The Power of Diversity: How Inclusive Teams Drive Innovation and Growth

Diversity has become a hot topic in the business world, and is growing a lot of traction - transforming corporate culture to be more inclusive, restructuring teams to accommodate different needs, hiring experts from other industries for fresh perspectives and ideas, the list goes on.

Leadership teams have been looking into this new trend as well, finding that adjusting their leadership strategies to be more diverse and inclusive has been proving to be beneficial both to their teams as well as their organizations' growth and success.

Though this can be chalked up to anecdotal evidence, there have been studies carried out on variances between leaders who have not implemented diversity and inclusion in their strategies and those who have. Across the board, implementing diversity and inclusion has shown to have a positive impact on teams, as it opens the doors for high-potential talents who may not have otherwise gotten the opportunities that they did to showcase their skills and expertise.

A corporate study conducted by BCG across multiple countries bore some interesting results - the most prominent outcome being that organizations that have more diverse and inclusive teams reported a higher innovation revenue.

But why diversity and inclusion? What makes it so special?

Across the six dimensions considered in the study (gender, age, nation of origin, career path, industry background, education level), all of them showed varying levels of positive correlation with innovation, with digitization being a major catalyst in pushing innovative strategies and practices forward in the organizations with above-average diversity scores.

Having a diverse leadership team is great and all, but taking advantage of all the unique and differing viewpoints and perspectives of leaders requires having a strong inclusive organizational culture as a foundation.

Organizations that actively seek to diversify their teams and make efforts to find unconventional solutions to challenges and generate uniquely innovative ideas have a greater likelihood of these ideas becoming winning products/services in the market.

Though the study looked into the aforementioned six dimensions, diversity is not limited to just them - diversity comes in many facets such as diversity of thought, diversity of industry experience, diversity of leadership style and strategy, diversity of age groups, and the difference of perspective that brings, all of these points can be considered under diversity. What's important is for organizations to first identify what they're missing, and what facet of diversity will help them bridge those gaps and bring a positive impact to their teams, provided the foundational structures are in place to facilitate and support these new hires for what they bring to the table.

BCG put it quite aptly, regarding what diversity means for organizations and its importance in organisational design and culture: "For management teams, there are few slam dunks in the business world. This is one of them."

With remote and hybrid work taking over the working world by storm, more and more doors of opportunity are opening up, making today an unprecedented era of work. The future of work and organizational teams is looking up, and we're excited about what the next few years will look like.

BCG study: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/how-diverse-leadership-teams-boost-innovation

Sajid Hussain

Consultant | Activ8