I first used that term in 2003 with a client whom I was advising on a variety of matters, including a Board of Advisors for his new small business. He gave me the list of people he wanted on the Board and their short bios; it quickly became apparent that he had the wrong selection criteria, but didn’t realize it. I called him to discuss the value of diversity in a Board, whether of Advisors or Directors. He was taken aback.
“We have six members including one black and two women. We’re diverse.” It took an hour before he agreed to retract all offers of membership and start over. There was diversity of gender and race, things that are irrelevant in business. There was no diversity in experience set. They were all small business owners in the industry that he was sure would be the primary customer of his products. Caution: Groupthink Ahead!
“Where’s the representative from your bank?” There wasn’t one. Swing and a miss. “Where’s the representative from this other target industry?” Strike two. “Where’s somebody with Board experience elsewhere?” Strike three.
All members of the board can be purple Martian females if they have diverse backgrounds and experience sets. Ignore race and gender, they have almost nothing to do with important diversity in business, and do nothing by themselves to provide an advantage of diversity.
I introduced my client to one of my potential competitors, a turnaround specialist involved in turning around a $100M manufacturer. He sat on the manufacturer’s board to represent the interests of everyone but management. He discussed how the board functioned and what value it brought. I introduced another client, a stand-alone surgery center, to which I had brought a tool-management process from a tech manufacturing client. Value transfers easily between industries. I introduced him to yet another client, a small hotel owner, to whom I introduced a process used by a hospital to fill beds quickly. His vacancy rate went down. My client was sold. He revisited the issue with me two weeks later, with a new list, with real diversity. They could all well have been purple Martian females, I didn’t care.
We hear calls for unity and diversity nowadays, but they ring hollow. People calling for re-education camps for those with political differences aren’t calling for unity, they’re calling for conformity. The two are nowhere near the same. Diversity has only one acceptable definition now: any superficial difference but no allowance for diversity of perspective or political opinion. Diversity of perspective and opinion are derived from diversity of experience set, not from skin color, genitalia, or species. Unity doesn’t mean everyone follows Mao’s Little Red Book because it’s the only viewpoint allowed. That’s forced conformity. Unity is achieved by consensus among diverse viewpoints. That requires two things seriously out of vogue today: listening and compromise. Both are hallmarks of tolerance and respect.
The subject of conformity has been a long-time interest. I’m researching a paper on Solomon Asch and lynch mobs. Asch was a research psychologist in the 1950s who specialized in conformity, and his conclusions are frightening. They explain so much about lynch mobs and crowds watching a murder without taking action that they are more dangerous than instructions to build a thermonuclear weapon.