1to1 - Spring 2009 - (Page 50) face to face DON PEPPERS AND MARTHA ROGERS, Ph.D. In Diversity We Trust Diverse viewpoints bring creativity and innovation to corporate and social culture. a ll of life teaches us that resilience springs from diversity. The survival of a species, when faced with some evolutionary threat, depends a great deal on how diverse the members of that species are. Insufficient diversity can often lead to extinction. Similarly, the creativity and resourcefulness of a group of people are directly related to the diversity of their perspectives. Groups composed entirely of experts are not as creative and innovative, nor do they generally solve problems as well, as mixed groups. Creativity and innovation are more critical to a company’s survival than ever before, because the pace of technological change is accelerating. But the most valuable innovations don’t come in an orderly fashion. Rather, they tend to happen by accident and experimentation within organizations whose diverse cultures embrace creativity and risk taking. Accidental innovations include anesthesia, cellophane, dynamite, Ivory soap, NutraSweet, the microwave oven, nylon, photography, Post-It Notes, rayon, PVC, smallpox vaccine, stainless steel, Teflon, and Viagra. Whether connecting distant and unrelated synapses in your own brain to hatch an interesting new idea, or connecting disparate points of view within your employee or customer base to come up with a product improvement, the key to innovation is to start with diverse points of view, jumble them around, and make some interesting connections. The overwhelming majority of these connections will be completely useless. They will be failures. But then, by accident, you’ll discover that microwave energy can melt a candy bar, or that the drug you originally designed for hypertension actually increases male sexual potency. When you consider creativity and innovation at your company, of course, you’re no longer thinking just about the creative ideas a single human brain can produce. Your goal is to harness the creativity found in many different brains, working together. And, as with individual creativity, it turns out that the most interesting, innovative, and useful ideas produced by a group of people come when the people themselves bring a variety of backgrounds and perspectives to connect to the problem. So innovation is crucial, but it depends on (1) trial and error, and (2) combining diverse perspectives. Obviously, therefore, innovation also requires a great deal of trust. People will venture more new thinking if they trust they won’t be harmed by the failure of an idea, and employees need to trust those who have widely different views. It is for this reason that the most innovative companies in the world, from 3M to Toyota to Apple, have corporate cultures based on mutual trust and respectful disagreement. Creativity and innovation are more critical to a company’s survival than ever before, because the pace of technological change is accelerating. From Wall St. to Main St. Which brings us to the new presidential administration, and what it says about America. We’ve always thought that the robustness of the U.S. social, political, and economic system is in large measure attributable to our history as a “melting pot” of immigrants from all different cultures. Surely, America’s strength and resilience as a nation derives principally from the fact that its citizens have such a diverse array of backgrounds, experiences, beliefs, and perspectives. Our diversity as a people, coupled with our freedom to express opinions, is one of our biggest strengths. And what better way is there to prove the case that America is a diverse but genuinely inclusive country than to inaugurate as our next president a young, African-American freshman senator? President Obama seems to share our point of view with respect to the importance of diverse perspectives, at least judging by his “team of rivals” approach to Cabinet and sub-Cabinet appointments. So far, he appears to be someone who will be genuinely comfortable taking in multiple points of view, which is certainly the mark of a good decision-maker. Our thinking is that the whole country should take a lesson from this. But if we really want to leverage the immense benefits of the diverse political and economic perspectives available to us, then we have to be willing to trust each other more, and to disagree respectfully, rather than stridently. Our hope is that with the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama, political dialogue in this country will turn a new leaf. Our hope is that with this inauguration our country will renew its commitment to celebrating diverse perspectives, and encouraging respectful disagreement, rather than the mindnumbing partisanship that has characterized much of our political discussion in the past few years. Interact with Don and Martha on their blog, Strategy Speaks, at www.peppersandrogersgroup.com 50 1to1 magazine www.1to1media.com http://www.1to1media.com/downloads/SpeakingServices/2009_BiosDon.pdf http://www.1to1media.com/downloads/SpeakingServices/2009_BiosMartha.pdf http://www.peppersandrogersgroup.com/blog/index.html http://www.peppersandrogersgroup.com/blog/index.html http://www.1to1media.com
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