Sheesh! Can we stop talking about diversity now?

My editor at Nicholas Brealey told me that she wanted 'How To Get To Great Ideas' to weigh in at around 40,000 words. In my enthusiasm I overshot slightly and the finished manuscript totalled 72,000. So we came to a compromise and agreed at 50,000 words. That still left me with a lot of action for my delete key. As part of that, my editor requested that I cut one of my favourite sections of the book which explored different aspects of individual difference. It was hard to do. Really hard! So I told her that I'd release it to the world at some point. And that's what I'm starting to do now. Piece by piece. And this is the first part. If you want to understand where it fits in context, it was part of chapter 4. Feel free to print it out and stick it after page 56 where it belongs.

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Sheesh! Can we stop talking about diversity now?

For the last few years, one of the most talked about topics in business has been diversity. Along with the tsunami of articles, TED talks, books and conferences emphasising the importance of diversity in the workplace, we've been inundated with stories about inequality, prejudice and sexual harassment. It seems as if all the talking isn't leading to enough action. And action is what we desperately need.

In 2017, to show their support of sexual equality, State Street Global Advisors installed a statue of a young girl standing up to the iconic Wall Street Charging Bull. This 'Fearless Girl' installation was accompanied by a plaque that reads "Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference." This was marketing for a fund that featured companies with a higher percentage of women leaders. But it was also a statement on the topic of the moment. It was generally well received by the public and news outlets alike. Here was a company bravely making a stand.

But only six months later, it was revealed as being nothing more than a piece of hollow marketing as State Street agreed to a settlement of around $5 million for violation of equal pay rights. An investigation by the US Department of Labor found they were short-changing female and ethnic minority leaders on a grand scale. They ended up making a statement that was quite the opposite of the one they intended.

Maybe if companies like this understood the economic benefits of diversity, they'd take it a bit more seriously.

A McKinsey report in 2014 looked at the gender split in Fortune 1000 companies. On the plus side, it showed there were more female CEOs than ever. However, that figure was still a shockingly low 51 out of 1000. The interesting part came when they calculated the financial performance of these companies. Even although female CEOs made up just 5% of the Fortune 1000 category, they were responsible for 7% of the revenue. That means that on average female leaders performed 40% better than their male counterparts.

In 2015, Ernst & Young discovered that the S&P 1500 had more board directors named John than it had board directors who were women . Yes, gender diversity is on the rise. But with an increase of just 5 percentage points over ten years, it's clearly not happening fast enough.

In the same year, a study of ethnic diversity in the workplace found that the most diverse companies performed 35% better than the least diverse companies.

With solid financial benefits like these, you'd think that businesses would be falling over themselves to redress the imbalance of their workforce. If there was a new piece of technology that gave companies an advantage like this, none of them would hesitate to invest in it. Shareholders should be in revolt against the companies who aren't addressing their diversity issue. A balanced workforce appears to be financial dynamite. 

Diversity's biggest impact, however, lies in the areas of innovation and creativity. And that's what every company's future depends upon.

Difference makes a difference

You're likely to have a smartphone within reach as you're reading this. And that smartphone is likely to be either an Apple or an Android device. Neither of these would have been possible if it wasn't for foreigners moving to America. The founder of one company is a Russian immigrant and the founder of the other is the son of a Syrian immigrant. And that's nothing unusual. Out of the 87 billion-dollar startups operating in the United States in 2016, forty-four of them were founded by an immigrant. That's just over half.

In the UK, research shows that immigrants are three times more likely to start a business than British-born nationals. And that UK-born adults who have lived abroad are also significantly more likely to be entrepreneurial. In fact, over 10% of returning Brits will at some point in their lives start a business.

There could be two ways of explaining this. It could be that people with entrepreneurial mindsets are more likely to travel. Or it could be that the act of adapting to another culture gives you the perspective you need to spot and act on business opportunities. Regardless of the reason, being a cultural outsider can give you a valuable mind.

These travellers diverge from national norms, industry norms and company norms. That divergence broadens the collective knowledge. And it offers us more chance of accessing those new and valuable ideas.

The current international shift from globalisation to isolationism has the potential to undo this amazing benefit. If we have fewer foreign nationals in our workplaces - and fewer of our own nationals working abroad - we'll lose out on the breadth of experience and knowledge they bring with them.

If it wasn't for cultural outsiders and free movement of people, most of us would never even have heard of Silicon Valley. And the world's technology would be years behind where it is now.

The special ability of disability

Some of the most shocking statistics are around disability. In the UK, the 18% of the working-age population that are disabled are more than twice as likely to be unemployed as non-disabled people. That offers a massive talent pool for employers to tap into. One that is simple to recruit and more likely to remain loyal to the organisation.

