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Teams Solve Problems Faster When They’re More Cognitively Diverse

• Alison Reynolds
• David Lewis

Find people who disagree with you and cherish them.

Looking at the executive teams we work with as consultants and those we teach in the classroom, increased diversity of gender, ethnicity, and age is apparent. Over recent decades the rightful endeavor to achieve a more representative workforce has had an impact. Of course, there is a ways to go, but progress has been made.

• AR Alison Reynolds  is a member of faculty at the UK’s Ashridge Business School where she works with executive groups in the field of leadership development, strategy execution and organization development. She has previously worked in the public sector and management consulting, and is an advisor to a number of small businesses and charities.
• DL David Lewis  is Director of London Business School’s Senior Executive Programme and teaches on strategy execution and leading in uncertainty. He is a consultant and works with global corporations, advising and coaching board teams.  He is co-founder of a research company focusing on developing tools to enhance individual, team and organization performance through better interaction.

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The Power of Cognitive Diversity in Team Problem-Solving

• August 15, 2023
• Teamwork & Collaboration

In the realm of team problem-solving, cognitive diversity holds significant potential. This concept encapsulates the presence of distinct thinking styles, perspectives, and approaches within a team. By amalgamating various skills, knowledge, and experiences, teams with cognitive diversity can effectively solve problems at a faster pace. Moreover, cognitive diversity fosters creativity, innovation, critical thinking, and a broader range of ideas and perspectives. This essay delves into the importance of cognitive diversity in team problem-solving, the benefits it brings, the challenges it poses, and strategies to cultivate it within teams.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

• Teams with cognitive diversity solve problems faster.
• Cognitive diversity enhances creativity and innovation.
• Cognitive diversity helps teams consider multiple viewpoints and find better solutions.
• Strategies to foster cognitive diversity in teams include actively seeking out diverse perspectives, creating a culture of psychological safety, implementing inclusive hiring practices, and providing training on unconscious biases and cognitive diversity.

Importance of Cognitive Diversity in Team Problem-Solving

The importance of cognitive diversity in team problem-solving lies in its ability to stimulate critical thinking, promote a wider range of ideas and perspectives, and encourage creative solutions and out-of-the-box thinking. Teams with cognitive diversity are more adept at enhancing problem-solving speed through their varied thinking styles, approaches, and experiences. By incorporating diverse perspectives, teams can better understand the concept at hand and consider multiple viewpoints, leading to more comprehensive and effective problem-solving outcomes. Different cognitive styles complement each other, filling in knowledge gaps and avoiding groupthink and biases. This diversity of thought not only enhances problem-solving abilities but also fosters innovation and creativity. Therefore, recognizing and valuing cognitive diversity in teams is crucial for organizations seeking to optimize their problem-solving processes.

Impact of Diversity on Team Composition

Increased diversity of gender, ethnicity, and age in executive teams has been observed in efforts to achieve a more representative workforce. These efforts have shown progress in increasing the representation of diverse individuals in team compositions. The presence of diversity in executive teams and classrooms is becoming more visible, indicating a positive shift in achieving progress towards a more inclusive environment. However, it is important to note that more work needs to be done to further enhance diversity in team compositions. The benefits of increased representation include better decision-making and problem-solving, as diverse perspectives bring a wider range of ideas and viewpoints to the table. By actively seeking out diverse talent, implementing inclusive hiring practices, and fostering a culture that embraces different viewpoints, organizations can continue to make strides in achieving greater cognitive diversity in teams.

Benefits of Cognitive Diversity in Problem-Solving

An enhanced range of perspectives and ideas are fostered through the inclusion of diverse thinking styles, leading to more creative and innovative solutions. The benefits of cognitive diversity in problem-solving can be summarized as follows:

Promoting collaboration: Cognitive diversity stimulates critical thinking and analysis, encouraging individuals to work together and leverage their unique perspectives. This collaborative environment allows for the exploration of different ideas and the development of more comprehensive solutions.

Embracing different perspectives: Cognitive diversity brings together individuals with varying backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge. This diversity of perspectives helps to avoid groupthink and biases, enabling teams to consider multiple viewpoints and find more effective solutions to complex problems.

Encouraging creative solutions: Different cognitive styles complement each other and fill in knowledge gaps. This diversity of thinking encourages out-of-the-box thinking and sparks innovative ideas, leading to creative problem-solving approaches.

Challenges and Barriers to Achieving Cognitive Diversity

Challenges and barriers to achieving cognitive diversity include unconscious biases, limited access to diverse talent pools, and resistance to change. Unconscious biases in team dynamics can hinder the inclusion of diverse perspectives, as individuals may unknowingly favor those who think and behave in a similar manner. These biases can perpetuate homogeneity and make it difficult for different perspectives to be heard and valued. Limited access to diverse talent pools further exacerbates the issue, as organizations may struggle to attract and retain individuals with diverse backgrounds and ways of thinking. Additionally, resistance to change and a reluctance to embrace different viewpoints can impede efforts to foster cognitive diversity. Overcoming these challenges requires raising awareness about unconscious biases, creating inclusive hiring practices, and fostering a culture that values and embraces cognitive diversity.

Strategies to Foster Cognitive Diversity in Teams

One approach to promoting cognitive diversity within teams is to actively seek out and incorporate a wide range of perspectives and opinions. This can be achieved by creating diverse teams that bring together individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and ways of thinking. By creating such teams, organizations can promote open dialogue and foster an environment where diverse perspectives are valued and encouraged.

Strategies to foster cognitive diversity in teams include:

Actively seeking out diverse perspectives and opinions: This involves actively recruiting individuals from diverse backgrounds and ensuring that their voices are heard and valued within the team.

Promoting open dialogue: Creating an environment where team members feel comfortable expressing their opinions and engaging in constructive discussions is crucial for promoting cognitive diversity.

Implementing inclusive hiring practices: By adopting inclusive hiring practices, organizations can attract a diverse pool of talent, ensuring that different perspectives and experiences are represented within the team.

Enhancing Problem-Solving Speed With Cognitive Diversity

Enhancing the speed of problem-solving can be achieved through the incorporation of diverse perspectives and opinions within teams. Cognitive diversity, which refers to differences in thinking styles, perspectives, and approaches, plays a crucial role in increasing efficiency and enhancing collaboration. By bringing together a variety of skills, knowledge, and experiences, cognitive diversity stimulates critical thinking and analysis, promoting a wider range of ideas and perspectives. Different cognitive styles complement each other and fill in knowledge gaps, leading to better decision-making and problem-solving. Moreover, cognitive diversity helps to avoid groupthink and biases, encouraging creative solutions and out-of-the-box thinking. To foster cognitive diversity in teams, organizations should actively seek out diverse perspectives, create a culture of psychological safety that encourages open dialogue, implement inclusive hiring practices, provide training on unconscious biases and cognitive diversity, and foster collaboration and teamwork to leverage its benefits.

Understanding the Concept of Cognitive Diversity

Different perspectives, thinking styles, and approaches contribute to cognitive diversity within teams. Cognitive diversity refers to the differences in how individuals perceive, think, and solve problems. It encompasses a range of characteristics such as educational background, professional experience, cultural upbringing, and personality traits. Here are some examples of cognitive diversity:

Analytical Thinkers: These individuals excel at breaking down complex problems into smaller, manageable components. They rely on data and evidence to make decisions and tend to be detail-oriented.

Creative Thinkers: These individuals thrive in generating new and innovative ideas. They approach problems from unconventional angles, often thinking outside the box and challenging the status quo.

Collaborative Thinkers: These individuals excel at building relationships and working in teams. They value cooperation and seek to integrate diverse perspectives to find optimal solutions.

The benefits of cognitive diversity in team problem-solving are numerous. It enhances collective intelligence by bringing together a variety of skills, knowledge, and experiences. It enables teams to consider multiple viewpoints, leading to more comprehensive and well-rounded solutions. Cognitive diversity stimulates critical thinking and analysis, promoting a wider range of ideas and perspectives. By complementing each other’s cognitive styles and filling in knowledge gaps, teams can avoid groupthink and biases. This encourages creative solutions and out-of-the-box thinking, ultimately leading to more innovative outcomes.

Leveraging Cognitive Diversity for Creativity and Innovation

By leveraging the varied perspectives and thinking styles within a team, opportunities for creativity and innovation can be maximized. Fostering collaboration and embracing different perspectives are key strategies in leveraging cognitive diversity. Collaboration allows team members to share ideas, challenge assumptions, and build on each other’s strengths. Embracing different perspectives encourages individuals to bring their unique insights and experiences to the table. This diversity of thought stimulates creativity and innovation by providing a wider range of ideas and approaches to problem-solving. When team members with different perspectives collaborate effectively, they can overcome biases and avoid groupthink, leading to more robust and innovative solutions. This approach fosters an environment that values diversity and creates space for creative thinking, ultimately enhancing the team’s ability to generate innovative ideas and solutions.

Overcoming Unconscious Biases for Inclusive Problem-Solving

Unconscious biases pose a challenge to achieving inclusion and diverse perspectives in the problem-solving process. To overcome this challenge, it is essential to raise awareness of unconscious biases and implement strategies that promote a more inclusive problem-solving environment.

Unconscious bias awareness: Organizations should provide training and education on unconscious biases to help individuals recognize and mitigate their biases. This awareness can help create a more inclusive and equitable problem-solving process.

Diversity talent pools: To overcome unconscious biases, organizations should actively seek out diverse talent pools. By expanding recruitment efforts and implementing inclusive hiring practices, organizations can ensure a broader range of perspectives and experiences are included in the problem-solving process.

Inclusive problem-solving practices: Encouraging open dialogue and creating a culture of psychological safety can foster an environment where diverse perspectives are valued and included. By leveraging the power of cognitive diversity, teams can overcome unconscious biases and achieve more effective and innovative problem-solving outcomes.

