Last week, I travelled from the Swiss Alps to the Himalayas in a matter of 48 hours. It was a massive culture shock, while the mountains in each country were equally spectacular, the way the country operated could not be further apart. I went from a country where the trains ran on time to the minute, perhaps even to the second, to arriving in Pokhara at the base of the Annapurna Himalayan range, where the 200km bus trip took 8 hours with no reference to time whatsoever. If you get to your destination, the bus company has met its mandate!
This complete change of pace got me to thinking about how different people on this wonderful planet are. In Australia, 25% of people are born outside of the country, which means you will likely work in team with people from a variety of different backgrounds. Many people immigrate every year from Europe and Nepal (pre pandemic Nepal was the fastest growing group of international students) and we have a wonderfully multicultural population.
We often hear how important diversity is in teams. You would be forgiven for believing this concept is rammed down our throats, but articulating why and how it improves teamwork seems to be difficult. As I was bumping my way along the main highway from Kathmandu to India (doing about 25K/hour), I passed a newly constructed cable car and I got to thinking about the teams that engineered and constructed it.
I could just imagine how different the approach to constructing a cable car in Switzerland would be to constructing one in Nepal. However, if you could assemble a construction crew who had experience constructing in both countries, how much better would the problem solving and innovation be! The art would be in considering all the approaches and being able to transparently and without fear of being dismissed, communicate with each other. Bringing together a construction group that included both Swiss and Nepali engineers, project and construction managers, would result in some conflict in the way things "should" be done, however, the experience and background that the team could draw on, to overcome problems would be immeasurable. Ultimately, when you have different levels and types of experience and diverse approaches, the team's ability to become innovative, creative and problem solve increases.
There would be the Swiss way, the Nepali way and the best way for that particular project. Being open to alternative perspectives that individuals can offer is smart because the variety of experiences they have is where diversity really comes into its own. I've often seen in project teams, members dismissing other's ideas because it's not the way that they've done it before, but that doesn't necessarily make it wrong or any less valid. Keeping our minds open to ideas that we may initially dismiss is where diversity can be leveraged. It's mindboggling all the approaches that can solve a problem depending on the perspective from which you are viewing it. When we harness the diversity, listen and question in a curious way we might just find a better, more efficient, stronger, or safer way to accomplish something than what we thought was possible.
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