It's not just their different perspectives that makes disabled people an asset for employers. Many people with disabilities have no choice but to be resilient and resourceful in their everyday lives. Just getting around can be a constant array of challenges to be overcome. A well-honed problem-solving ability is a powerful skill to bring to the workplace.

Disabled people may be the most over-looked resource the business world currently has. And, therefore, a massive opportunity for more-enlightened employers.

Minding the mind

One area of diversity that has only started to be talked about in recent years is Neurodiversity. For those of you who aren't yet familiar with it, it's the term for a variety of neurological differences that include autism, dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD and other natural mental variations. These are not illnesses. They are simply differences in mental wiring that lead people to function differently.

It may surprise you that, even although I've written a few books, I have difficulty reading. Whether that's because of dyslexia or a symptom of ADHD, I'm not sure. But I'm pretty certain that if I was in school these days, I'd be on Ritalin. Growing up in the 70s, my teachers diagnosed me as a fidget. There were no pills to treat fidgetiness so I had to find my own ways of dealing with it.

The classic view of neurodiverse conditions is that they’re 'disorders' or 'problems'. But the truth is they are often more like superpowers. They can give people special abilities that the average brain just doesn't have.

Kaiya Stone is a stand-up comedian who was diagnosed with dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD in her late teens. But having learning difficulties didn't make her stupid. It didn't stop her being a bookworm or getting a classics degree from Oxford or having a successful one-woman comedy show. Instead, her neurodiversity made her who she is. As she puts it, "everything that I have ever achieved is not in spite of it, it's because of it."

I totally relate to that.

From my experience in advertising, designers and art directors are far more likely to be dyslexic than people in other roles. That seems to be because they have been forced to think visually as a way of coping with their reading difficulties.

In recent years, tech companies have been seeing the benefits of autism. Over the last few years, companies like Microsoft and SAP have deliberately sought out autistic people to join their coding teams. These individuals are likely to be more methodical and detail-oriented, which are vital skills in software development. They've adjusted their hiring methods accordingly, doing away with the traditional interview process and replacing it with a longer observation period.

Studies have also shown that autistic people outperform neurotypical people on certain creativity tests . When given the classic 'how many uses for an object' test, they tended to come up with more original answers than average. The way they experience, interpret and interact with the world allows them to access ideas the average person could never get to. It becomes less about easy associations and more about using cognitively demanding thinking. The different ideas this approach creates can open up entirely new opportunities.

Embracing the rainbow

Sexual orientation can be a powerful form of difference. The very act of coming out is a way of shouting "I'm not like most people". It's a public statement that an individual diverges from the societal norm and identifies with an outsider group. Sexuality is so diverse itself, that currently, the most acceptable term seems to be LGBTQ+ to encompass everyone who identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual or queer along with anyone else who doesn't belong in the 'straight' camp. Regardless of where you sit in the acronym, being LGBTQ+ provides you with a valuable quality of otherness.

But sexuality appears to be a factor for straight people too. People who score highly in creativity tests are more likely to be androgynous . That means they display both male and female traits, regardless of their sex. People who strongly identify as a 'typical' member of their sex—a manly man or a girly girl—see the world through a single filter, which limits their ability to view a problem from multiple perspectives. More androgynous individuals can see things from both a male and female point of view, giving them a more flexible approach.

As we deal with increasingly complex problems, this ability to switch perspectives and compare and contrast becomes a real advantage.

This isn't just the right thing to do

Diversity seems to be the cause de jour of the right-on community. And—yes—moral reasons are a good motivation to want to make a change to our ridiculously out-of-whack workplaces.

But companies, who measure success by profit, will be reticent to make a change that doesn't help them financially. Fortunately, as we've seen, diversity can have a huge impact on business success. And a huge impact on generating ideas that could radically transform a company's fortunes. So we need to change the way the business world looks at the issue. This isn't about ticking boxes and avoiding bad publicity. Increasing the diversity of an organisation adds value to everyone; the employees, the customers and the shareholders. Quite simply, there's a solid business case for fairer and more balanced workplaces.

Every form of diversity makes individuals more valuable to organisations. And has the potential to result in more effective ideas, if the workplace allows for it. But we’ll come to that later.

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There are more sections to come covering other controversial topics, like trauma, altered states and contrarianism. If you want to make sure you catch them, sign up to my mailing list at davebirss.com

If you want to pick up a copy of the book, ask for 'How To Get To Great Ideas' at your local bookstore or order it from your local Amazon.