Diverse Teams = High Performing Workforce!

Creating a cognitive-diverse workplace

Engaged and high-performing teams are paramount to the success of any organization. Equally as important is having a diverse and inclusive workplace. Taking steps to make sure your teams have rich cognitive diversity can promote both inclusiveness and enable your organization to solve complex challenges quicker. So, what is cognitive diversity?

“Cognitive diversity embraces the differences in the way we think ”

Cognitive diversity celebrates the differences in our perspectives, how we process information and approach problem solving. It’s about embracing the differences of thought and is critical when building highly creative and innovative teams driven by an open and transparent culture.

Creating amazing experiences for your customers means solving amazing and complex problems. Non-linear thinking is a critical component to innovating at speed and is essential to remaining competitive, regardless of your industry.

How can you enable this? What types of strategies can help create more cognitive diverse teams? Let’s look at a few areas.

Don’t hire you

We love being around others who share our interests, similar behaviors, and similar opinions; however, these aspects can cause biases when we look for candidates and potential hires.

Teams who think similarly eventually end up suffering from group think. Group think occurs when a team reaches a consensus view without considering alternatives. This limits your team’s potential and creative outcomes.

History is littered with examples of group think and the resulting disasters it created. There is now a growing body of research showing how cognitive diverse teams can help avoid this consequence.

Actions you can take:

• Be courageous! Look for people who can disrupt the current ways of working and thinking within your teams.
• Hire talent for their differences, not their similarity to others.
• Remove rigid job specifications and the need to confirm to a ‘company fit.’

Expand the hiring pool

Companies often have a set of defined channels where they source talent, especially recent college graduates. Hiring from the same universities or colleges and especially the same set of courses can result in candidates (and eventual hires) who have been exposed to the same teaching paths or similar learning experiences.

Narrow pools can limit opportunities to source candidates who have achieved excellent skills and aptitude through their life experiences or have been exposed to different problem-solving techniques through alternative paths of learning.

“Creativity thrives when you bring different perspectives together”

Actions you can take:

• Source candidates from alternative channels, in conjunction with your existing channels.
• Look for candidates with alternative industry backgrounds. Focus on seeking those who show a strong aptitude for continuous learning and those who approach problem solving in a non-linear way.
• Within your organization, seek out employees who work in other areas of your business and place them on your teams to disrupt the norm.

Look beyond the piece of paper

Software engineering continues to change at a rapid pace, and learning platforms have evolved greatly over the past decade. We now have amazing alternatives to access knowledge with online courses, distance learning, and software apprenticeship programs. Seek alternative paths. Understand and learn about the disruptors — they are truly how we learn the craft of software engineering.

Alternative channels of education challenge the traditional formal paths. Making degrees or formal education a minimum requirement excludes a diverse pool of potential candidates who have gained valuable skills and experience through alternative paths.

Actions you can take:

• Remove formal education as a barrier to applying for roles within your organization.
• Look beyond the piece of paper for the skills and focus on the abilities candidates can bring to your organization.

A change of culture might be needed

Using strategies to grow and enable a more cognitive diverse organization is an important step but it is not enough to ensure success. Your culture needs to support this growth.

We are all individuals, yet teams often conform to a set of given norms or behaviors. This can suppress the advantage of bringing a diverse set of individuals together. People need to be allowed to let their individualism shine. Creating a psychologically safe environment is the bedrock to enabling a culture based on openness, transparency and where individualism is respected. This environment enables everyone to express their options, thoughts, and ideas without the fear of being dismissed, ignored or ridiculed for their approach or input.

Conflict can occur within all teams, especially through misunderstandings. This can be amplified when we come from different backgrounds, cultures and perspectives.

Actions you can take:

• Openly discuss these differing perspectives. Capture them and display them openly.
• Educate your leaders. This way of working can be new to many. Look to additional training to ensure your leaders can effectively bring out the best in everyone and especially enable psychological safety. Consider extending this training to everyone ensuring your whole organization is not only equipped with the skills to work in a new dynamic but excel in it.

Technology and the demands on the services we leverage are changing fast. AI and machine learning combined with social and economic forces drive unprecedented change — creativity and the ability to solve complex challenges at the pace of this change is now critical to achieving success and bringing impactful experiences to your customers.

A cognitive rich and diverse workforce is the foundation stone of this success.

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