Building a Culture of Psychological Safety for Cognitive Diversity

Creating an inclusive and supportive environment that fosters open dialogue and psychological safety is crucial for promoting a culture that values and embraces diverse perspectives and thinking styles. This environment encourages individuals to express their unique viewpoints and ideas without fear of judgement or reprisal. It allows for the exploration of different perspectives, which can lead to more innovative and effective problem-solving. By encouraging diverse perspectives, teams can tap into a wider range of knowledge, experiences, and approaches, ultimately enhancing their ability to find creative solutions. Furthermore, creating an inclusive environment not only promotes cognitive diversity but also helps to break down barriers and biases that may hinder the inclusion of diverse perspectives. Therefore, organizations should prioritize the development of a culture of psychological safety that encourages open dialogue and values diverse perspectives.

The Role of Inclusive Hiring Practices in Promoting Cognitive Diversity

Implementing inclusive hiring practices is essential for fostering cognitive diversity within teams and organizations. By actively seeking out diverse talent pools, organizations can tap into a wider range of perspectives, experiences, and thinking styles. This can lead to enhanced problem-solving abilities and increased innovation within teams. Inclusive hiring practices can be implemented by:

Broadening recruitment channels: Organizations can reach out to a diverse range of candidates by utilizing various platforms and networks, including those specifically focused on underrepresented groups.

Removing bias from the hiring process: Implementing structured interviews and blind resume reviews can help reduce unconscious biases and ensure fair evaluation of candidates based on their qualifications and capabilities.

Promoting diversity and inclusion from within: Organizations can create a culture that values and celebrates diversity, ensuring that employees from all backgrounds feel welcome and supported.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does cognitive diversity enhance problem-solving speed in teams.

Cognitive diversity enhances problem-solving speed in teams by enhancing collaboration and decision-making efficiency. It allows for a wider range of ideas and perspectives, stimulates critical thinking, and encourages creative solutions, thus avoiding groupthink and biases.

What Are Some Examples of Unconscious Biases That Can Hinder the Inclusion of Diverse Perspectives?

Unconscious biases, such as affinity biases and confirmation biases, can hinder the inclusion of diverse perspectives in teams. Overcoming resistance to cognitive diversity requires awareness, education, and creating a culture that values and embraces different viewpoints.

How Can Organizations Overcome Resistance to Change and Encourage the Embrace of Different Viewpoints?

To overcome resistance to change and encourage the embrace of different viewpoints, organizations can implement strategies such as creating a culture of openness, providing education on the value of diversity, and fostering collaboration to leverage the benefits of cognitive diversity.

What Are Some Strategies for Actively Seeking Out Diverse Perspectives and Opinions?

Strategies for seeking diverse perspectives and fostering inclusion include actively soliciting input from individuals with different backgrounds and experiences, creating a safe environment for open dialogue, implementing inclusive hiring practices, providing education on unconscious biases, and promoting collaboration.

How Can Organizations Create a Culture of Psychological Safety That Encourages Open Dialogue and Diverse Thinking?

To create a culture of psychological safety that encourages open dialogue and diverse thinking, organizations can build trust by promoting transparency, actively listening to employee perspectives, and valuing diverse contributions. Additionally, empowering individuals through training and recognition can motivate them to share their unique viewpoints openly.

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Everyday problem solving across the adult life span: solution diversity and efficacy

Everyday problem solving involves examining the solutions that individuals generate when faced with problems that take place in their everyday experiences. Problems can range from medication adherence and meal preparation to disagreeing with a physician over a recommended medical procedure or compromising with extended family members over where to host Thanksgiving dinner. Across the life span, research has demonstrated divergent patterns of change in performance based on the type of everyday problems used as well as based on the way that problem-solving efficacy is operationally defined. Advancing age is associated with worsening performance when tasks involve single-solution or fluency-based definitions of effectiveness. However, when efficacy is defined in terms of the diversity of strategies used, as well as by the social and emotional impact of solution choice on the individual, performance is remarkably stable and sometimes even improves in the latter half of life. This article discusses how both of these approaches to everyday problem solving inform research on the influence that aging has on everyday functioning.

Introduction

As mentioned in many chapters in this review volume, a common theme of the cognitive aging literature is a steady decline in functioning. As we get older, we experience changes in processing speed, 1 – 3 memory, 4 reasoning, 5 attention, 6 , 7 and executive functioning. 8 – 10 Underlying such decline is a series of structural changes in the brain 11 , 12 as well as shifts in what motivates us to think and act as we grow older. 13 – 15 Despite these declines, older adults are often autonomous, independent, and well adjusted. They live full lives and occupy as many roles in society as younger individuals, if not more roles, and they are relied upon as authority figures—leaders, advisors, employers, parents, and grandparents. This divergence between declines in lab-assessed cognitive functioning and maintained interpersonal influence is what fuels research on everyday problem solving across the adult half of the life span. 16 , 17 The need to assess everyday functioning independently of traditional measures of primary mental abilities led to the creation of everyday problem solving batteries that displayed higher levels of ecological validity, more closely resembling challenges that are part of our day-to-day existence. Research in this field focuses on defining the conditions under which older adults may have difficulties with these problems (e.g., physical limitations and comprehension of sophisticated instructions) so that interventions can be established to ameliorate such difficulties and promote a higher quality of life. In addition, research in this field also focuses on examining how those processes that we use to solve problems change across the adult life span and lead us to implement different types of strategies based upon the goals that we set at each stage of life. 18 , 19 Here, research is reviewed that discusses the challenges faced by older individuals when managing everyday problems as well as the differences that have been found in how young and older adults approach the process of solving everyday problems.

Everyday problems are the circumstances that we find ourselves in on a daily basis that involve using the skills, accumulated knowledge, and resources (e.g., time, money, and friends) that we have available to us to reach our goals and to side step obstacles to these goals. 17 Everyday problems vary in terms of their problem space, or the possible solutions that an individual can reach given the contextual features and demands of the situation. 16 Everyday problems sometimes have a clear outcome, or goal state, that all individuals will work toward. For instance, if you return to your automobile at the airport to find that you have a flat tire, the steps that are required to effectively resolve the problem so that you can be on your way are quite clear. Success depends upon your ability to implement these steps (e.g., use of physical strength to remove lug nuts). On the other hand, everyday problems sometimes create obstacles that cannot be directly removed and require a careful balance of knowing not just what to do but when to do it. For example, should you find yourself in a disagreement with your partner on what to give your child as a gift on a birthday, you can each give the child your respective preferred gifts. However, how will you resolve the negativity that emerged as a result of conflicting preferences? What if you have a limited number of resources to devote to a gift and a compromise is necessary to resolve the conflict? If you have to involve others in the problem-solving process, it is challenging to ensure that all parties have the same goals in mind. Moreover, you cannot proceed forward to acquire the gift until you have buy-in from others. When problems are ill-defined, the timing of your actions is important because you may have to refrain from acting until a negotiation can take place. In such a situation, it is important to recognize how to regulate your own emotions and how to influence the emotions and thought processes of others. 18

In this review, how everyday problem solving changes across the adult half of the life span will be discussed. Included is (a) a description of the methods used to assess everyday problem-solving performance and the diversity in findings that emerges when age's impact on everyday problem solving is gauged using well-defined versus ill-defined problems as well as different operational definitions of efficacy, (b) a description of the contextual factors that lead to age differences in everyday problem solving, and (c) a brief assessment of the future directions of the field.

Assessing age differences in everyday problem-solving performance

As mentioned earlier, decades of research on cognitive aging demonstrate gradual decline in functioning over time. This decline, however, runs counter to the notion that with age comes wisdom, or at least an accumulation of experiences that can help us determine how to continue to function when faced with problems. Baltes referred to these divergent trends as multidirectionality, and he believed that two distinct systems of cognition existed to capture these trends: pragmatic knowledge and structural mechanics. 20 Accumulated experience or pragmatic knowledge (sometimes called tacit knowledge or crystallized intelligence) continues to grow throughout the life span given the novel circumstances and ever-expanding culture to which we are exposed year by year. Conversely, the hard-wired, biologically determined mechanisms that support cognition (sometimes called fluid intelligence) slowly degrade as our cells and tissues wear out over time. Key to successful aging is how the change that takes place in these two systems balance against one another. 21 – 23 Ultimately, each person has a limited pool of resources to devote to all aspects of their life at any given moment. 20 Consequently, throughout the life span, we set goals for ourselves that shape our behavior by prioritizing some pursuits over others. This selection process limits the number of goals that we consider at any given stage of our life so as to make it possible to optimize the investment of our resources to maintain the greatest level of successful functioning as is possible. 20 With respect to everyday problem solving, this poses some interesting questions: (a) To what extent does decline in cognitive functioning (especially rooted in one's neural mechanics) affect the resources that are available to individuals in the latter half of life when faced with complex everyday problems that are vital to autonomous functioning, and (b) How does one's changing goals and accumulated experience across the life span influence the process by which we solve problems? These two questions have dominated research on everyday problem solving and aging over the past 25 years.

Consistent with the need to map cognitive decline onto everyday problem solving, many everyday problem-solving tasks consist of a pool of well-defined problems from multiple domains (e.g., nutrition, health, and finance) that reflect the activities that an autonomous individual will engage in when caring for themselves. 24 A well-defined problem is a problem that has a constrained problem space (i.e., number of possible responses limited by the features of the question asked) with a single correct solution. For instance, the Everyday Cognition Battery (ECB) includes items that ask participants to compare the nutritional value of two brands of chili. 25 Participants are asked to use nutrition labels to determine which brand has less fat and to compare the statistics provided on each label for each of the other listed categories of dietary information. They might also be asked specific questions about what the categories listed on the labels refer to as a way to assess the participants' general knowledge about food labels. Additional items in the battery focus on medication use and understanding financial information. Overall, the problems included in the ECB capture functioning that contributes to many of the domains found in the assessment of Instrumental Activities of Daily Living. 26 Studies using this battery or similar tasks with similar well-defined problems demonstrate decline in everyday functioning with advancing age. 27 Also, performance on the different components of the battery (e.g., everyday inductive reasoning or everyday knowledge) are significantly correlated with performance on corresponding psychometric tests of intelligence, 28 like lab-based assessments of inductive reasoning and verbal knowledge commonly used to track intelligence. 29 However, performance on the practical problems included in the ECB better predicts actual everyday functioning than does performance on the standard psychometric tests of intelligence. Overall, well-defined problems are used to trace how age-related cognitive decline affects the specific abilities that are vital to maintaining an individual's autonomy over and above those abilities measured by tests of primary mental abilities. 24 , 28 , 30 Often, researchers who use tasks that include well-defined everyday problems are trying to replicate specific activities from everyday life within the lab to systematically examine where functional deficits may occur. These tasks provide useful information as to which skills might be most affected in an individual, 31 opening up the possibility for future skills training geared toward forestalling further losses. 32 , 33

