The Power Of Diversity And Inclusion

Kaizen Recruitment recently attended the Diversity and Inclusion Workshop hosted by CFA Society Melbourne, led by Heather Price. The event was held in Vanguard Australia’s head office and was attended by numerous CIOs, CFOs and senior leaders from across the funds management, superannuation and investment consulting industry.

Heather Price, CEO of Symmetra has over 25 years of experience in diversity consulting, initially starting her career in diversity management in post-apartheid South Africa. Founded in 2003, Symmetra aims to produce and deliver leading-edge products and services for diversity and inclusion across the globe.

Heather explored the science and studies behind diversity of thought and how teams with different perspectives consistently outperform homogenous teams. Research shows that this is attributed to the greater collective ‘mental toolbox’ from the diverse teams. These studies were referenced from Professor Scott Page’s book, The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy (2017). In summary, his findings show that:

• Diversity is at least as important as individual ability
• The best team may not necessarily comprise of the most talented individuals

Heather then discussed case studies on how diversity of thought has improved business outcomes. An example mentioned was Eli Lilly and Company, who used a crowdsourcing web-based system (now InnoCentive) to attract a diverse range of fresh perspectives outside of the company, including those from different disciplines to tackle complex pharmaceutical problems.

Inclusion

Heather shared that the key to tapping the power of diversity is ‘inclusion’ – the act of bringing those with different perspectives into the conversation and “filtering the difference in, not out”. She also discussed that one of the key factors of enabling inclusion in businesses is leaders who embed psychological safety. Studies have shown that teams with high levels of psychological safety are the number one predictor of high performing teams.

By embedding psychological safety within team members, colleagues feel empowered to express concerns, challenge norms and take calculated risks. Heather then shared pragmatic approaches for leaders to create an environment for psychological safety, including being a ‘learner’ rather than a ‘knower’, and destigmatising failure.

Unconscious Bias

Another key approach discussed to harnessing diversity of thought is to orchestrate business and talent management processes to counteract unconscious biases. Some examples of unconscious biases discussed by Heather include affinity bias, egocentric/overconfidence bias, and confirmation bias.

Heather explored high performing leaders who incorporated debiasing techniques in their decision-making processes, including Warren Buffett’s inversion technique by evaluating ‘both sides of the coin’.

To conclude, the significant challenge remains in the financial services industry when it comes to implementing best practices and processes to leverage the power of diversity of thought. Heather reiterated that consistency is the key.

On behalf of the team at Kaizen, thank you to Vanguard Investments Australia who not only sponsored this event but are known leaders in diversity and inclusion. Thank you also to CFA Society Melbourne for hosting the event and to Heather Price for sharing her fascinating expertise.

Kind regards,

Daniel Ong – Recruitment Consultant