Embracing Cognitive Diversity
Part of Going Beyond the Op Model
There is a lot that is already written about embracing and empowering diversity in teams and many of these articles talk about the benefits of empowering cultural and sociological diversity in teams. All of which is incredibly important and extremely essential to build an equal society, correct the ramifications of discrimination and make sure that that discrimination is eradicated.
That being said, today we are going to focus on cognitive diversity and its impact on high performing teams and organisations.
Cognitive Diversity
The term cognitive diversity describes the way people perceive the world and the actions they take from that. A practical way to describe this in teams is the perception of a problem and what they would do to solve it — in essence, the many ways to ‘skin a cat’ as the saying goes.
Perception and the Cognitive Process
I will be writing an article on the power of perception in organisations and teams another time, however, if we look at how different people can perceive different things from the same sensory input, we can easily see how one person’s truth can vary from another’s. Perception is a personal interpretation that can both help and hinder progress in a team. Conflict of perception in team members can lead to entrenched cognitive dissonance, making the team’s productivity breakdown. Symptoms of this include an increase in destructive conflict, increased absence and, a high churn rate. People’s answer to this is often to tighten the definition of ‘team fit’ when hiring.
In teams where cognitive diversity is embraced and cultivated, it can lead to rapid resolutions in issues and high performance in teams that can innovate.
Empowering Cognitive Diversity
Organisations are now embracing ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) to become organisations that are led by purpose and, that give back. When we turn this in on the organisation itself, there is much that can be done. The change from the objectification of people such as a resource, a resource pool and the allocation of such is still very prevalent. There are even models that claim to be agile such as S_fe that negate the basic concept of building products around motivated people. In fact, what we now see is a change in operating models of organisations that still do not employ the basics of human variability.
It has been known for many years that human variability vs finding the universal best in products is much more successful. For an example of this, there is a link to a fantastic Ted Talk on Howard Moskowitz at the end of this article. By making sure that we focus our attention on the people instead of the RACI (responsible, accountable, consult, inform) chart, we can push the boundaries of the collective of individuals. Without the investment in maintaining and growing individuals in that community, the cognitive dissonance can quickly become destructive. Great coaches, mentors and champions are key to any community success and this is no different.
Good methodologies — that just so happen to be part of the family of agile methodologies- are great at this, but can not be held solely responsible for change. The art of collaboration, forging great relationships and, respecting that each perception is to be considered with a shared focus and mission is essential. Great teams and organisations that operate beyond the op model and are a community can achieve great things.
