The Case for Diversity in Analytics Team
In 1983 President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr (MLK) and his fight against discrimination. Today America celebrates MLK Day and I cannot think of a more appropriate moment to ponder about the role diversity plays not only in our personal lives but specially in analytics professional context.
It surprised me that having worked for nine years as analytics manager for Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) I had never considered diversity as an important aspect of team productivity. In every opportunity I had to hire personal, I opted for people I trusted, had the necessary skills and shared the same mindset about analytics. As a consequence, the teams I led tended to be in many dimensions uniform.
I always considered that such configurations could reduce noise in communication and facilitate the craft of a homogenous collective mindset towards goals. What ultimately would lead to superior and faster results. Particularly in Business Analytics (BAx) context, where quantitative language is imperative, I believed that uniform profiles were the key to harmonic work and to more productive teams.
Nevertheless, my perception about BAx teams composition has remarkably changed since I joined the UC-Davis MSBA Program. I started to realize that the set of competencies required to conduct business analysis was larger than I previously considered. The need to understand businesses models, clients’ requirements and data generation process urges analytics team to be more empathic, creative and aware of its own bias.
However, it was really when I stated participating the MSBA Practicum Project that I realized the true importance of diversity in analytics team. This project proportionated me joining one the most diverse team I have ever worked with. Even more, in almost every single individual aspect — as age, gender, ethnicity, values, technical backgrounds, working experiences etc.— I am considered minority.
From this experience I have noticed how diversity can impact team productivity in positive ways.
First, it’s clear that more heterogeneous teams make more rational decisions. In decision making, it is important to acknowledge for critical possible future implications of choices since it helps in comparing outcomes from available options. In addition, as observe James Stone and David Myers, generally groups tend to be blind about balanced choices and make decisions towards extreme options (too conservative or too risky). Because heterogeneous teams have broader perspectives they are more inclined to detect potential issues, foresee choices implications and opt for less biased and polarized decisions.
I also noted that decision makings during the practicum project meetings usually take longer than similar decisions makings in less diverse groups. The reason is that normally there are more options for the group to take into consideration. Thus, pondering about them and selecting one course of action is more time consuming. However, I also realized that decisions took by the practicum team tend to be more fact-oriented and balanced.
Second, diversity is the building block of creativity. Being surrounded by people that share different histories, values, skills and cultures has served me as fertile ground for cultivating innovative ideas. The process of how diversity fosters innovation is better summarized by Rocío Lorenzo in her TEDx talk lecture:
During the practicum project, for instance, the decision to step back and design a business diagram was taken based on the suggestion by a group member with non-analytic background. She advocated for potential benefits of having a better understating of the whole business model. Later, that decision resulted in the team designing and proposing metrics that were not only more problem-adherent but also brought new insights to the company.
Diversity doesn't only bring benefits, it also carries a few disadvantages. For instance, language barriers in multicultural teams may increase noise in communication. In the practicum case, the team is composed of only non-native english speakers. Usually a lot of time is spent trying to avoid misinterpretations. Different attitudes regarding conflict resolution is another source of difficulties. While a few cultures are more leaned towards openly and publicly discuss about problems, others prefer dealing with conflicts privately.
In Managing Multicultural Teams, Jeanne Brett, Kristin Behfar, and Mary C. Kern diagnosed commons problems in multicultural teams and provided suggestion on how to handle them. Despite the fact the publication doesn't exhaust the list of problems that may arise in diverse teams and targets only multicultural teams, it serves as guideline for addressing most frequent issues. Furthermore, it shows that it is possible to craft solutions capable of reducing attrition caused by diversity.
The practicum team decided to embrace diversity in many ways: i) recognizing and understanding cultural differences; ii) respecting different point of views; iii) incentivizing general participation; iv) explicit stating rules; v) when necessary, respectfully making counter-arguments; vi) consulting external advisors about decisions and strategies; among others. These practices enable our team not only to extract the best of diversity but to keep its accompanying costs as low as possible.
Besides traditional quantitative competencies, BAx professionals are expected to be empathic, creative and aware of their own bias. A diverse team may reinforce these abilities by exercising open-mindedness, serving as creativity playground and decision making sparring field. Nevertheless, to crop these benefits it is important to recognize the differences, to design processes centered in conflict reduction and to promote a culture of empathy.
By the end of the day, I was right in assuming similarities lead to less divergences. However I was completely wrong about the fact that absence of conflict leads to increases in efficiency. The secret of a truly productive analytics team lies in its ability to extract the best out of diversity and its competency to design proper processes to handle possible conflicts.
