”. That “God” is never willingly or easily displaced. When Copernicus put the sun at the center of the Universe, it was rejected as heresy by the small group of clerics who controlled the levers of power. Such a concept was anathema to their shared beliefs. But no matter how much their pious convictions told them their decision was “right”, it did not change the “correctness” of Copernicus’ observation of the astronomical order.

Most importantly, diversity allows us to shine a light on our blind-spots and to identify issues that our perspective, simply, does not permit us to see. Diversity provides an outlet for the question: “Why?”, which is quintessential to any successful business endeavour. Having to plead our position to people who share neither our background nor our experiences force us to more thoroughly support our position. This often leads to the realization that perhaps our idea was not so well thought out in the first place. Healthy conflict is the ability to passionately disagree without prejudicing trust.By its nature, diversity helps promote healthy conflict by exposing ideas to a wider spectrum of experiences; thereby helping refine the concepts that lead to better decision-making.

What does diversity mean?  Some wrongly believe that it means removing skilled people from positions of power and replacing them with unqualified candidates, simply because they are able to check-off some boxes on a diversity questionnaire. Apart from being trite and dealing in fear, this argument is a manifestation of the entrenched power of the status quo. What seeking diversity actually means is to actively recruit for qualification with the addition of diversity as a criterion in the selection process.  It is part of the elements to take into account when judging a candidate as a whole after passing the initial threshold of qualification. It is similar to the reason why we hire people who come from different industries. We seek to hire people of different sexes, ethnicities, nationalities, religions and classes not as experiment in social engineering but in order to financially benefit from the wisdom derived from their unique experiences. Diversity is about creating a balanced management team. For corporations to harness the benefits of healthy conflict for their shareholders and stakeholders, they must actively promote diversity as the pull of the status quo will never permit that to happen by itself. Like an investment in innovation, it is about choosing to be uncomfortable in the present in favour of future gain. To argue against diversity is to argue against the benefits of knowledge and wisdom. Promoting diversity in business is not only ethical but also smart on a management level.

If we look at the history of modern sport, we come to the realization that the world’s best athletes are very rarely the children of great athletes themselves. Further, they seem come from anywhere and not necessarily from privileged backgrounds. What makes them win, in addition to natural talent, is discipline, resiliency, desire and a will to succeed; traits that are equally lauded in business. Furthermore, positive acts of inclusivity in sports, such as the breaking of the colour barrier, have proven that no race, country or ethnicity ever has the monopoly on victory…even Canada loses at hockey. If diversity has been so beneficial to sport, why should it not offer the same rewards to every other form of human activity?