Diversity vs. 21st Century Problems
I am reading The Diversity Bonus by Scott Page. I hope to have more complete thoughts about the book later, but here’s some ideas that have come up along the way.
Think of some of the main challenges facing the human race in the early 21st Century:
Political unrest: an erosion of the western political order is underway, with extremism rising in different forms in many nations and global alliances under threat.
Economic displacement: people who were previously secure economically are finding themselves uprooted. The twin forces of globalization and automation mean that workers are in competition with a global labor market, and anything that can be automated will. (We have yet to even feel the full brunt of automation.)
Side effects from hyper-connectivity: it turns out that when you connect everyone on the planet in a global information network, some unanticipated things start to happen. It was not long ago that no one thought that a social network could be an attack vector on a democracy, or that the economic value of a company could rise or fall on a few words.
And, of course, there’s climate change.
One of the main things that all of these problems, the juggernauts of our generation, have in common is complexity. These problems are complex at a level beyond what we’ve experienced in the past. They resist easy fixes and simple solutions (making them what designers call wicked problems). As a species, we will need to use every tool at our disposal to overcome them.
This is where Scott Page comes in. The Diversity Bonus describes the kinds of mental tools that a team can bring to the table (mental models, knowledge, skills etc.) as the union of what the individuals on the team possess. So if I have mental tool A, B and C, and you have B, C and D, then as a team we collectively possess A, B, C, and D. The diversity between us (I have A and you don’t, you have D and I don’t) has created a bonus as far as our team’s capabilities are concerned.
On the other hand, if we both individually just possess A, B and C, then collectively that’s all we possess as well. We are poorer for our lack of diversity.
In other words, a more diverse team is stronger, specifically as far as its ability to deal with the kind of complex problems that are the hallmark of this time. It is through diversity that we have a shot of collectively overcoming the major challenges that we face as a species.
So what is the practical upshot of this? The great thing about diversity is that it is a strategy that can be implemented by practically any of group. Regardless of whether you are a business, a community group or a government, ensuring diversity within your ranks makes you stronger when dealing with the complex challenges we now face.
