> Hmm. Why does no one argue for equitable balance of political views, or religions, or anything to do with ideas at all? Is anyone even measuring ideational diversity?
Probably not, no.
About a decade ago, I worked with a woman who had a PhD in psychometric assessment / quantitative psych. She was crazy smart. She said there have been lots of studies of high performing teams, and of course one of the conclusions people have taken from these studies is that "more diversity is better".
But she said if you actually go and read the studies, its far more complex than that. She said the data actually shows:
- A diversity of backgrounds makes a team more effective.
- A diversity of values makes a team less effective.
It makes sense. Imagine your company sells breakfast cereal. You will be more effective if you have people from a lot of backgrounds because they will understand issues your customers will face. If everyone on your team is wealthy, you might price your product too high. If everyone on your team is poor, you might never consider having a premium version of your product for wealthy areas. If your team only speaks English, you might accidentally give your product a name that plays really badly for Spanish speakers or something. And so on. These mistakes can be avoided by having a team with diverse backgrounds.
But if your team members have different values, they won't get along and your team will become less effective. Say, some people on your team want to make a product thats good for the environment. And other people on the team just want to maximise profit. Then they'll spend their energy fighting about that, and the result is a low performing team, making a confused product thats probably expensive and bad for the environment at the same time. Or, one person on the team wants everyone to like each other and someone else on the team loves competition. They'll inevitably clash. The conflict might result in personal growth - but it'll probably be bad for the team's KPIs this quarter.
In essence, nobody talks about diversity of values because nobody wants it. Ironically, not even DEI proponents.