In addition to assessing individuals' ability to generate the single correct solution found in each well-defined everyday problem, other researchers assess everyday problem-solving performance by posing ill-defined hypothetical problems and counting the number of safe and effective solutions that can be generated by each participant. In an ill-defined problem, participants are asked to identify all of the ways that they might overcome an obstacle to a goal to reach an acceptable outcome. 34 , 35 The participants' solutions are then examined by coders to ensure that they are in fact safe and effective ways to resolve the problem before being tallied as an indicator of everyday problem-solving ability. A sample problem from such a test might ask the participants to consider ways in which a man with heart problems might still be able to complete summer maintenance and landscaping duties around his house even though his doctor has told him to refrain from strenuous physical activity and even though he does not have enough money to hire someone to do the work for him. 36 Researchers use everyday problem-solving assessments that consist of ill-defined problems in order to allow participant-specific experiences to inform the solutions that are generated. For instance, suppose that one is asked to balance a checkbook in a well-defined everyday problem-solving task, this activity requires that the individual demonstrate addition and subtraction skills. If an ill-defined problem involved balancing one's checkbook or managing finances, then recommending the addition of deposits and subtraction of expenditures would be an effective solution. However, recommending that one seek assistance from someone who has experience balancing a checkbook would also be an effective solution. Ultimately, tasks using ill-defined problems have the potential to capture other solutions that a person may find that go beyond the most common strategy for resolving the issue at hand.

From young adulthood until middle age, the fluency of solution generation increases, possibly reflecting the appropriate balance between gains stemming from pragmatic life experience and only minimal structural or neurological decline. However, performance declines slightly in one's 50s and throughout the remainder of one's years. 35 Similarly, when social problem solving was examined via ill-defined problems, again an inverted U-shaped function characterized performance, with solution fluency peaking in one's 40s and 50s, and declining thereafter. 37 This finding is important because perceived quality of life is closely linked to one's ability to function independently 38 – 40 and solve everyday problems that might emerge on occasion 41 , 42 that are both linked to mortality. 43 – 45 Despite there being numerous studies that link advancing age to declines in everyday problem-solving ability, 46 , 47 other studies have identified areas in which we improve in everyday problem solving with age. Studies that do not demonstrate the similar levels of age-related decline in problem-solving performance often rely on an operational definition of problem solving efficacy that differs from a focus on solution fluency (i.e., the number of safe and effective solutions generated). Table 1 includes some of the ways that researchers have defined everyday problem-solving effectiveness.

Operationalizing effective everyday problem solving

Everyday problem-solving performance dependent on manner of assessment

What defines success when solving everyday problems? In the aforementioned studies, when faced with a well-defined problem, success was based on whether the participant provided the single best solution. When faced with an ill-defined problem, success was based on the overall number of safe and effective solutions that the individual offered as potential ways of managing the problem. In general, with these definitions of success, advancing age is associated with a decline in everyday problem solving performance. 46 Although these definitions of effectiveness provide a useful metric for problem solving success, they are not without their limitations. The one-solution definition of success assumes that there may only be one way to solve a well-defined problem and that such problems are generally solved in isolation instead of with the assistance of others or with supplemental information. Additionally, the solution-fluency definition of success assumes that the solutions that are generated reflect the maximum number of solutions accessible to the participants when in actuality they may reflect those solutions that the participants believed to be most relevant to or efficacious for a given problem.

When you examine the actual strategies that young and older individuals use (or recommend) to solve problems, older adults may fare better than expected because the previously mentioned techniques for assessing everyday problem-solving performance underestimate the value of the behaviors evinced by older adults when they are coping with an everyday problem. 17 , 18 Specifically, the conventional ways of operationalizing everyday problem solving success fail to account for the quality of individual solutions that are generated. They also do not account for the evolving nature of the everyday problem solving process, including the temporal and environmental limitations on direct action that might be imposed on the problem solver by the problem space. Finally, they ignore the impact that nominated solutions have on the participants' well-being and on their ability to meet the goals that they have set for resolving the problem. Given these limitations, additional definitions of everyday problem-solving success have emerged in order to broaden the scope with which age differences in the everyday problem-solving process are examined.

For instance, Cornelius and Caspi defined everyday problem solving success in terms of the degree to which participants' recommended solutions matched those of an expert panel consisting of developmental psychologists as well as young, middle-aged, and older adult lay people. They asked participants ranging in age from 20 to 78 years to consider 48 hypothetical, ill-defined problems from six domains of everyday functioning (i.e., family, friend, work, home, consumer, and information gathering) included in their Everyday Problem Solving Inventory (EPSI). 48 Participants indicated the extent to which they might use each of four specific strategies, tailored to each problem, in an attempt to reach a resolution: purposeful action (self-initiated action to directly resolve the problem), cognitive analysis (planning action and thinking about the situation to better understand it), passive-dependent behavior (doing nothing to change the situation or relying on others to step in), and avoidant thinking and denial (distracting one's attention away from the problem, avoiding responsibility for the problem, or denying one's emotions). Other studies conducted at this point in time were also relying on similar coping-based techniques for operationalizing the diversity of problem-solving strategies that may be employed to manage stressors like those in the EPSI. 49 , 50 After the participants responded, their recommended strategies were compared to those selected by an expert panel as ideal, and an effectiveness correlation was calculated and examined by age group. Overall, older individuals chose strategies that more closely matched those recommended by the expert panel than did younger age groups. This finding runs counter to previous findings that have been discussed demonstrating that problem-solving ability peaks in mid-life and then declines.

This age-related enhancement in everyday problem solving was later replicated using the same set of problems from the EPSI, parsimoniously redistributing them into achievement-oriented and interpersonal domains. 51 Again, older adults were more effective than young adults in their overall choice of strategies for solving everyday problems. Moreover, older adults were more effective than young adults in choosing strategies to resolve hypothetical social conflicts (e.g., how to react when your peers gossip about one of your closest friends). The major reason for this outcome is that older adults were more likely to implement combinations of strategies that included both problem-focused solutions (e.g., purposeful action) and emotion-focused solutions (avoidance and passive dependence). As had been noted by Blanchard-Fields and her colleagues in prior research, older adults approach everyday problems involving interpersonal conflict in ways that are fundamentally different from young adults and in ways that possibly reflect age-appropriate differences in social motivation and experience that guide older adults to be more mindful of the emotions evoked by problems. 19 , 52

Although older adults are less accurate than young adults when solving well-defined instrumental everyday problems and less fluent when generating solutions for ill-defined everyday problems in tasks that do not recognize the value of emotion recognition in the problem-solving process, 46 older adults display a consistent advantage over young adults when problem solving success is defined in terms of one's ability to implement a diverse repertoire of strategies that meet the practical and emotional challenges created by problems. 18 This divergence in outcomes emerges because of the differences that exist in the two dominant approaches to research on everyday problem solving and aging. The method of investigation used, including the operational definition of problem-solving success, influences the conclusions that are drawn about how everyday problem solving performance changes across the adult half of the life span. This can make it quite challenging to compare outcomes across tasks. 53 Ultimately, though, each technique seeks to characterize the diversity of solutions offered by the population to manage everyday problems. Errors that individuals make while completing well-defined problems can help inform the research and development conducted by those who design consumer products, financial forms, and even home environments by specifying which parameters need to be changed to promote a more user friendly experience for people of all ages. Additionally, the breadth of emotion-focused coping strategies offered by individuals facing challenging interpersonal conflicts can be used to develop age-specific norms that can inform mental health professionals of those strategies that would be most relevant to patients at different points in their life. In their own ways, each technique strives to add more information to the existing literature on ways that people of all ages can elevate their sense of well-being while continuing to maintain their autonomy and social functioning.

Contextual factors that contribute to age differences in everyday problem solving

Over the past two decades, researchers have recognized that everyday problem solving can be influenced by many person-specific (e.g., sensory abilities and level of cognitive functioning) and age-typical (e.g., communion-oriented goals or time constraints imposed by thoughts about the end of life) contextual factors. Consequently, the literature is replete with examples of studies that attempt to measure the correlational impact of contextual factors on everyday functioning or that directly manipulate context to track how such interventions affect solution quality and strategy preference. These studies are valuable to the field because they inform practitioners (e.g., medical doctors, nurses, rehabilitation therapists, mental health professionals, and financial advisors) about the roles that cognitive ability and personal motivation play in driving adult decision making. Earlier, it was already noted that cognitive functioning predicts everyday problem-solving performance. 25 , 28 , 33 In fact, recent research suggests that individual differences in cognitive functioning mediate the relationship between poor health status and poor everyday problem-solving performance. 47 Some possible factors that underlie this mediation effect include wide variation (or inconsistency) in response time and age-associated decline in sensory abilities. 54 – 56 These findings tie back to Baltes' hypothesis that we become most susceptible to functional deficits in old age when our neurological architecture degrades to the point where we have difficulty implementing the knowledge that we have gained from our past experiences as we cope with current obstacles to our goals. 20 Consistent with the idea that our own personal goals and our appraisals of problems matter and shape our choices, other researchers have proceeded forward knowing that, although cognitive ability can factor into everyday problem-solving performance, personal relevance and social context also influence how we solve everyday problems. Figure 1 illustrates the mediating role that social context can have on everyday problem-solving performance.

Contextual factors that influence solution implementation in everyday problem-solving tasks.

