Late last year I wrote about clutter, neatness, and the control attitude implicit in bosses’ efforts to force Baroque-minded people to have minimalist personal workspaces.

A recent Dilbert reminded me just how far this attitude is sometimes carried.

Juicing creativity and innovation requires a strong diversity of vision and of skills within your organization—homogenizing your workforce dilutes the juice.

There are three ways to homogenize

• Hire all the same types, most often “people like me;”
• scorn/belittle/reject anything that doesn’t conform with your own MAP/ideas/approach; or
• allow others in your organization to do the first two.

Keep in mind that true diversity is about MAP and mental function, not just race and gender. I’ve known managers whose organizations were mini-UNs with equal numbers of males and females, but they might as well have been cloned from the boss, their thinking was so identical.

Viva La Difference is the rallying cry for the anti-homogenizing movement.

That means you want to celebrate controversy, encourage disagreement, and enable discussions—all within a civilized framework that debates the merits of ideas, not individuals.

You can do it, after all—it’s in your MAP.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Business info, Culture, Hiring, Leadership, Motivation, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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