One cornerstone of an adaptable culture is having a meaningful number of employees with diverse thoughts, views, ways of seeing the world.
Without that kind of diversity, you will be leading in an echo chamber. What might feel like creativity is merely your voice, your ideas coming back at you. Group think prevails.
However, merely hiring people with diverse views is only the first step. The easier one.
Your greatest challenge/opportunity is welcoming their differentness, and regularly seeking their perspective – truly listening to them. If you fail to accomplish that, cultural diversity will be a revolving door. People will come. They will be marginalized. They will leave. And you might conclude that, in your organization, diversity is a bad idea. But you’d be wrong.
So, what should you do? Ask some what would it take questions.
- What would it take to truly accept people with diverse views, and diverse ideas?
- What would it take to listen to those people, especially when their ideas contradict cultural norms, traditional beliefs and historic behaviors that have shaped your success – up to now?
And when you discover answers to those questions, then ask: What would it take to infuse those answers into the fabric of your culture?
This is a tall order, a huge ask. When you consider the magnitude of this challenge, we think you will have a sense of what cultural adaptability is really about, and why the real meaning of transformation should never be trivialized.
To explore more about transformation in upcoming posts, follow us at Axies Group on LinkedIn.