When faced with a challenge that is not personally meaningful to us, it is reasonable to expect that our feelings of self-efficacy toward our solutions might be less than they would have otherwise been if we were faced with a problem that was more relevant to our own personal history. This prediction is supported by the work of Artistico et al ., who identified that age differences in everyday problem-solving performance map on to the divergent feelings of self-efficacy held by young and older adults when solving problems that either were age relevant or were not relevant to their own age group. 57 , 58 Problems that are more relevant to our current stage of life might be easier to resolve because (a) the problem's context may be more familiar to use, (b) solutions to past similar problems are still accessible, and (c) our peers may also be familiar with these problems and could offer instrumental and emotional support. Intuitively, how much personal experience we have with a given problem should predict how successful we are at solving it. However, Berg et al . have found that experience with the problem itself matters less in producing age differences in everyday problem solving than does the heuristic-oriented (or experiential-based) reasoning implemented by older adults and not younger adults when completing problem solving tasks. 59 Specifically, Berg et al . demonstrated that older adults may be less motivated than young adults to produce as exhaustive of a list of potential solutions to problems or to consider as much information when generating solutions. This behavioral tendency of older adults has appeared in decision making research over the past 20 years and is discussed throughout this review volume. Ultimately, future research will continue to examine whether this practice is being driven by cognitive decline or by a fundamental shift in the reward structure that motivates decisions in the latter half of life. 60 – 62

The impact that personal relevance has on everyday problem solving may stem from how it facilitates several other appraisal processes that force us to examine the contextual features of problems in more details. Specifically, we have to assess what may be the source of a problem (e.g., domain and cause), our goals for coping with the problem, and the types of solutions that may lead to the best outcomes for the problem. Blanchard-Fields and colleagues have identified that younger and older adults choose similar forms of purposeful action- and planning-oriented strategies (also known as problem-focused strategies) when faced with instrumental problems, or problems that merely present some obstacle to the individual who is trying to achieve some personal goal that does not involve other people or relationships, neither directly nor indirectly. 18 , 63 This finding is not surprising given that it is most adaptive to combat the source of the problem directly in these types of situations (e.g., a flat tire on a car or a broken iPod). 64 Interestingly, younger adults are more likely than older adults to use emotion-focused strategies when faced with instrumental problems. 63 This may occur because young people do not have the same personal freedom (e.g., time constraints) and monetary resources at their disposal as older individuals do to invest in clearing obstacles to achievement-oriented problems. If you cannot do something to resolve the problem yourself, you may have to depend on others for assistance. Consequently, passive dependence or attempts to avoid or deny the existence of the obstacle can be an effective way to reduce the disappointment or frustration that one experiences when a goal is thwarted. 18 Developmentally, we would expect young and older adults to offer different solutions to instrumental problems.

Likewise, when faced with interpersonal problems, we might predict that how one responds may depend upon where they currently fall along the developmental spectrum. Early in life, individuals are focused on gathering information, seeking novel experiences, and meeting new people. In the latter half of life, however, the focus shifts toward investing resources in our current relationships to maintain strong socioemotional bonds. 15 , 64 This means that young adults have more social capital to spare and can afford to engage in more argumentative or confrontational strategies for resolving interpersonal problems than can older adults. 65 Whereas young adults focus on balancing short-term negativity with long-term happiness, older adults are focused on being happy today. Simply put, older adults are more likely than young adults to focus on strategies that squelch those negative emotions that are toxic or threaten relationships because they do not have as much time left in life to enjoy these relationships. 15 , 18 For example, in a seminal paper in everyday problem solving and aging, Blanchard-Fields and colleagues found that older adults were more likely thanyoung adults to engage inavoidant-denial strategies when faced with interpersonal problems that were emotionally evocative. 66 Older adults appear to be more keenly aware of when it is important to step away from a conflict to cool off and when it is valuable to delay reacting so as to avoid from fanning the flames. 52 , 67 Consistent with this interpretation, older adults have been found to experience less anger during interpersonal conflicts. 68 , 69 More-over, from middle adulthood through old age, there is a greater emphasis placed on secondary control striving, or the need to internally regulate our reactivity to an environment that might fall outside of our control. 70 With respect to interpersonal everyday problems, the latter half of life is when we realize that attempting to change the behaviors of others might be counterproductive because doing so might exacerbate conflict. A substantial component of this is recognizing that interpersonal harmony requires working within the boundaries of relationships and considering the mutual goals that we have with our relationship partners.

Future directions

The research reviewed up to this point has highlighted how the methods used to assess everyday problem solving contribute to age differences in everyday problem solving performance. It has also presented some of the factors that are responsible for eliciting age differences in strategy selection when researchers focus on the dynamics of how young and older adults react to everyday problems. With the emergence of socioemotional selectivity theory in cognitive aging, there has been a renewed focus on the role that age differences in goals play in motivating everyday decisions. 15 Specifically, an increased emphasis has been placed on trying to gain a deeper understanding of the ways that emotion regulatory and relational communion goals drive older adults' behavioral tendencies when faced with stress or everyday problems. Strough, Berg, and Sansone were among the first to provide evidence that young and older adults approached interpersonal interactions with different goal sets in mind. 71 Their research suggested that older adults were more supportive of social others than were young adults when pursuing the resolution to everyday problems. They interpreted this to suggest that older adults were more focused on generativity, whereas young adults were focused on independence. What is most remarkable about this finding is that, in old age, when individuals face the greatest potential for cognitive and physical decline as well as thwarted instrumental goals, they realign their priorities in order to provide support to their friends and family. Future research in this field will examine how older adults capitalize on their interpersonal focus to live happy and healthy lives. 72 It will also characterize the relational contexts under which older adults are most at risk for stress or which predispose older adults to health problems.

Emerging from the discussion on how we should define successful everyday problem solving was the recognition that individuals would experience the greatest sense of well-being when they selected problem solving strategies that matched their personal goals for the situation in which they found themselves. 18 , 71 , 73 In other words, if your chosen course of action allowed you to meet your goal for the problem, then you will be successful at resolving that problem. Although shockingly simple in theory, in practice, this perspective creates some challenging methodological and statistical hurdles for the researcher to negotiate. For instance, if you want to assess the match between goals and strategies in real time, you have to collect information on the participant's current goals, carefully distinguishing between short-term interests and longer-term life philosophies. Next, you have to wait for a problem to arise and then track how the participant resolves it. If the problem involves someone else, then you have to determine if there is a match between the goals of both parties involved and then examine the strategies of each individual to see how they contribute to individual and collective goals. Time-sampling studies, which ask people to report their goals, the obstacles that they experience to their goals, their emotional reactions to such obstacles, as well as the strategies that they are using to manage these obstacles are currently in progress. 74 Using archival data from a study in which participants ranging in age from 15 to 84 years were asked to discuss a problem from their own lives, Hoppmann, Coats, and Blanchard-Fields found that younger individuals were most likely to match autonomy goals (e.g., independence of action) with self-focused strategies, whereas older adults matched generativity goals with other-focused strategies. 75 These findings highlight the importance of considering goals when trying to account for why young and older adults may arrive at different resolutions to their problems.

Although numerous studies have examined the types of problem- and emotion-focused coping strategies that young and older adults endorse when faced with everyday problems, few studies have examined the interpersonal interactions that occur between individuals as they collaboratively solve everyday problems. As mentioned earlier, older adults display passive dependent strategies at times during a conflict when action may worsen the negativity experienced by both interaction partners, whereas young adults are willing to be confrontational. For instance, when working with a friend to generate as many solutions as possible to hypothetical interpersonal problems, older adults were more likely than young adults to recommend help seeking and careful planning, whereas young adults were more likely to recommend verbally aggressive self-assertion. 76 In other words, when collaborating with a friend, older adults are more likely than young adults to agree that interpersonally destructive strategies are not the best way to resolve conflict. This may reflect a shared recognition in the importance of reducing the potential for making the problem worse. Aside from looking at the strategies nominated by collaborators, Berg et al . have also examined the ways that collaborators treat one another while working to solve problems. In a study examining how partners in older couples collaboratively coped with prostate cancer, husbands and wives both benefited emotionally from working with one another if they were satisfied with their marriage. 77 In a second study, middle-aged and older married couples were asked to discuss an ongoing conflict and to also collaborate with one another to complete an instrumental planning task. 78 Older couples experienced less negative affect during the conflict if they were satisfied with their marriage. However, contrary to the prediction that older couples may behave more passively toward one another during conflict, older couples did express negativity toward one another (especially wives) during the discussion of their conflict. Additionally, when working on the instrumental task, members of older adult couples were warm when attempting to exert control over their partner during the task. When taken together, these findings suggest that jointly reported marital satisfaction can be important for fostering collaborative efforts between partners when coping with health problems, resolving an interpersonal spat, and even when dealing with the daily chores and errands of everyday life. 79 Future research should continue to examine the dynamic role of partner involvement in everyday problem solving performance to identify which relationship factors are most valuable for predicting long-term health and well-being.

Conclusions

One of the central themes of research examining everyday problem solving across the life span has been to identify the trajectory of change in performance throughout the years as we gain experience and knowledge while simultaneously displaying cognitive and physical declines. The impact of cognitive decline on everyday problem solving is most evident when examining the outcomes of studies that use tasks consisting of well-defined problems. Studies using tasks consisting of ill-defined problems produce mixed evidence of both decline and maintenance, depending on the manner with which problem-solving success is operationally defined. Based on more recent findings, however, it is clear that those individuals in their latter half of life are motivated by interpersonal factors that are important to young people but just are not prioritized to the same degree. Future research needs to further clarify the role that interpersonal interaction plays in promoting successful everyday problem solving. Outside of the lab environment, older adults continue to make autonomous choices while also working interdependently with members of their social network. Although cognitive and physical decline are inevitable to some degree for all of us, it seems that a shared decision space between close partners may go a long way to promote sustained well-being, physical health, and everyday cognition.

Conflicts of interest The author declares no conflicts of interest.

22 Working in Diverse Teams

Learning Objectives

• Describe how diversity can enhance decision-making and problem-solving
• Identify challenges and best practices for working with multicultural teams
• Discuss divergent cultural characteristics and list several examples of such characteristics in the culture(s) you identify with

Decision-making and problem-solving can be much more dynamic and successful when performed in a diverse team environment. The multiple diverse perspectives can enhance both the understanding of the problem and the quality of the solution. Yet, working in diverse teams can be challenging given different identities, cultures, beliefs, and experiences. In this chapter, we will discuss the effects of team diversity on group decision-making and problem-solving, identify best practices and challenges for working in and with multicultural teams, and dig deeper into divergent cultural characteristics that teams may need to navigate.

Does Team Diversity Enhance Decision Making and Problem Solving?

