Organisations that work to create more diverse cultures and hire diverse teams perform better than those that don’t.
It’s something that researchers and analysts, like McKinsey, have reported for years.
What’s interesting to consider is how this diversity helps organisations with crisis management.
Insight, ideas and effective collaboration
Various reports in recent years have highlighted several advantages of having diverse teams.
- They make better decisions (87% of the time) and do so twice as quickly than those that aren’t diverse (Cloverpop)
- McKinsey found that:
- People who worked on diverse teams were more comfortable speaking up about their ideas and more willing to question their coworkers about their thought processes.
- Organisations with strong diversity also often have an easier time attracting the skilled people they need.
- Diverse teams better understand a diverse customer base and create products and services people want to use.
- In its 2023 report, “Diversity Matters Even More”, McKinsey found that business exec teams that were ethnically and gender-diverse were 39% more likely to outperform businesses with the least ethnically or gender-diverse teams.
You need insight, dissenting voices and confident communication in a crisis
According to research discussed in HBR, this mix of complexities creates friction in teams and organisations that spurs innovation and productivity.
For a crisis team, this means being able to understand multiple viewpoints and predict potential problems.
And, while a crisis team needs to implement the agreed strategy, if there is a reason to change it, people need to be secure enough to voice their ideas and concerns – this can be harder if they’re going up against groupthink (which can be more of a problem with teams that lack diversity).
Organisations that ensure they have diverse teams aren’t just doing it because it’s the right thing to do, they’re benefiting from a range of expertise they couldn’t get otherwise. And that’s needed now more than ever.
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Featured image: “My Life Through A Lens” on Unsplash
