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A separate issue - I never know exactly what people mean when they say this: "Diverse teams are more innovative and adaptable than monocultures."
by gull 11y ago
A separate issue - I never know exactly what people mean when they say this:
"Diverse teams are more innovative and adaptable than monocultures."
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoJust that groups of different people with different thinking styles are able to come up with solutions to problems faster than a team of people who think alike or are beaten into group think by a strong central authority. It really follows the pattern of biological diversity in ecosystems: a diverse ecosystem is able to thrive and overcome troubles more than a non-diverse one, which is actually quite fragile.
- ageek123 11y agoBut natural ecosystems have a very stringent natural selection operating, so you always end up with diversity that represents an objective improvement, something that isn't guaranteed when diversity is driven by a company's philosophical notion of justice.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoDiversity to improve performance has little to do with justice, though past injustices have definitely led to less actual diversity today.
- not_with_retard 11y ago> so you always end up with diversity that represents an objective improvement Not at all how it functions.
- gumpton456 11y agoBut a 'diverse' team is code for a team with both black and white people, men and women, straight and gay, etc. So when you say that 'groups of different people with different thinking styles' you are implying that, for example, black people think differently from white people for the sole reason that they are black and other people are white. Or in other words, that if you get a random black person off the street you can assume his views will be different from a white person's? Isn't that kind of grouping and assumption exactly what we don't want to promote? I can't reconcile this in my mind. Anonymous because I don't want to be shamed as a racist when I'm not, but a genuine question.
- ben0x539 11y agoThe idea isn't that you make a pokemon team of people of all skin colors, sexualities and genders to have all damage types covered. It's more that cultural background and experiences made shape thinking, problem-solving approaches, etc, and if your team is 100% straight white affluent men, chances are pretty good they will all have roughly overlapping backgrounds and leave the vast majority of the human experience uncovered.
- gumpton456 11y agoI don't get it - either it's right to look at the color of someone's skin and make an assumption about their background, or it isn't. You could hire both a rich white guy and a poor black guy, in order to get diversity, and then find out they both love classical music, basketball, knitting, went to the same college and vote for the same political party. If you're telling me you can look at the color of someone's skin and tell me what their cultural beliefs and background is then you're the crazy racist judgemental one!
- gluelogic 11y agoI am glad to see this kind of doublethink addressed directly.
- eloff 11y agoI'd say you'd have better luck predicting the weather with a dartboard. But knowing a person's skin color or cultural heritage or gender etc would let you make better predictions, that's a fact. For building diverse teams I think selecting people based on their skin color would be pretty dumb. Rather pay attention to their background. But you should be putting their skills first in either case.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoI said nothing about gender and ethnicity. Diversity is a concept that goes beyond that. You can be a white straight male and still be a weirdo, or a black Hispanic lesbian and still be a conformist.