In the Harvard Business Review article “Why Diverse Teams are Smarter,” David Rock and Heidi Grant (2016) support the idea that increasing workplace diversity is a good business decision. A 2015 McKinsey report on 366 public companies found that those in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean, and those in the top quartile for gender diversity were 15% more likely to have returns above the industry mean. Similarly, in a global analysis conducted by Credit Suisse, organizations with at least one female board member yielded a higher return on equity and higher net income growth than those that did not have any women on the board.

Additional research on diversity has shown that diverse teams are better at decision-making and problem-solving because they tend to focus more on facts, per the Rock and Grant article. A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology showed that people from diverse backgrounds “might actually alter the behavior of a group’s social majority in ways that lead to improved and more accurate group thinking.” It turned out that in the study, the diverse panels raised more facts related to the case than homogeneous panels and made fewer factual errors while discussing available evidence. Another study noted in the article showed that diverse teams are “more likely to constantly reexamine facts and remain objective. They may also encourage greater scrutiny of each member’s actions, keeping their joint cognitive resources sharp and vigilant. By breaking up workforce homogeneity, you can allow your employees to become more aware of their own potential biases—entrenched ways of thinking that can otherwise blind them to key information and even lead them to make errors in decision-making processes.” In other words, when people are among homogeneous and like-minded (non-diverse) teammates, the team is susceptible to groupthink and may be reticent to think about opposing viewpoints since all team members are in alignment. In a more diverse team with a variety of backgrounds and experiences, the opposing viewpoints are more likely to come out and the team members feel obligated to research and address the questions that have been raised. Again, this enables a richer discussion and a more in-depth fact-finding and exploration of opposing ideas and viewpoints in order to solve problems.

Diversity in teams also leads to greater innovation. A Boston Consulting Group article entitled “The Mix that Matters: Innovation through Diversity” explains a study in which they sought to understand the relationship between diversity in managers (all management levels) and innovation (Lorenzo et al., 2017). The key findings of this study show that:

• The positive relationship between management diversity and innovation is statistically significant—and thus companies with higher levels of diversity derive more revenue from new products and services.
• The innovation boost isn’t limited to a single type of diversity. The presence of managers who are either female or are from other countries, industries, or companies can cause an increase in innovation.
• Management diversity seems to have a particularly positive effect on innovation at complex companies—those that have multiple product lines or that operate in multiple industry segments.
• To reach its potential, gender diversity needs to go beyond tokenism. In the study, innovation performance only increased significantly when the workforce included more than 20% women in management positions. Having a high percentage of female employees doesn’t increase innovation if only a small number of women are managers.
• At companies with diverse management teams, openness to contributions from lower-level workers and an environment in which employees feel free to speak their minds are crucial for fostering innovation.

When you consider the impact that diverse teams have on decision-making and problem-solving—through the discussion and incorporation of new perspectives, ideas, and data—it is no wonder that the BCG study shows greater innovation. Team leaders need to reflect upon these findings during the early stages of team selection so that they can reap the benefits of having diverse voices and backgrounds.

Challenges and Best Practices for Working with Multicultural Teams

As globalization has increased over the last decades, workplaces have felt the impact of working within multicultural teams. The earlier section on team diversity outlined some of the highlights and benefits of working on diverse teams, and a multicultural group certainly qualifies as diverse. However, there are some key practices that are recommended to those who are leading multicultural teams so that they can parlay the diversity into an advantage and not be derailed by it.

People may assume that communication is the key factor that can derail multicultural teams, as participants may have different languages and communication styles. In the Harvard Business Review article “Managing Multicultural Teams,” Brett et al. (2006) outline four key cultural differences that can cause destructive conflicts in a team. The first difference is direct versus indirect communication, also known as high-context vs. low-context communication . Some cultures are very direct and explicit in their communication, while others are more indirect and ask questions rather than pointing our problems. This difference can cause conflict because, at the extreme, the direct style may be considered offensive by some, while the indirect style may be perceived as unproductive and passive-aggressive in team interactions.

The second difference that multicultural teams may face is trouble with accents and fluency. When team members don’t speak the same language, there may be one language that dominates the group interaction—and those who don’t speak it may feel left out. The speakers of the primary language may feel that those members don’t contribute as much or are less competent. The next challenge is when there are differing attitudes toward hierarchy. Some cultures are very respectful of the hierarchy and will treat team members based on that hierarchy. Other cultures are more egalitarian and don’t observe hierarchical differences to the same degree. This may lead to clashes if some people feel that they are being disrespected and not treated according to their status. The final difference that may challenge multicultural teams is conflicting decision-making norms. Different cultures make decisions differently, and some will apply a great deal of analysis and preparation beforehand. Those cultures that make decisions more quickly (and need just enough information to make a decision) may be frustrated with the slow response and relatively longer thought process.

These cultural differences are good examples of how everyday team activities (decision-making, communication, interaction among team members) may become points of contention for a multicultural team if there isn’t adequate understanding of everyone’s culture. The authors propose that there are several potential interventions to try if these conflicts arise. One simple intervention is adaptation , which is working with or around differences. This is best used when team members are willing to acknowledge the cultural differences and learn how to work with them. The next intervention technique is structural intervention , or reorganizing to reduce friction on the team. This technique is best used if there are unproductive subgroups or cliques within the team that need to be moved around. Managerial intervention is the technique of making decisions by management and without team involvement. This technique is one that should be used sparingly, as it essentially shows that the team needs guidance and can’t move forward without management getting involved. Finally, exit is an intervention of last resort, and is the voluntary or involuntary removal of a team member. If the differences and challenges have proven to be so great that an individual on the team can no longer work with the team productively, then it may be necessary to remove the team member in question.

Developing Cultural Intelligence

There are some people who seem to be innately aware of and able to work with cultural differences on teams and in their organizations. These individuals might be said to have cultural intelligence . Cultural intelligence  is a competency and a skill that enables individuals to function effectively in cross-cultural environments. It develops as people become more aware of the influence of culture and more capable of adapting their behavior to the norms of other cultures. In the IESE Insight article entitled “Cultural Competence: Why It Matters and How You Can Acquire It,” Lee and Liao (2015) assert that “multicultural leaders may relate better to team members from different cultures and resolve conflicts more easily. Their multiple talents can also be put to good use in international negotiations.” Multicultural leaders don’t have a lot of “baggage” from any one culture, and so are sometimes perceived as being culturally neutral. They are very good at handling diversity, which gives them a great advantage in their relationships with teammates.

In order to help people become better team members in a world that is increasingly multicultural, there are a few best practices that the authors recommend for honing cross-cultural skills. The first is to “broaden your mind”—expand your own cultural channels (travel, movies, books) and surround yourself with people from other cultures. This helps to raise your own awareness of the cultural differences and norms that you may encounter. Another best practice is to “develop your cross-cultural skills through practice” and experiential learning. You may have the opportunity to work or travel abroad—but if you don’t, then getting to know some of your company’s cross-cultural colleagues or foreign visitors will help you to practice your skills. Serving on a cross-cultural project team and taking the time to get to know and bond with your global colleagues is an excellent way to develop skills.

Once you have a sense of the different cultures and have started to work on developing your cross-cultural skills, another good practice is to “boost your cultural metacognition” and monitor your own behavior in multicultural situations. When you are in a situation in which you are interacting with multicultural individuals, you should test yourself and be aware of how you act and feel. Observe both your positive and negative interactions with people, and learn from them. Developing “ cognitive complexity ” is the final best practice for boosting multicultural skills. This is the most advanced, and it requires being able to view situations from more than one cultural framework. In order to see things from another perspective, you need to have a strong sense of emotional intelligence, empathy, and sympathy, and be willing to engage in honest communications.

In the Harvard Business Review article “Cultural Intelligence,” Earley and Mosakowski (2004) describe three sources of cultural intelligence that teams should consider if they are serious about becoming more adept in their cross-cultural skills and understanding. These sources, very simply, are head, body, and heart . One first learns about the beliefs, customs, and taboos of foreign cultures via the head . Training programs are based on providing this type of overview information—which is helpful, but obviously isn’t experiential. This is the cognitive component of cultural intelligence. The second source, the body , involves more commitment and experimentation with the new culture. It is this physical component (demeanor, eye contact, posture, accent) that shows a deeper level of understanding of the new culture and its physical manifestations. The final source, the heart , deals with a person’s own confidence in their ability to adapt to and deal well with cultures outside of their own. Heart really speaks to one’s own level of emotional commitment and motivation to understand the new culture.

The authors have created a quick assessment to diagnose cultural intelligence, based on these cognitive, physical, and emotional/motivational measures (i.e., head, body, heart). Please refer to the table below for a short diagnostic that allows you to assess your cultural intelligence.

Cultural intelligence is an extension of emotional intelligence. An individual must have a level of awareness and understanding of the new culture so that he or she can adapt to the style, pace, language, nonverbal communication, etc. and work together successfully with the new culture. A multicultural team can only find success if its members take the time to understand each other and ensure that everyone feels included. Multiculturalism and cultural intelligence are traits that are taking on increasing importance in the business world today. By following best practices and avoiding the challenges and pitfalls that can derail a multicultural team, a team can find great success and personal fulfillment well beyond the boundaries of the project or work engagement.

Digging in Deeper: Divergent Cultural Dimensions

Let’s dig in deeper by examining several points of divergence across cultures and consider how these dimensions might play out in organizations and in groups or teams.

Low-Power versus High-Power Distance

How comfortable are you with critiquing your boss’s decisions? If you are from a low-power distance culture, your answer might be “no problem.” In low-power distance cultures , according to Dutch researcher Geert Hofstede, people relate to one another more as equals and less as a reflection of dominant or subordinate roles, regardless of their actual formal roles as employee and manager, for example.

In a high-power distance culture , you would probably be much less likely to challenge the decision, to provide an alternative, or to give input. If you are working with people from a high-power distance culture, you may need to take extra care to elicit feedback and involve them in the discussion because their cultural framework may preclude their participation. They may have learned that less powerful people must accept decisions without comment, even if they have a concern or know there is a significant problem. Unless you are sensitive to cultural orientation and power distance, you may lose valuable information.

