At the National Centre for Diversity we love to learn new things about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), which is why we gather information from lots of different sources. One of those sources is TED talks. If you haven’t come across them, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. The talks cover thousands of topics and involve someone talking in front of an audience whilst they are also being recorded on camera. The resulting video is then posted online for others to watch all over the world. The aim is to share and exchange ideas and knowledge across a global community.
I recently watched a talk by Mellody Hobson titled ‘Colour Blind or Colour Brave’ (if you get the chance, you should watch it). Mellody is Chairman of Ariel, an American investment firm, and Chairman of the Board of Directors at Dreamworks Animation. Her talk was about racial diversity; exploring how organisations and individuals try to present themselves as blind to colour and therefore dismiss it as a diversity factor, when instead they should be addressing it and having brave conversations about race as an issue. During this talk, Mellody mentioned Scott E. Page, a professor at the University of Michigan who has published a book that ‘uses mathematical modelling and case studies to show how variety in staffing produces organisational strength’1.
At the National Centre for Diversity we all believe that diversity in the workplace is a huge advantage to any organisation, and that EDI leads to happier employees. In an interview with The New York Times several years ago, Professor Page said the following:
“Diverse groups of people bring to organisations more and different ways of seeing a problem and, thus, faster/better ways of solving it.
People from different backgrounds have varying ways of looking at problems, what I call ‘tools’. The sum of these tools is far more powerful in organisations with diversity than in ones where everyone has gone to the same schools, been trained in the same mould and thinks in almost identical ways.
The problems we face in the world are very complicated. Any one of us can get stuck. If we’re in an organisation where everyone thinks the same way, everyone will get stuck in the same place.
But if we have people with diverse tools, they’ll get stuck in different places. One person can do their best, and then someone else can come in and improve on it. There’s a lot of empirical data to show that diverse cities are more productive, diverse boards of directors make better decisions, the most innovative companies are diverse.”1
After reading about Professor Page’s work, myself and Solat, our CEO at the National Centre for Diversity, sat down to draw out an infographic outlining our ideas on workplace culture and the reasons why it seems so difficult to change it.
Workplace culture is a result of the character of the individuals in an organisation. As outlined in Professor Page’s research, if everyone in an organisation has a very similar character because they have a very similar background, then the culture of the organisation can become static and problematic when new approaches are needed.
Equally, individuals who have very strong and opposing views can also create a static and problematic environment if those individuals are unwilling to accept other viewpoints or adapt their own thoughts to incorporate the thoughts of their colleagues. Just as complacency has a negative effect, so does conflict.
Let us know what your workplace culture is like or get in touch if you need some guidance on how best to approach Equality, Diversity and Inclusion within your organisation.
1 – Extracted from ‘A conversation with Scott E. Page: In Professor’s Model, Diversity = Productivity’ by Claudia Dreifus. Published in The New York Times on 08/01/2008.
By Sam Fisher
