I heard someone say, "When my grandad dug the earth, he got gold. When my dad dug the earth, he got coal. When I dig the earth, I get landmines/bombs. I am worried that when my children and their children dig the earth, that they would end up getting skeletons." This makes me wonder whether this is the price we have to pay because of intolerance to diversity of thought?
We fight wars in the name of rogue countries with weapons of mass destruction, in the name of religion, in the name of terrorism, for territories that originally belonged to some country, etc. If we analyse many of these wars, they are because of economic reasons or because of intolerance to diversity of thought (including religious ideologies).
In an organization this takes different forms. I have noticed that if we profile members of a team, we will find people with similar skills and capabilities and orientation towards work as that of the Head of Team. This is very true if the Head has himself/herself handpicked the teams. That is why we will notice poorly balanced teams from a work orientation perspective. We will also notice changes happening to teams as a new Head takes over. While some of it would be due to disappointments in existing team members when a new head comes in or perceived differences of opinions, many times this happens when there is no tolerance to diversity of thought.
Many organizations try and get in diversity in to teams. More often than not, this tends to be focussed on gender diversity. Some look at diversity related to countries, related to regions in a country and some related to languages spoken or religion. Most organizations do not put in much effort in to handling diversity of thought. This is probably one of the most critical aspects that many companies should look in to. There is an excellent story that explains this aspect well. There was a very bright and creative architect. He realised that the demand for his work was increasing and so decided to form a company. He did that and selected a good management team. This team soon realised that they started getting work. However, after a year, they started noticing customer problems and the number of contracts started reducing. They hired a consultant to figure out what was happening. When they were profiled by the consultant, their work preferences were very similar. All of them were very creative and spent a lot of time on creating lovely concepts and buildings. However, collectively, they were poor at execution of their concepts and designs. So, while they got contracts initially, since they could not execute these well, they started losing business.
Like this story, I have seen many stories of very good teams failing. This is primarily because of lack of diversity of thought. Implementing it in a team is very complex given that the needs of business are so varied and demanding. However, a well balanced team in the only one that will produce sustained results.
At work and in life, it makes a lot of sense to be tolerant to many things and most importantly, different thoughts and thought processes. India, as a country, has this diversity and takes this diversity in its stride. This tolerance comes out of our spiritual practices. That is why we still see the cows strolling along with the latest motor cars in our streets!!!
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