Is Diversity Really an Asset?
Serge Thill, coach for gender diversity in Luxembourg, used EBBF’s Linked-In network to request help with a workshop he had been asked to give on Diversity for AIESEC in France. The very set of responses he received speaks clearly of the power of diverse ideas focused on a single point. After the successful workshop based on different ideas shared, Serge shared the following reflections.
***
The question whether diversity really useful has been one of the topics of my workshop.
“Diversity is not an advantage it is a complication. Diversity is a source of misunderstandings and of tensions between people. It is costly in terms of energy and time to manage diversity. The manager’s job is to maximize results while using resources in the most parsimonious way. To distill simplicity out of complexity. Running a company is complex enough as it is; no need to add more complications for ideological reasons.”
Isn’t that what we learned in business school? The logical conclusion is: we hire no women, we hire no foreigners, and we avoid disagreement. We have a clear hierarchy and clear allocation of responsibilities. Everyone knows what he (!) has to do and does it. It’s as simple as that.
Or is it?
I watched a company being run this way from the start. The founder had very clear ideas about what needed to be done and he hired people he trusted to perform according to his needs. The more someone was like him, the better. It worked like a charm. The company was set up with very minimal resources and no debt, and it went from 3 to 30 people in three years.
Then the first problems showed up: difficulties to hire additional talent, lack of motivation despite brilliant results, difficulties to crack the limits of the initial market definition, difficulties to innovate, failure to identify a compelling mission, blaming of outside factors for internal problems. The company started losing money.
Luckily, the founder was open-minded and daring enough to recognize the problem. Instead of cutting costs and trying to stay on course, he started hiring people speaking strange languages, women, people who knew nothing of the initial markets (but lots of other markets), people who had different values and ideas. He let go of the top down, authoritarian approach and gave his new managers room to succeed. Of course, incomprehension, strong opposition and tensions within the initial management team were the results. Some had or chose to go.
They are two years into the new culture now. It is still difficult and expensive, but the downward trend is broken, new strategies show very promising results and the company is set to resume a course of success. The ultimate challenge for them will be to consolidate a culture of diversity and inclusion.
Diversity in itself is not enough. When many people do many different things in different ways and with different values, and they do so each in their own corner, or worse, creating opposing fractions, then diversity is more a liability than an asset. But when an organization succeeds in including diverse cultures, ideas, experience, knowledge, talents … under a common mission, with shared objectives that everyone feels enthused and empowered to contribute to through their own individuality and their own specific talents, without feeling like being judged for their being different from the majority, when mistakes are considered as opportunities to learn, when different talents and innovative contributions are being celebrated, then the organization starts tapping into the wealth of diversity.
***
To follow this and other conversations on EBBF’s linked-in page, click here.
