But unfortunately, many of those diversity goals start and end at the time of hire. These companies might be diversifying their ranks but fall short when leveraging that talent to innovate, develop and bring new products to market.
The question isn’t how many cultures are represented in your company. It’s how many of those perspectives make their way into your company’s decisions and actions.
Cultural diversity isn’t merely an HR responsibility. It’s an innovation architecture issue.
If you believe different perspectives produce better ideas, then you need an environment where those perspectives can come together and make an impact.
Diversity does more than enrich your work environment. It can drive innovation, improve decision-making, and increase customer satisfaction. But only if you let it.
From my experience at Macnica, I’ve seen that teams with different backgrounds and viewpoints can look at old problems in new ways and find creative answers that uniform groups miss. They challenge our normal habits and test old rules.
Homogeneous decision-making leads to mistakes and missed opportunities.
Applying Diversity
I’ve known the value of diversity from an early age. I grew up in Quebec, where Franco-Ontariens are considered a minority group. I also had the privilege of studying in an international business program that brought together students from different countries, cultures, and backgrounds. But it wasn’t until much later in my career that I learned about the importance of applying diversity.
As I was joining Macnica, I came across a custodian waiting to clean a train car at Japan’s Narita Express train station. The gentleman stood dutifully for 10 minutes, patiently waiting for the train that he would clean. He politely asked me not to enter until he was finished cleaning. When the train arrived, he gave it a courteous bow, diligently ensured the car was tidy, and then welcomed me onboard with a warm smile.
I was amazed by the pride this man took in his work and truly felt like a guest entering his home. I probably would not have fully appreciated his work ethic and discipline had I not experienced it in person.
Likewise, the value and potential of diversity cannot be fully appreciated if it’s not fully embraced and integrated within an organization’s complete operations. Otherwise, those experiences are confined to a location, building, or conference room and never fully reach and influence the company’s culture.
Cultural Diversity in Practice
In many ways, Macnica has opened my eyes to the connection between innovation and diversity. It’s a 50-year-old company that has grown from a distribution business in Japan to a $10 billion international company with 4,000 employees. Our employees are as diverse as our technology portfolio, which spans cyber security, AI, autonomous vehicles, engineering services, imaging, smart manufacturing, and robotics.
Macnica combines innovation with the traditional Japanese service-oriented approach to business that fosters and maintains traditional business relationships.
During my nearly four years with the company, I’ve learned how to convert cultural diversity into an operating advantage. I’ve learned there’s a difference between having diversity and using diversity.
A company can employ people from 20 countries and still have a culture in which everyone is expected to think, communicate and make decisions the same way. That’s demographic diversity, but it doesn’t necessarily create cognitive or cultural diversity in practice.
Seven Ways to Improve Innovation Through Diversity
To improve innovation through diversity, you must deliberately create mechanisms that allow different cultural perspectives to influence decisions. Here are seven ways to get there.
1. Enable Cultural Diversity to Influence
Your organization might be incredibly diverse from a 1,000-foot level. But what does it look like on the ground when it comes to making decisions? Does a diverse workforce run your projects and programs, or does the same group, region or demographic always call the shots? Cultural diversity farther down the organization doesn’t accomplish much if major decisions continue to be made by a culturally homogeneous leadership group.
2. Build Global Teams, Not Headquarters with Satellites
It’s not uncommon for global companies to make decisions as a group without input from the region charged with execution. That’s an important difference. Multinationals can unintentionally operate as a central organization that develops a strategy for regional employees to execute.
Instead, bring people from different markets into product development, strategy, and innovation before decisions are made. If you’re a global company, every product should be brought to market by a global team.
Introduce cultural diversity early in innovation, not as a validation exercise. Don’t develop something in the U.S. and then ask a Japanese, Brazilian or European team if it will work there. Bring those perspectives into the original problem definition. That’s the difference between localization and genuinely global innovation.
3. Embrace Cultural Friction
When you bring different cultures into the room, there will always be friction. And that’s okay. In fact – the more, the better. Friction uncovers issues before they become problems.
Different cultures approach hierarchy, risk, disagreement, consensus, customer relationships and even time differently. Those differences can make collaboration harder.
But eliminating that friction by forcing everyone into one corporate norm can diminish the value of diversity. Your objective shouldn’t be cultural harmony at all costs. Instead, strive for productive cultural friction.
4. Make Curiosity a Leadership Competency
Leaders of culturally diverse organizations should understand it’s okay to say, “I wouldn’t have thought about it that way.” Instead of viewing unfamiliar approaches as obstacles, they need to investigate why someone sees the problem differently. Likewise, global team members need to feel comfortable surfacing issues. No single country or region should ever fear headquarters. Encourage a culture of curiosity. And reward it.
5. Design Meetings so Every Culture Contributes
Some business cultures reward speaking quickly and forcefully. Others emphasize listening, reflection, consensus or deference to seniority. Put everyone in an American-style brainstorming session and you may inadvertently select an American-style solution instead of the best idea.
Written input before meetings, rotating facilitators and deliberate solicitation of viewpoints can change that.
6. Measure Diversity Outcomes
Instead of measuring only representation, look at how many product initiatives include multiple regions at inception. How many strategic teams have cross-cultural representation? How frequently do ideas originating outside headquarters become global initiatives? That’s much closer to measuring whether diversity is affecting innovation.
7. Remember Cultural Diversity Isn’t the Same for Everyone
It’s a common mistake to assume diversity means the same thing everywhere. It doesn’t.
In the U.S., diversity conversations often center on race, gender and ethnicity. In other countries, the focus may be on nationality, language, religion, socioeconomic backgrounds, indigenous communities, migration or regional differences.
Perceptions about inclusion, identity and representation can vary significantly from one culture to another. Resist the temptation to export a single definition of diversity from headquarters. Instead, listen to your local teams, understand the cultural dynamics of each market and recognize that fostering cultural diversity on a global scale sometimes means allowing different regions to define it.
Remember, being culturally diverse requires accepting culturally diverse definitions of diversity. And that can be difficult.
Taking A Different Perspective
With a company steeped in Japanese culture and tradition, I’ve learned to view business differently. While the traditional Silicon Valley approach centers around understanding technology and adding value, I’ve come to understand the importance of a Japanese service-oriented way of doing business. That’s an entirely different way of looking at business for many North American organizations.
Just like the custodian on the trainway, my colleagues and I are driven by the need to serve and align our services with our customers and partners. And we realize that can only happen when we allow cultural diversity to lead the way.