Individualistic versus Collectivist Cultures

People in individualistic cultures  value individual freedom and personal independence, and cultures always have stories to reflect their values. You may recall the story of Superman, or John McLean in the Diehard series, and note how one person overcomes all obstacles. Through personal ingenuity, in spite of challenges, one person rises successfully to conquer or vanquish those obstacles. Sometimes there is an assist, as in basketball or football, where another person lends a hand, but still the story repeats itself again and again, reflecting the cultural viewpoint.

When Hofstede explored the concepts of individualism and collectivism across diverse cultures (Hofstede, 1982, 2001, 2005), he found that in individualistic cultures like the United States, people perceived their world primarily from their own viewpoint. They perceived themselves as empowered individuals, capable of making their own decisions, and able to make an impact on their own lives.

Cultural viewpoint is not an either/or dichotomy, but rather a continuum or range. You may belong to some communities that express individualistic cultural values, while others place the focus on a collective viewpoint. Collectivist cultures  (Hofstede, 1982), including many in Asia and South America, focus on the needs of the nation, community, family, or group of workers. Ownership and private property is one way to examine this difference. In some cultures, property is almost exclusively private, while others tend toward community ownership. The collectively owned resource returns benefits to the community. Water, for example, has long been viewed as a community resource, much like air, but that has been changing as business and organizations have purchased water rights and gained control over resources. Public lands, such as parks, are often considered public, and individual exploitation of them is restricted. Copper, a metal with a variety of industrial applications, is collectively owned in Chile, with profits deposited in the general government fund. While public and private initiatives exist, the cultural viewpoint is our topic. How does someone raised in a culture that emphasizes the community interact with someone raised in a primarily individualistic culture? How could tensions be expressed and how might interactions be influenced by this point of divergence?

Masculine versus Feminine Orientation

There was a time when many cultures and religions valued a female figurehead, and with the rise of Western cultures we have observed a shift toward a masculine ideal. Each carries with it a set of cultural expectations and norms for gender behavior and gender roles across life, including business.

Hofstede describes the masculine-feminine dichotomy not in terms of whether men or women hold the power in a given culture, but rather the extent to which that culture values certain traits that may be considered masculine or feminine . Thus, “the assertive pole has been called ‘masculine’ and the modest, caring pole ‘feminine.’ The women in feminine countries have the same modest, caring values as the men; in the masculine countries they are somewhat assertive and competitive, but not as much as the men, so that these countries show a gap between men’s values and women’s values” (Hofstede, 2009).

We can observe this difference in where people gather, how they interact, and how they dress. We can see it during business negotiations, where it may make an important difference in the success of the organizations involved. Cultural expectations precede the interaction, so someone who doesn’t match those expectations may experience tension. Business in the United States has a masculine orientation—assertiveness and competition are highly valued. In other cultures, such as Sweden, business values are more attuned to modesty (lack of self-promotion) and taking care of society’s weaker members. This range of difference is one aspect of intercultural communication that requires significant attention when the business communicator enters a new environment.

Uncertainty-Accepting Cultures versus Uncertainty-Rejecting Cultures

When we meet each other for the first time, we often use what we have previously learned to understand our current context. We also do this to reduce our uncertainty. Some cultures, such as the United States and Britain, are highly tolerant of uncertainty , while others go to great lengths to reduce the element of surprise. Cultures in the Arab world, for example, are high in uncertainty avoidance ; they tend to be resistant to change and reluctant to take risks. Whereas a U.S. business negotiator might enthusiastically agree to try a new procedure, the Egyptian counterpart would likely refuse to get involved until all the details are worked out.

Short-Term versus Long-Term Orientation

Do you want your reward right now or can you dedicate yourself to a long-term goal? You may work in a culture whose people value immediate results and grow impatient when those results do not materialize. Geert Hofstede discusses this relationship of time orientation to a culture as a “time horizon,” and it underscores the perspective of the individual within a cultural context. Many countries in Asia, influenced by the teachings of Confucius, value a long-term orientation, whereas other countries, including the United States, have a more short-term approach to life and results. Native American cultures are known for holding a long-term orientation, as illustrated by the proverb attributed to the Iroquois that decisions require contemplation of their impact seven generations removed.

If you work within a culture that has a short-term orientation ,  you may need to place greater emphasis on reciprocation of greetings, gifts, and rewards. For example, if you send a thank-you note the morning after being treated to a business dinner, your host will appreciate your promptness. While there may be a respect for tradition, there is also an emphasis on personal representation and honor, a reflection of identity and integrity. Personal stability and consistency are also valued in a short-term oriented culture, contributing to an overall sense of predictability and familiarity.

Long-term orientation  is often marked by persistence, thrift and frugality, and an order to relationships based on age and status. A sense of shame for the family and community is also observed across generations. What an individual does reflects on the family and is carried by immediate and extended family members.

Time Orientation

Edward T. Hall and Mildred Reed Hall (1987) state that monochronic time-oriented cultures consider one thing at a time, whereas polychronic time-oriented cultures schedule many things at one time, and time is considered in a more fluid sense. In monochromatic time , time is thought of as very linear, interruptions are to be avoided, and everything has its own specific time. Even the multitasker from a monochromatic culture will, for example, recognize the value of work first before play or personal time. The United States, Germany, and Switzerland are often noted as countries that value a monochromatic time orientation.

Polychromatic time  looks a little more complicated, with business and family mixing with dinner and dancing. Greece, Italy, Chile, and Saudi Arabia are countries where one can observe this perception of time; business meetings may be scheduled at a fixed time, but when they actually begin may be another story. Also note that the dinner invitation for 8 p.m. may in reality be more like 9 p.m. If you were to show up on time, you might be the first person to arrive and find that the hosts are not quite ready to receive you.

When in doubt, always ask before the event; many people from polychromatic cultures will be used to foreigner’s tendency to be punctual, even compulsive, about respecting established times for events. The skilled business communicator is aware of this difference and takes steps to anticipate it. The value of time in different cultures is expressed in many ways, and your understanding can help you communicate more effectively.

Review & Reflection Questions

• Why are diverse teams better at decision-making and problem-solving?
• What are some of the challenges that multicultural teams face?
• How might you further cultivate your own cultural intelligence?
• What are some potential points of divergence between cultures?
• Brett, J., Behfar, K., Kern, M. (2006, November). Managing multicultural teams. Harvard Business Review . https://hbr.org/2006/11/managing-multicultural-teams
• Dodd, C. (1998). Dynamics of intercultural communication (5th ed.). New York, NY: Harper & Row.
• Earley, P.C., & Mosakowski, E. (2004, October). Cultural intelligence. Harvard Business Review . https://hbr.org/2004/10/cultural-intelligence
• Hall, M. R., & Hall, E. T. (1987). Hidden differences: Doing business with the Japanese . New York, NY: Doubleday.
• Hofstede, G. (1982). Culture’s consequences (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Hofstede, G. (2005). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
• Lee, Y-T., & Liao, Y. (2015). Cultural competence: Why it matters and how you can acquire it. IESE Insight . https://www.ieseinsight.com/doc.aspx?id=1733&ar=20
• Lorenzo, R., Yoigt, N., Schetelig, K., Zawadzki, A., Welpe, I., & Brosi, P. (2017). The mix that matters: Innovation through diversity. Boston Consulting Group. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/people-organization-leadership-talent-innovation-through-diversity-mix-that-matters.aspx
• Rock, D., & Grant, H. (2016, November 4). Why diverse teams are smarter . Harvard Business Review . https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter

Author & Attribution

This remix comes from Dr. Jasmine Linabary at Emporia State University. This chapter is also available in her book:  Small Group Communication: Forming and Sustaining Teams.

The sections “How Does Team Diversity Enhance Decision Making and Problem Solving?” and “Challenges and Best Practices for Working with Multicultural Teams” are adapted from Black, J.S., & Bright, D.S. (2019). Organizational behavior. OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/organizational-behavior/ . Access the full chapter for free here . The content is available under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 license .

The section “Digging in Deeper: Divergent Cultural Dimensions” is adapted from “ Divergent Cultural Characteristics ” in Business Communication for Success from the University of Minnesota. The book was adapted from a work produced and distributed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA) by a publisher who has requested that they and the original author not receive attribution. This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license .

A set of negative group-level processes, including illusions of invulnerability, self-censorship, and pressures to conform, that occur when highly cohesive groups seek concurrence when making a decision.

a culture that emphasize nonverbal communication and indirect communication styles

a culture that emphasizes verbal expression and direct communication styles

a competency and a skill that enables individuals to function effectively in cross-cultural environments

cultures in which people relate to one another more as equals and less as a reflection of dominant or subordinate roles, regardless of their actual formal roles

culture tends to accept power differences, encourage hierarchy, and show respect for rank and authority

cultures that place greater importance on individual freedom and personal independence

cultures that place more value on the needs and goals of the group, family, community or nation

cultures that tend to value assertiveness, and concentrate on material achievements and wealth-building

cultures that tend to value nurturing, care and emotion, and are concerned with the quality of life

cultures with a high tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity, and risk-taking. The unknown is more openly accepted, and rules and regulations tend to be more lax

cultures with a low tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity, and risk-taking. The unknown is minimized through strict rules and regulations

focus on the near future, involves delivering short-term success or gratification and places a stronger emphasis on the present than the future

cultures that focus on the future and delaying short-term success or gratification in order to achieve long-term success

an orientation to time is considered highly linear, where interruptions are to be avoided, and everything has its own specific time

an orientation to time where multiple things can be done at once and time is viewed more fluidly

Working in Diverse Teams Copyright © 2021 by Cameron W. Piercy, Ph.D. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

Organizations Leadership Oct 1, 2010

Better decisions through diversity, heterogeneity can boost group performance..

Katherine W. Phillips

Katie A. Liljenquist

Margaret A. Neale

Expanding diversity in the workplace is often seen as a good way to inject fresh ideas into an otherwise stagnant environment, and incorporating new perspectives can help members tackle problems from a number of different angles. But only a few have looked into exactly why or how this is so.

New research finds that socially different group members do more than simply introduce new viewpoints or approaches. In the study, diverse groups outperformed more homogeneous groups not because of an influx of new ideas, but because diversity triggered more careful information processing that is absent in homogeneous groups.

