“A peaceful, harmonious workplace can be the worst possible thing for a business because it leads to complacency, the biggest predictor of poor company performance.”

– Harvard Business Review (“How to Pick a Good Fight,” December 2009).

While the Thanksgiving holiday is riddled with myths — a fairy tale of friendly pilgrims dining with Indians — it’s a perfect time to reflect on diversity.

THE HEADLINE:

Diversity and dissent drive business transformation. Companies that thrive embrace continuous transformation, diverse perspectives, and promote a systematic process of constructive criticism.

ACCORDING TO A CENTER FOR TALENT INNOVATION STUDY:

• Companies that demonstrate leadership diversity are 70% more likely to capture a new market and 45% more likely to improve market share.
• When companies encourage/reward diversity and dissent, employees are 3.5 times more likely (67% versus 16%) to contribute their full innovative potential.
• Ideation teams are most successful when they mine a talent pool of people whose non-mainstream backgrounds lead to new interpretations and points of view.

HERE’S WHY:

Diversity and dissent light a fire to business transformation because they increase perspective, improve problem-solving abilities, and boost potential for better solutions and big breakthroughs. They expand your set of the “adjacent possible” — what is possible next given existing conditions and knowledge. The GREATER the diversity of thought the better, according to the Diversity Prediction Theorem.

For this reason, RE:INVENTION’s team is comprised of a remote network of former Fortune 100 company execs, leading technologists, lean entrepreneurs, MBAs, scrappy underdog entrepreneurs, educators, engineers, fantastic failures, and agile design thinkers. When we conduct Team Upskilling and Measure What Matters Labs for our Clients, our team’s diversity propels fresh thinking. And our team conducts feats of strength (ala George’s family on Seinfeld) during the holidays to facilitate tension.

Ok. So we don’t really do that last bit. Our Chief Strategist would lose every time if we did (she’s all of 125 pounds).

KEY TAKEAWAY:

Want to create a company culture of diversity and dissent? Deloitte’s “Diversity Report” recommends: hiring with debate in mind, giving employees permission to disagree, sponsoring reverse mentorship programs, shifting to team-based evaluation, and rewarding successes that are a result of diversity (and divergent thinking).

Rescind DEI programs and kill future innovation. Create a hostile work environment and fail. Diversity matters: diversity in terms of perspective, age, gender, ethnicity, national origin, religion, neurodiversity, physical ability, socioeconomic status.

Diversity drives:

• Productivity
• Business performance
• Employee engagement
• Reduced employee turnover
• Workforce reputation
• Creativity and innovation
• Workforce skills and knowledge

Agree or disagree?

For the record, I really like today’s blog image featuring two sparring turkeys. What did one turkey say to the other? Nothing. Because turkeys can’t talk.