Diversity: The Canary in the Coal Mine?

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Diversity is usually understood as a good in and of itself, increasing the variety of viewpoints expressed and broadening the base of experience on which decisions are based. But as a recent online discussion of the under-representation of women in tech and entrepreneurship heated up, author, blogger and expert on entrepreneurship Eric Ries offered another view of this lack of gender diversity �C�C it’s a symptom of another, larger problem.

Diversity is the canary in the coal mine for meritocracy. As entrepreneurs, more than any other industry, we��re in the meritocracy business. The companies that make decisions based on merit, rather than title, politics, or hierarchy execute faster and learn faster than their competitors. For startups (and other innovators), that��s a decisive advantage.

So when a team lacks diversity, that��s a bad sign. What are the odds that the decisions that were made to create that team were really meritocratic? That��s why I care a lot about diversity: not for its own sake, but because it is a source of strength for teams that have it, and a symptom of dysfunction for those that don��t.

In the long and meaty post (well worth a read in its entirety), Ries goes on note the diversity is also a powerful antidote to group think and argues that “diverse teams make better decisions than homogeneous ones”? because “having someone with a wacky outlier-type experience causes everyone else to re-examine their own assumptions.”

So how can we both make our teams more meritocratic and also, as a likely side effect, more diverse? Ries has several suggestions but one stands out for its simplicity and ease of implementation. Just ask whoever receives resumes to black out any demographic info, including name, age, gender or country of origin, before they’re screened. When Rise tried this, he says, “much to my surprise (and embarrassment), the kinds of people I started phone-screening changed immediately.” Would the same thing happen to you?