The mere presence of diversity in a group creates awkwardness, and the need to diffuse this tension leads to better group problem solving, says Katherine Phillips, an associate professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management. She and her coauthors, Katie A. Liljenquist, an assistant professor at Brigham Young University, and Margaret A. Neale, a professor at Stanford University, demonstrate that while homogenous groups feel more confident in their performance and group interactions, it is the diverse groups that are more successful in completing their tasks.

Diversity in the Workplace Can Produce New Ideas

Though people often feel more comfortable with others like themselves, homogeneity can hamper the exchange of different ideas and stifle the intellectual workout that stems from disagreements. “Generally speaking, people would prefer to spend time with others who agree with them rather than disagree with them,” Phillips explains. But this unbridled affirmation does not always produce the best results. “When you think about diversity, it often comes with more cognitive processing and more exchange of information and more perceptions of conflict,” Phillips says. In diverse settings, people tend to view conversations as a potential source of conflict that can breed negative emotions, and it is these emotions that can blind people to diversity’s upsides: new ideas can emerge, individuals can learn from one another, and they may discover the solution to a problem in the process. “It’s kind of surprising how difficult it is for people to actually see the benefit of the conversations they are having in a diverse setting,” observes Phillips.

“Generally speaking, people would prefer to spend time with others who agree with them rather than disagree with them.”

Phillips says the study is one of the first to look beyond the newcomer’s impact on a group and to focus instead on how the newcomer shifts alliances, thereby enlivening group interaction. “A lot of the research on newcomers has really specifically focused on the effect of newcomers as a source of new information,” Phillips says. “We know though that not all new ideas come from newcomers. Sometimes new ideas are sitting in the group already, just waiting for the right moment to come up.”

In their study, the researchers focus on whether the newcomer to the group agreed or disagreed with established group members, or “oldtimers” as Phillips refers to them. Sometimes a newcomer’s perspective aligned with one held by one or more of the current oldtimers (these agreeing oldtimers were called allies). By identifying allies, Phillips and her colleagues could determine if the benefits of having a newcomer only occurred when they brought in a new idea.

In the experiment, participants from fraternities and sororities were divided into fifty same-gender four-person groups. Each group performed the same task: read a set of interviews conducted by a detective investigating a murder. Participants decided on the most likely suspect individually before entering the groups to discuss his or her decision. In each four-person group, three individuals were always members of the same fraternity or sorority (the oldtimers) and the fourth individual (the newcomer) was either from that same fraternity or sorority (an “in-group”) or from a different one (an “out-group”).

After completing an unrelated task, the oldtimers were brought together and were given twenty minutes to come to a consensus on the most likely murder suspect. Five minutes into the discussion, a newcomer joined the group. Their task remained the same, but now they had to take the newcomer’s views into consideration. After the discussions were finished, each member rated their confidence in the group’s decision on the murder suspect, their feelings on how effective the group discussion went, how each person felt they fit into the group, and who they believed really committed the murder.

The Out-group Advantage

Unsurprisingly, oldtimers felt more comfortable with newcomers who belonged to their sorority or fraternity. But the biggest discovery was the sheer advantage an out-group newcomer gave a group—and this advantage was even more pronounced when the newcomer did not bring in a new idea. Diverse groups with out-group newcomers guessed the correct murder suspect with far greater frequency, while in-group newcomers hindered the groups’ accuracy (Figure 1). And though out-group newcomers increased group accuracy and performance, these groups reported much lower confidence in their decisions.

“When these diverse groups perform well, they don’t recognize their improved performance,” Phillips points out. “When people have visceral feelings and emotions,” she says, “it’s really hard to explain them away as “good” when they are feeling really bad.” Regardless of the outcome, a diverse group’s members will typically feel less confident about their progress largely due to the lack of homogeneity.

Homogeneous groups, on the other hand, were more confident in their decisions, even though they were more often wrong in their conclusions. In non-diverse groups, Phillips says, “often times the disagreements are just squelched so people don’t really talk about the issue. They come out of these groups really confident that everybody agreed when in fact not everybody agreed. There were new ideas and different opinions that never got discussed in the group.”

Phillips believes understanding the relationship between oldtimers who ally themselves with both in-group and out-group newcomers is important, because these relationships allow for disagreements to occur as well as newcomers’ opinions to be heard. “It is important to remember that these group members did not know each other for very long before identifying strongly with the group,” she says.

“When a newcomer comes in, it interrupts the group. It changes the flow of the process and makes people stop and pay attention to the person,” Phillips says. Whether they stop and pay attention to the newcomer is up to the group. But if they do, the pain will probably be worth the gain.

Member of the Department of Management & Organizations faculty until 2011

About the Writer Bunkhuon Chhun is a freelance science and legal writer based in Longmont, Colorado.

Phillips, Katherine W., Katie A. Liljenquist and Margaret A. Neale. 2009. Is the pain worth the gain? The advantages and liabilities of agreeing with socially distinct newcomers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35: 336-350.

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Diversity and Problem-Solving

Diversity and problem-solving .

Organizations face unique problem-solving challenges that require a new mindset of how to frame questions and look at solutions, all while inspiring diversity in thought. The world is more digital and complex than ever before, which opens opportunities for diverse teams to solve problems quickly and iteratively while accelerating change in this new hybrid environment.

Developing people in a primarily remote environment or driving change and focusing on collaboration within a large Government organization where people work nationwide are just two examples of challenges that arise in this new hybrid environment. While there is no perfect solution, promoting diversity in project teams and building inclusion into their processes can help agencies think about their customer and engage their stakeholders.

A structured, repeatable yet iterative approach to problem-solving enhances mission outcomes while promoting diversity. Part of this approach involves breaking the problem into component parts and identifying resources to provoke diverse thoughts, recommendations, and solutions – from a wide variety of people – not just the experts.

Real problem-solving involves some key ingredients for success:

A Clear, Well Written Definition of the Problem – Understanding the context and scope of the issue by examining the current environment to develop a problem statement so that everyone (especially those who benefit from fixing the problem) can understand it. This is harder than it sounds!

A Formal Way to Comprehensively Decompose and Analyze a Problem – Breaking the problem down into smaller pieces for a clearer understanding of the issue creates a more manageable problem set and verifies each specific issue or area to evaluate. Options include value chain analysis or issue tree exercises, allowing visibility into the full range of options and the types of resources needed to incorporate diverse perspectives to foster collaboration

Persistent Information Gathering – Structuring research, gathering facts, using interviews and surveys, and identifying resources to speak with promotes adequate problem-solving. The culmination of these techniques may propel a new way of thinking of or approaching the original problem, while sparking innovation. Share the facts, do the analysis, and get second opinions using online collaboration platforms (e.g., Miro)

Iteratively Develop and Evolve Solution Ideas – Analyzing information while engaging diverse stakeholders promotes buy-in and encourages diverse thinking to develop the best solutions to problems. Clearly defining what the future looks like from multiple lenses helps manage high value sprints to address specific problems and promotes innovative and integrated solutions

Communicate Insights – Go beyond communicating the solution and reporting on early wins and incremental results as your organization implements them. Share how you did the problem-solving, gather and apply lessons learned to apply to the next hard challenge

Iteration and diversity in problem-solving – for both analysis and idea generation – brings new ideas and often identifies innovative solutions to problems. Establishing the norm of diversity through participation in each step – both the project team who is solving the problem and the customers and stakeholders who benefit from the result – opens endless possibilities in this hybrid world.

Arc Aspicio

Arc Aspicio enhances the future of our nation by creating bold ideas and bringing them to life. A consulting and solutions company, Arc Aspicio solves problems by applying our integrated capabilities in strategy, design, data, human capital, behavioral science, and technology. The company passionately pursues our vision to be the hub of creativity where people take action to change the world. To do this, employees collaborate with clients and partners to create solutions using a human-centered approach. Innovation is not possible without action. The company focuses on strategy first, then takes a hands-on approach implementing ideas to achieve results. Join Arc Aspicio and our Strategy Innovation Lab (SILab) by creating and sharing ideas to inspire people to change the world. Follow us on Twitter @ArcAspicio @SILabDC and, #welovedogs!

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How the best teams solve problems

Published by stefan doll on 04/19/2019 04/19/2019.

Most employers ask for good problem-solving skills. Job applicants are eager to prove that they have them. The World Economic Forum aimed to predict how technological advancements like AI and automation will transform our labour markets ( WEF, Jan 2016, The Future of Jobs ). Problem-solving skills are still on top of the list with 36% of all jobs and across all sectors needing this skill. Furthermore, “ … social skills—such as persuasion, emotional intelligence and teaching others will be in higher demand…” and “…cognitive abilities (such as creativity and mathematical reasoning) and process skills (such as active listening and critical thinking) will be a growing part of the core skills requirements for many industries.” Problem-solving skills are hugely desirable now, and they are increasingly important in future.

Today, the easy problems have been solved already. The complexity of problems requires a range of specialists to collaborate. Very rarely, solutions are developed and implemented by one person in isolation. People usually meet to discuss the design, testing, and implementation of an idea. Of course, in business we have a variety of discussions to find the best solution, from what coffee we should provide our staff to how do we overcome bottlenecks on the production line. When two or more people come together with the goal of finding the best possible solution they need social skills as well as problem-solving skills. Only with good capabilities in both skills-sets, a team has a chance to reach their best solutions, strategies, and decisions.

The intersection of problem-solving and social skills

In New Zealand and other western cultures, we are trained to solve problems from an early age. However, we have not been trained on how to do this effectively in a group of diverse people which is what most work situations require. Diverse problem-solving teams often lack the right social skills, and yet, social skills are a critical second dimension to the success of problem-solving teams.

• Problem solving skills . Those are skills people have in relation to the problem. For example, engineers have skills to identify the cause of an engine failure. People know their subject and can make valuable contributions by applying logic and creativity, analytical and lateral thinking.
• Social skills. Those are skills that take care of the social dynamics between people while solving the problem. For example, people effectively collaborate with good communication, EQ, empathy, and the ability to actively solicit and integrate diversity.

