Why are we so afraid of difference?
I recently engaged in the services of a virtual assistant. I had two really great candidates to choose from in the final lineup, and quite honestly could have engaged either one of them. In order to make a decision, I decided to pick the one that was least like me. Whilst it’s often tempting to recruit people like us, from a business and productivity point of view, recruiting for difference is often the smarter move.
We are increasingly aware that we make better collective decisions when there is gender and ethnic diversity in our organisations. If we want our businesses to thrive, to innovate and to develop, difference is helpful rather than harmful. It's a bit like how the lack of diversity caused by selective breeding of pedigree dogs can result in irritating to life-threatening ailments including cancer and blindness.
When we consider improving productivity, it’s important to remember that increases in productivity require us to change current working patterns. As the old saying goes:
“If you always do what you’ve always done,
you’ll always get what you’ve always got(ten).”Jessie Potter
So, to change the way we work, we need new ideas, different perspectives and innovative ways of working. If everybody in the organization thinks the same that’s a difficult thing to deliver.
So, what can organisations do to increase innovation and develop new ways of thinking?
A healthy staff turnover assists with new ideas and new thinking
Whilst losing a valued employee, particularly one that’s been with you for years, can often feel like a disaster at the time, it presents you with an opportunity to recruit new thinking into your organization. Provided you ensure your new recruit/s have specific opportunities to challenge the status quo and you and the wider organisation is open to listening to their ideas this can become the silver lining spearheading process and productivity improvements.
Going outside the organization and bringing in advisors, coaches and mentors can show us new ideas
Whenever I work with organisations for a prolonged period of time, I always identify different ways of operating key business processes. One of the benefits of working with me is I’ve seen so many different organisations across multiple sectors, I’m literally a walking library of new thinking for any organization. Tapping into and embracing that is the opportunity to be seized. A recent example was challenging how supplier invoices were processed within a finance team. New thinking has reduced the need to print, and scan invoices, eliminated the requirement to have people visit the office and reduced overall processing times by hours if not days.
Recruiting for difference, not just gender, or ethnicity but in ways of thinking
This is a big opportunity for the next decade. When we look at when and how our output has grown historically, the first time was when women entered the workforce, the second big growth was when the workforce expanded through mass migration. The next opportunity is the neurodivergent population.
Neurodiversity is the term used to describe people whose brains are wired significantly differently from the majority of us. I say significantly differently because of course we all have different brain wiring and are therefore differently-abled (an expression favoured by many neurodiverse people). People who are autistic, have ADHD/ADD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia or Dyscalculia would all be considered within this group. As the parent of an autistic teenager, I can speak first hand about his ability to think ‘differently’, to suggest different ways of looking at the world and to come up with new ways of doing things.
Sadly, unemployment runs high in this group, as neurodiverse people often face huge barriers to entering the workplace despite the considerable value they can add. Thankfully change is afoot. Several organisations, particularly in the technology sector are finding a competitive advantage in strategic programmes to attract, recruit and retain neurodiverse employees. For example, preliminary results from Australia’s Department of Human Services suggest that the organization’s neurodiverse testing teams are 30% more productive than the others.*
I’ve seen first hand how small adjustments to the environment can make a huge difference for my autistic son. Most of the changes require empathy and understanding, in the form of expertise about what works and doesn’t work for him. The big opportunity for organisations everywhere is to seize the initiative, learn how to support neurodiverse individuals, provide highly qualified people with meaningful work and reap the commercial rewards that will result.
