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Tech, Strategy, and other interesting things by Roberto Zoia

diversity

Diversity and Problem Solving

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Solvable problems are usually solved by surprising, non-trivial alternatives. If an obvious solution from an obvious source could have provided an answer, it would have happened already.

Instead, it’s the unlikely approaches—the odd combinations that come from diversity—that often win the day.

Diversity might involve ethnicity or physical abilities. But it’s just as likely to involve idiosyncratic approaches and differences in experience. If enough peculiar people get together, something new is going to happen. Author Scott Page has shown that as systems get more complex, diversity creates ever more benefits.

— Seth Godin, The Practice (p. 52)

Blind to Biases

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Runner’s World tells the storie of Ellie Pell, who won the overall first place in a 50K Ultra Marathon.

The organizers of the event had assumed that the overall winner would male.

While there was an award made for the first place female, there was no award prepared for the first place male. Instead, there was only a trophy for the overall winner, which was predicted to be a man.

What’s worth noting is not the organizers’s bias, but that they were blind to it. Blind to the possibility that a woman could actually win the race.

Being aware that we may be blind to our own biases is the first step towards overcoming them. Blindness may come, for example, from taking for granted what for others may be a privilege1.


Photo by Andrea Leopardi on Unsplash

  1. For example, check McKinsey’s article on Why gender diversity at the top remains a challenge. ↩

You have to build diversity into your company from day one

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Fred Wilson, commenting on how diversity happens:

A few years at our annual CEO summit, Scott Heiferman, founder and CEO of Meetup, told a room full of startup CEOs that you have to build diversity into your company from day one because if you don’t, it becomes so much harder later on. He explained that nobody wants to join a company where nobody looks like them. That really hit home and woke quite a few people up.

All companies and people suffer from back burnering things. You focus on what you must get done and everything else takes a back seat.

That doesn’t work when it comes to hiring and diversity. You have to prioritize it and make it intentional.