Speaker 1: 0:13

Welcome back to another episode of transformative change. Today's topic is something I've been thinking about that I wanted to bring up for a long time, and it required me to do a bit of processing. Today, we're going to talk about the importance of building diverse team and interactions in order to spark productivity, creativity and improve the overall outcome towards what you want to do. This is a topic that's been on my mind, maybe not in this concise thought that I have right now. That is actually important and it's backed up by research. But rather than growing up, and particularly when I was a kid 6, 7, 8, I spent a lot of time in Indonesia being exposed to other cultures, which really focused my mind. Well, focus might be the wrong word, but it pushed me to think differently, to take into account other thoughts, inputs. It made me think bigger and challenged the way I was doing things and I think I was travelling last week and even then in my travels being exposed to other cultures, other ways of doing things, forces you outside of your comfort zone. When we are in the common pathways of everyday life, we are not really challenged. We are doing things automatically. We are taking the same steps as we have done hundreds, if not thousands, of times before. So how can we think, as people say, outside of the box? This whole thing got an ignition in me about 20 years ago.

Speaker 1: 2:09

I was at this presentation in Gothenburg. I was invited to listen in and see how Schalmer University was organising things down there and it was this Swedish entrepreneur who is very outspoken, called Johan Stelf, on Holstein, and he was doing sort of a presentation. He had a whiteboard, he was drawing on it and he started talking about things in a way that I found very interesting. And one thing still stuck with me, and it was if you go to a party and everybody has the same background, everybody has the same appearance, the same education, similar families, similar economical status, you know what you are going to talk about. You're gonna have similar discussions. There's not going to be much creativity happening in those dialogue. You know pretty much what to expect. You're not gonna solve world hunger in one of those meetings or Parties depends on how you see it. He said but put people with different background, different experiences, and I guarantee you you will have discussions which are not only thought provocative, but you will see the world in a different way, and that really blew my mind. It was very inspirational and that's when I started nimbling on the strength of diversity and also inclusion in teams. I didn't know it by them, but that's somewhere where it really started and got me thinking to it.

Speaker 1: 3:46

So welcome to transformative change the podcast where we're giving you the tools to drive change in the world, exposing you to new things that make it possible to create sustainable, long-lasting, positive change in this world. We digest cross-cutting topics and we believe that no areas should be off-limit. We want to draw on the strength of all of these different type of insights and give them to you so you can drive transformative change in the world today. Today's topic is the one on Diversity. Another one will have more inclusion, which you shouldn't have without. Well, diversity and inclusion goes hand-in-hand. Why don't focus on the strings of these things?

Speaker 1: 4:35

I built global teams for the last five to ten years and I've always been fascinated about people's background and differences and how People see things in a similar or different way, and when you are exposed to thought patterns which are completely different from yourself, it forces you to think differently. But you also need to be open to these things. I remember Well I started working for big Nordic Bank and some people might say that the Nordic culture is very Similar and it is in a way, but it's also extremely different. Working together with Danes, norwegians and and Finns has both positive and negative sides, and I would say the most positive side is there are different ways of approaching how to solve a problem, and I think my first experience for this was building up this Nordic for department once upon a time where we had a thin in our team and we had people, because we were doing this in Norway and we came together and trying to solve these problems together, and when I was in London for many years, there were Italians, people from Spain there, there were people from the US, the UK, all over the place. Now, what was interesting was a different approaches that everybody came with. What was important, because the field that I was working with was really about problem-solving.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Having worked in the field of AI now for but Entirely almost on my career, data science that emerged as a discipline has been Misconceived. In my perception, of course, is about Quantitative data collection, predictive analytics, but most of it is about problem-solving, because, as a data scientist, what you want to do is to optimize the metrics that you're aiming to hit, if it's the accuracy of your predictions, fine. You do everything to give the best recommendations. You don't just use the map. It's about the entirety of the process how you collect and store the data. It's problem-solving at the highest level, and when you are trying to solve a problem, you get stuck in your own thought pattern. In your own thought pattern, you are comfortable because you're doing things the way you've done them before and you might go online and search for another algorithm and other way of solving it. But it's hard when you are with individuals or team members even, and you're trying to fix this particular problem.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Let's say I want to give an offer to someone in a specific country. I worked for telco. So let's say, oh, I want to give you a better offer so I can retain you for a longer period of time. What do you do? Well, you have to try to get input to bundle to people with marketing experience for local marketing experience and know how somebody that's working in a market potentially that has completely different insight on how to do these things. You need somebody that understands the data point and you get them together in the room and your problem solve. This is how you come up with the best solution possible.

Speaker 1: 8:19

And this is what I was exposed to when I came to London and it was very interesting. But what I could also see that people with similar thought patterns, usually from the same country or same education they tended to go together in groups and one of the key points I saw about this when people with similar thinking group together, of course it's easier to talk to somebody speak the same language. That also creates group that are not inclusive and you tend to go to the things you already know, because for some reason, people have a preference towards what you already know. And then you see these silos of people that are potentially should be open minded, but they're narrow minded in the moment and that is dangerous and that's something I try to actively work towards not being narrow minded and biased towards my own preference, because if I'm narrow minded and biased towards my own preference, how will I ever get the exposure to think differently?

