Diversity or Talent? Change Agents Need Both
“As individuals we can accomplish only so much. We’re limited in our abilities. Our heads contain only so many neurons and axons. Collectively, we face no such constraints. We possess incredible capacity to think differently. These differences can provide the seeds of innovation, progress, and understanding.”
- Scott Page
Contemporary American society often uses meritocracy to determine an individual’s worth. Companies and Universities regularly use objective methods such as IQ tests and SAT scores to determine ones perceived value. It’s no wonder, then, that common sense points to ability as the best indicator of success – not diversity.
Scott Page, author of the book The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Teams, Schools, and Societies, contends that an average team made up of a diverse set of individuals will consistently out-perform a team of the brightest and best-performing individuals. Using frameworks and mathematical models as proof, Mr. Page adds that it is the individual’s unique set of perceptions, interpretations, heuristics, and predictive models that makes his “Diversity Conjecture” a reality. Jim Surowiecki calls this “the wisdom of crowds.”
Mr. Page mentions randomness as a best practice towards achieving diversity, and if true, his findings could prove useful for leaders trying to put together the most successful teams possible. Think about the amount of time and money it takes to find, hire, and staff a team of the most talented individuals, and then consider - What if talent could be replaced with diversity at no extra risk to the project? Obviously, more technical and specialized fields such as information technology and medicine need subject matter expertise, but it is the job of leaders to figure out how diversity can be incorporated into different situations.
Leaders in the business world today seem to be making this shift towards pro-diversity. In part, this is the result of globalization, but it can also be linked to the ever-increasing complexity of business problems, along with the desire for team-focused working groups. I have no doubt that diversity has been the gateway to many of our most groundbreaking solutions and ideas. Take a look at Wikipedia – the free, multilingual encyclopedia written and constantly modified by collaborators located all across the world. In only five years, Wikipedia is regarded by many as the most up-to-date and accurate source of information on the internet; possibly even more accurate than the dictionaries and encyclopedias that precede it. In addition, consider the powers of open-sourcing and the stock market. In both examples, diversification has led to the creation of better products and portfolios when compared to those produced by so called ‘experts’.
As the whitepaper states, one of the six key attributes of a change agent is the ability to pinpoint talent and create the right teams. Having read Mr. Page’s position, is pinpointing talent the most important criteria towards forming the right team? Or is diversity more important? I believe that both are critical for any change agent to consider. Talented individuals can provide stability, low-risk, and experience to a team, while diversity can lead to new outcomes, better vision, and a comprehensive approach towards any solution. Diversity doesn’t have to be incorporated into every scenario that a change agent encounters, but it certainly deserves some serious contextual consideration.
