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.
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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.