Speaker 1: 9:23

You have to be uncomfortable in order to grow and challenge yourself, so be comfortable being uncomfortable. This is so hard because people have this tendency to stay with the people that they've known for a very long time or are very similar to yourself, because you're comfortable. But we want to make sure that this actually doesn't happen. So that's one of the key insights I got so having the guts, daring to speak to people and almost sometimes being so open minded that it's hard to explain, because what's right for other people might feel wrong for you. But once you understand why certain things are happening, why certain cultures are louder than others, why certain cultures are not as loud, how you react the cultural differences. Once you understand that, you're able to see the world from a different perspective because you add more experience to your backpack. The world from a different perspective because you add more experience to your backpack. And when the world grows, you grow with your understanding of the world. So one of the things I took with me when I was trying to build these diverse and large teams when I was at H&M was really about seeing the individual. And this is always hard because when you're doing hiring, you need to base it on the interactions from those meetings that you have and you try to minimize the error rate, because hiring is a tedious and expensive process.

Speaker 1: 11:05

I hate the hiring process. I love working with people because it's so hard to get out the information that you need to get out to see. Is this individual a self contributor? Are they a go-getter? Are they creative? Will they complement other people in the team? It's hard to get out this type of information. What you can get out is did they have enough for what it takes or stamina to get a degree in business, mathematics or whatever? Did they do it on a bachelor or a master's or even a PhD level? Because that's all what it tells you when you see their diploma, you don't know how much information they retain.

Speaker 1: 11:43

You can hope and you can test for it, but how much can you test? I've set up these type of tests. The ones that usually get the best results are those that are freshly out of school. They ace the test, but then you want to hire somebody senior and they don't ace the test. What do you do? Because you know that they have done relevant things for so long. This is hard. And then into you. So in my into your process, I focus much more on what type of person is this? I ask questions like do you have any questions to me, and when they say no, well then I know that either they don't dare to ask the questions or they're not interested.

Speaker 1: 12:25

You have to look for the assertiveness. You have to look for the open-mindedness because you want to create a culture of diversity, because diversity doesn't just reflect the culture, it reflects also the mindset and you want to bring that out. So it's very hard to build these high performance teams and this is just my own experience so far and what I've tried to focus on and we manage quite well. At H&M, I think we were over speaking over 30 languages in a different team, so it was very rich on different cultures, interactions and diversity, everything from gender to different geographical parts of the world. All of this together to create the maximum outcome. And what was important as well was this was not just based on what me, my manager or the team around me had experienced. This was also based a lot on the research. There was research coming out I think it was called Project Phoenix from Google when they brought up a lot around these benefits. So If you're driving a business agenda, diversity of the team is also extremely important because obviously it contributes high performance team. The hypothesis is they create better products that create better revenue, etc. So diversity and inclusion in team buildings and driving change For instance, if you have a NGO, you want these diverse teams to get the input on how you can change and over affect the world.

Speaker 1: 14:00

That is aligned with the purpose you've defined for that organization. And the same thing goes for business. If it's not an NGO, how do you optimize the profit or reach the business goals that you want to achieve? All of this then boils down to the benefits. So having homogeneous teams can work, but not if you want to drive high performance culture as an overall objective of these teams, because having diverse and inclusive teams leads to better problem solving. Because the team members, they, have different perspectives. Obviously you'll see the world differently, have a different backpack full of experiences to see the world and challenge each other. You're more likely to come up with creative and innovative solutions to problems because you challenge each other in how this should be solved. And also it reduces the risk of group thinking.

Speaker 1: 15:07

And group thinking is sort of a phenomenon where team members become so focused on reaching consensus that they fail to consider all possible options. And I think this is what's been happening in the Nordic, because the consensus driven culture, especially in Sweden and Norway, have made sure that in many teams that consensus seeking is more important. So what does the group think what's important and you don't challenge it. And if everybody is homogeneous in their thinking it's very hard to challenge. So diversity in those teams will help pushing different options and at least put them on the table to be discussed. So diversity of both can help to reduce group thinking by ensuring that all perspectives are heard and considered. And when it comes to decision making, then in general in diverse team is that when team members have different backgrounds and experience, they can provide a wider range of information and insights to informed decision making which can lead to better and more informed decision. And I think we're all looking to optimize decision making. We take decisions when we are comfortable enough to take these decisions and what's then important is that if we have a lot of information we can take better decisions and we can increase the speed which leads to more information. So diversity speeds up this process as well. By this type of collection it boosts innovation. Diversity of thought can spark new ideas and perspective which can lead to innovative products and services. So goes a little bit in line with the problem-solving type of approach in all of this Creativity.

Speaker 1: 17:04

I think creativity is relatively hard. I mean when you buy yourself a ceiling to be creative. I find when I'm challenged I'm the most creative. I find, personally, that I need to sit, I need to think, and then I need to be challenged in my thinking. And it's hard to challenge me in my thinking if you think exactly the same. What I love and like and I really long for all the time is somebody coming with experiences that doesn't match my own and take me out of the box. If you have the exact same background as me and profile, you're probably going to think very similar to me, so how can you challenge yourself in this? So creativity is often the result of combining different ideas, perspectives, and the diversity. Part of this can help to create environment where creativity can flourish, and I think overall diversity of thought and experience is beneficial for teams, because what we know now based on the research, is that we have better problem solving, reduced risk of group thinking, improved decision making, boosted innovation, enhanced creativity and more inclusive places in this world.

Speaker 1: 18:27

So I think we need to make sure that organizations can foster diversity of thought and experience in the teams by hiring from different backgrounds, and that should be different educational backgrounds. Don't just hire from the same schools and places. Make sure you get different cultures in there. Make sure you also mix it up with inclusion so people are heard, and then you'll start seeing the results of diversity in your teams. Diversity is something we need to work on constantly in these topics, so that was a topic that was very dear to my heart. I've seen the results, and the results is always in the pudding right. I've seen the results of diversity and how cool it is. I think for another episode we'll talk about inclusion and why that is important as well to get a full result out of diversity in your teams. I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast, as usual. If you have any feedback or any topics that you would hear or listen to, send me an email at info at arialse. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to recording the next one. Until then, take care.