Too often the word diversity as applied to directors of companies is seen as demonstrating representation by gender, ethnicity, religion, and possibly of age. But it should actually be about more than that, it should also be about diversity of thought and ideas.
The challenges facing businesses in the 21st Century are becoming more complex and happening at a faster pace so it makes sense to have people at board level who think differently and can communicate their ideas.
In a recent survey carried out by Social Mobility Pledge as reported by The Times newspaper, the researchers found that by and large “who you know” was still the most important factor when promoting staff.
Sadly, the inference from this is that recruitment tends to favour like-minded people, which is hardly helpful to businesses wanting to avoid being stuck in a rut.
The ability to challenge the status quo at all levels and in particular a board level was a topic discussed in a recent vimeo by Kenneth McKellar, a partner at AGM Transitions, which advises senior executives on their career transitions and roles.
He argues that every business needs people who can challenge the organisation and this means choosing directors from a wide variety of backgrounds, education and disciplines as being more important than simply having more women on the board which seems to be the focus of most FTSE 100 companies seeking to observe the UK Corporate Governance Code.
Being open to people from different educational backgrounds and with different experiences can bring different ways of thinking, different knowledge bases and different perspectives to problem-solving.
The challenge for boards is to avoid groupthink despite the natural desire among teams to seek harmony and conformity since groupthink can lead to irrational and dysfunctional decision-making.
This is also about people’s preferred ways of thinking as shown in the Hermann Whole Brain ® Model which was the result of research originally conducted at GE’s corporate university, Crotonville.
It describes four main modes of thinking, analytical, organized, interpersonal and strategic, each of which has a value in promoting diversity of thought in the workplace and at board level. Of course, this is likely to lead to differences of opinion which might imply conflict. However, such differences ought to be regarded as healthy if a business is to consider the challenges of the future and continuously change to meet them.
Ultimately businesses need people who represent a range of thinking and of ideas with the ability to think laterally, who can disagree in a way that leads to collective decisions.
‘Yes’ men and women may keep their job but they ultimately they contribute to the decline of their business due to their going along with others instead of contributing in a constructive way that improves the decisions made.
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