diversity of thought
I read a story about some company (I think Apple). When they started, they didn’t have special parking for pregnant women, who then had to walk from a faraway garage. When they finally had a woman on the board of directors, she mentioned that and everyone said “oh! I didn’t think about that!”. People are blinded to their experiences.
I feel like this is pretty common sentiment among my generation. I do think I take it a step further, where I advocate not only for diversity of thought through identities (race, gender, etc.) but diversity of more fundamental thought patterns. (though of course identity politics are still very important).
I think that teams would be better if there were differences within about the fundamental way to do things. Examples:
- Someone who “moves fast and breaks things”
- Someone who cares about procedure
- Someone who is social, and can make connections outside the team
- Someone who understands connections within the team
- Someone who wants to try new ideas
- Someone who is good at squeezing value about what already exists
- Someone who cares about the thing for its own sake
- Someone who cares about the bottom line
Ok I’m realizing a lot of these are pretty similar but if I thought harder I’d come up with some actually unique ones but I don’t wanna so goodbyeee
