Tabitha A. Scott, CEM, CDSM is a partner at Epic Pivot with 20+ years of global leadership in investments, innovation and transformation.
In the natural world, as in business, variation provides strength and an increased chance of long-term survival. By emulating the variation found throughout nature, companies can better manage complexity, innovation and productivity. Most organizations, however, still limit diversity initiatives to demographic variations, such as ethnicity, age, gender, disability and personal preferences. There is no debate; hundreds of studies already prove that traditional, demographics-based diversity increases a company’s chance for long-term success, and it represents a foundational approach that is already protected by laws developed in the 1960s.
But it is just the beginning of how variation in the workplace can expand in modern times to improve business performance. Beyond demographics, progressive companies can adopt a more strategic approach to variation based on cognitive thinking, cognitive technologies and diversity dynamics.
Cognitive Thinking
We can define cognitive diversity as the ways people (cognitive thinking) and systems (cognitive technologies) think. It gained popularity in the 1990s, likely as a response to the overwhelming influx of data in the information age, when the accelerating technological pace of change stretched our human minds to keep pace. Without cognitive diversity, companies are limited by “like type” thinking, which can stamp out innovative ideas and promote a “business as usual” environment.
Diversity in thinking provides tangible advantages for organizations. According to Juliet Bourke’s Which Two Heads Are Better Than One? How Diverse Teams Create Breakthrough Ideas and Make Smarter Decisions (via Deloitte), cognitive diversity can improve innovation by about 20%. It means different thoughts, values and perspectives are taken into consideration to drive faster problem-solving and better decision-making. Research (paywall) by Alison Reynolds and David Lewis published in the Harvard Business Review in 2017 found that teams solve problems faster when they include diverse thinking types.
Cognitive Technologies
Cognitive technologies are “thinking” technologies. In the modern workforce, they are becoming increasingly integrated alongside human employees to boost efficiency, accuracy and productivity. Yet while most organizations deploy some type of automation, machine learning, robotics and artificial intelligence, few consider the implications of cognitive technologies when they’re planning for diversity and inclusion, employee engagement and succession planning.
According to insights from Deloitte: “Applications of cognitive technologies fall into three main categories: product, process or insight. Product applications embed the technology in a product or service to provide end-customer benefits. Process applications embed the technology in an organization’s workflow to automate or improve operations. And insight applications use cognitive technologies—specifically advanced analytical capabilities such as machine learning—to uncover insights that can inform operational and strategic decisions across an organization.”
The opportunity many companies are missing is to think about technology beyond the IT department. Leaders can be more strategic about planning the right mix of cognitive thinking and technologies, as they each offer unique capabilities that will be important during different phases of growth and under various contexts.
Diversity Dynamics
Diversity dynamics is the ongoing practice of assessing, aligning and actively changing team composition based on the needs at hand. As each product, process and insight moves up the growth curve I wrote about in a previous article, the mix of team members should constantly change to meet unique demands.
While all forms of diversity can reap the scientific benefits of variation, as demonstrated in the natural world, teams need different compositions based on the context of the task at hand. So, the mix of diversity you have for one team may not be appropriate for another—it may need to constantly change to adapt to the current situation. A firefighter would not be asked to perform brain surgery, nor would a toddler be invited to deliver a eulogy.
Specialization within growing businesses was developed to maximize results in the context of necessary work—accounting, legal services, marketing, technology and so on. While this is effective in a linear business that is not impacted by change, the model can actually hold companies back if data and connectivity are not shared fluidly based on each project. Tech teams may relate to this practice with project sprints, where workers are often shuffled around based on the rapidly changing needs of each development. However, to compete today, I believe every team within an organization should now be fluid, agile and responsive.
Everyone is unique and energized differently, and each technology has its optimal use. To maximize growth and engagement, companies should identify and align those contributions where they can serve most powerfully. In doing so, they can accelerate innovation, agility and productivity. This dynamic practice of leadership changes based on the phase of the growth curve and on the business segment’s purpose. For example, executive teams will generally perform best when they have representation across the entire growth curve, marketing teams will often perform best when they skew toward the beginning of the curve, and engineering teams may be optimized if they skew toward the top of the curve.
The techniques described here are based upon the proven science that variation in nature and in business equates to positive value; it increases the likelihood of long-term survival and success. In modern business, companies can find their competitive edge by expanding the way their leaders think about “diversity” beyond demographics alone to include cognitive thinking, cognitive technologies and diversity dynamics.
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