Summer of Soccer Thinking - Diversity is a strategic advantage

As a political guy who loves soccer and thinks about management, this piece in Good Authority made my day. Soccer, politics and management in one handy post, what's not to love?

In a longer essay about nationalism and national soccer teams during the Euros, Erik Voeten of Georgetown University points out that diverse teams do better. The piece cites a study from the Journal of Sports Analytics that found, "Results indicate that more heterogeneous teams outperform less diverse sides; a one-standard deviation increase in cultural diversity (measured by linguistic distance) can double a team’s goal differential over the course of the tournament." Different players from different places bring different strengths and styles to a team, and teams do better as a result.

The same is true in business. As Stephen Conmy wrote for the Corporate Governance Institute, "A diversity of people, thought and backgrounds appears to drive profits." Different perspectives help boards see threats and opportunities in different ways, there are fewer blind spots if there are more ways of seeing in the room.

Diversity doesn't automatically mean success of course - if it did, the US wouldn't have crashed out of the Copa America. But done well, diversity can help both soccer teams and businesses succeed.

In addition to this being a good way for me to think out loud and attempt to justify the absurd amount of time I'm spending watching soccer, it's a way to plug my 2018 book, Soccer Thinking for Management Success: Lessons for organizations from the worlds game. Some of the people I quote have moved on - Ben Olsen now coaches the Houston Dynamo and not DC United, Michael Williamson went from Inter Milan, to Miami FC, to Wrexham (seriously). But I think the lessons hold up.