Problem-solving skills, social skills, and team dynamics together determine the quality of the solution. The team cannot utilise the full benefits of its diversity without displaying inclusive communication, EQ, empathy and an ability to integrate diversity. Every team is diverse when we understand diversity as the different ways we think, feel and act. Some teams are just more diverse than others. In that sense, every team needs those skills. Team members have different strengths in those skill sets. As a team they can complement each other but ideally, each team member has at least a basic skill level in both.

What can we do to enhance the problem-solving and innovation capabilities of diverse teams in our organisations? Here some tips on how to boost the social skills.

Invite diversity of thought

Teams have often a good functional diversity, for example, the managers of Production, Sales, HR, Finance come together, or a range of technical specialists in an R&D team. Research suggests that adding social diversity, for example, a mix of gender and ethnicities can further increase the problem-solving abilities of the team for two reasons. First, they bring more diverse perspectives to the issue. Second, adding social diversity “…makes people believe that differences of perspective might exist among them and that belief makes people change their behavior’ .[ Scientific American ] Increased social diversity makes us more creative, more diligent and harder-working because compared to a more homogenous group we anticipate differences of opinion and challenges. We prepare better and are mentally more awake and present because our brain is forced to process complex and unexpected information and we expect that it is harder to collaborate and reach an outcome or agreement. Diversity gives our brain a powerful workout.

Diversity of thought can flourish in an inclusive environment, a space of psychological safety, where the contributions of individuals are encouraged, heard, and appreciated no matter how different they are. This can be achieved by applying an opportunity mindset. A mindset that allows us to listen to different views with curiosity, not with judgement. When people see differences as an opportunity they can resolve those differences and potential conflict in a constructive way.

Get everyone to participate

Make yourself heard if you have a different view or a contribution to make and help others to do so. Sometimes people mistakenly assume they are not loyal to their team when they express a different perspective or dissent. The opposite is the case. Sometimes they don’t want to rock the boat and shy away from a discussion. In that case, the team runs the risk of approaching a problem only from one perspective. A strong desire to reach consensus increases tunnel vision and blind spots. At best, the team arrives at suboptimal solutions, at worst they lose serious money and reputation. How can we get everyone to participate and share their views?

• Ask in the meeting invite to come prepared with some thoughts on a specific topic. Introverts will feel more comfortable as they had time to think through their contribution and extroverts have time to bring some structure to their thoughts that makes it easier for others to follow.
• At the meeting, give everyone the same time to share their thoughts first, without the whole team starting to discuss them. Only questions to clarify understanding are appropriate in this first round of participation. The timekeeper, facilitator, or chair intervenes when people are taking up more time. Each contribution should be recorded on a whiteboard or post-it to ensure that even the most diverse perspectives are not skimmed over.
• The second round of participation is about reflecting on the contributions made, sharing what resonates and why, prioritising, deciding on what should be further explored and what information is still required.

Increase tolerance for disagreements

Diversity of thought is often smothered by the urge to have consensus. We can encourage diversity of thought with the expectation that there will be (and should be) tensions in the team. For example, there should be a healthy tension between Marketing and Operations because the needs and desires of those departments are often in conflict. Marketing is coming up with fancy ideas on packaging to attract customers while Operations would like to keep it simple and consistent to be more efficient. If the team articulates the natural tensions between them it becomes normal to voice different views. Team members also learn about each other’s’ stressors which helps to increase their tolerance towards differences.

Diverse perspectives keep flowing better when we normalise disagreements. We can give team members added responsibilities around boosting the collective social skills of the team. For example, one person takes on the role of a Process Observer. While it is important for everyone to be mindful of team dynamics, someone can take the additional responsibility of helping others to listen, speak uninterrupted, and advocate for the use of inclusive language. The Process Observer is also more likely to intervene when judgements and assumptions are made or when people are getting personal. One team member can take on a ‘Devil’s Advocate’ role to avoid group think. They are mandated to share what could go wrong and why a solution would not work. When those roles are rotated between the team, each member becomes more agile in taking different perspectives and not one person is associated with, for example, the ‘Devil’s Advocate’.

Get to know the team on a personal and emotional level

Connecting on a personal level is the foundation for a safe, empathetic, and caring environment. People who are working together on a regular basis benefit from knowing the person they are working with beyond their positions and relevant skills. What are they interested in outside of work? What happens in their lives? What is important to them? The personal, human connection allows people to speak up and listen with an open mind. The personal connection enables people to be honest, humble, even vulnerable, which are all expressions of a psychological safe environment. When we know each other on a personal level we are more likely to find the right words in case we disagree, and we are more likely to be empathetic when we resolve differences.

In summary, problem-solving teams require problem-solving skills and social skills. Diverse teams successfully solve complex problems when they understand how to interact in an inclusive way, expect to have different views and disagreements, and connect on a personal and emotional level.

Get in contact with us today to find out how we can help you.

This article was published in Employment Today Magazine and Human Resources Magazine in 2019.

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Why diversity is the secret to solving complex problems

U-m professor scott page explains why diverse groups consistently outperform teams of like-minded experts..

The effort to make our workplaces and institutions more diverse is typically framed as a moral issue or an opportunity to make society more just. Given the many aspects of our society that advantage certain groups of people and disadvantage others, this is a worthwhile pursuit — and a fair way of framing the challenge. But what if it wasn’t the only way of establishing a value proposition for diversity and inclusion? For years, Scott Page, the John Seely Brown distinguished university professor of complexity, social science and management at UM-Ann Arbor, has been making a numbers case for diversity. His basic thesis: If you want innovation, or to solve complex 21st-century problems like income inequality or climate change, then groups of experts, at least as we’re accustomed to thinking about them, are going to have a hard time competing with talented teams of people with relevant diverse perspectives. 

Page recently laid out his argument in an entertaining lecture in UM-Dearborn’s Thought Leaders series, which brings experts to campus to talk about big ideas relating to our strategic plan priorities. A key point in Page’s case is distinguishing between simple and complex tasks. For example, he says if you’re looking to maximize output for your logging business in northern Michigan in the 1820s, then a straightforward measure of how many trees a person can cut down in a day may be a good hiring metric. By assembling a team of the most productive loggers and aggregating their effort, you reap the most profit — simple as that. But Page says group dynamics work differently for more complex tasks. For example, say you want to make forecasts about the economy, and you ask 40 really good economists to make predictions and then average them. (This, by the way, is a common method for producing economic forecasts in the U.S. and European Union.) Page says when you crunch the numbers, a couple interesting phenomena emerge. One, the group’s average prediction is better than any of the predictions of the individual economists. Even more interesting, the group’s prediction actually has less error than the average error of the individual members, and the size of the extra benefit from this group average actually corresponds to how different their predictions were. In other words, diversity yields a “bonus.”

So why is this the case? “Once you have something that’s really high-dimensional, by definition, people are going to go about it in different ways, and when they go about it in different ways, you get this benefit,” Page said. Stated a little differently, when something is very complex, it’s hard to figure out, which means no one is going to get it exactly right. So “you want people getting it wrong in different ways” so you’re accounting for a greater degree of the complexity. Needless to say, this is a different approach than many institutions take to solving problems. Typically, Page says, our inclination is to assemble a team of the best experts on a particular topic, as measured by an accepted set of credentials. But in doing so, we’re missing an opportunity to reap a diversity bonus. “For example, when I go to the New York Fed, they’ll have 60 people with PhDs in economics and no sociologists and no psychologists,” Page said. “They’re all trained to see the world in the same way, through the exact same categories, the exact same models.” Page is quick to point out, however, that diversity doesn’t mean random difference. If you’re trying to solve a complex physics problem, the solution isn’t to “bring Tony Hawk in to CERN.” The people on your team have to have knowledge or skills that are germane to the task. But if you’re trying to come up with policy solutions to, say, income inequality or inflation, it’s going to help to have economists working alongside sociologists or psychologists, because they’ll all approach the problem a little differently and the group’s solution will capture more complexity.

In addition, Page says we shouldn’t assume that traditional metrics, like what academic discipline a person got their doctorate in, are the only ways to measure or predict this advantageous “cognitive diversity” of the group. The amalgam of someone's life experiences is also very important in what they bring to the table, which is why diversity of identity can also matter. People of different races, genders, social classes, national origins, etc. will inherently have had different life experiences, which inform how they see the world and thus their approach to problems. When this kind of identity diversity contributes to more cognitive diversity, Page says it can boost diversity bonuses.

Page also notes that environmental conditions must be favorable to maximize this benefit you get from diverse teams. Most importantly, institutions have to create environments where people feel trusted and validated, so there’s no holding back when they’re working as a group. Under these conditions, Page says you can often reap even more benefits through “synergy” — moments when ideas combine in unexpected ways to create especially great solutions. Viewed this way, creating an inclusive environment where everyone has a seat at the table becomes an “amazing opportunity” to create solutions for today’s complex problems — in addition to being the right thing to do.

Want to learn more about Scott Page’s work on diversity and innovation? Check out his book " The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy ." Also, look out for the next installment in our Thought Leaders series on Nov 10 : “How Technology Developers and Social Scientists Can Work Together to Combat Bias in the Metaverse” with the University of Pennsylvania’s Desmond Patton. Register for the event .

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Why Diversity and Inclusion Are Important for Problem-Solving

Simone Bradley 22 March 2022

Change Management Activate Behavior Change

What happens when we bring in new perspectives? This article explores this and how to activate inclusive problem-solving.

Diversity in our backgrounds equips us with varying mental toolkits. When people with diverse perspectives work inclusively to solve problems, the results are powerful. Take the example of the million-dollar Netflix algorithm challenge : 

In 2006, Netflix's CEO, Reed Hastings, announced an open competition to create an algorithm that would predict customers' movie ratings. The algorithm had to be 10% more efficient than Netflix's algorithm, Cinematch. This task was so difficult that Netflix offered a million dollars to anyone who could achieve this. Of course, this competition attracted thousands of participants from various backgrounds – from math majors at an Ivy League university in the US to Austrian computer programmers and even a British psychologist and his daughter!   Dry erase markers scribbled across whiteboards, notebooks piled up, and brains were tested. It became clear to contestants that this was not going to be solved by one brilliant individual who had all the answers. Early on, teams realized that the most significant improvements came when individuals combined their results. The secret sauce for the eventual winners (a blended team called BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos) was, in the end, the collaboration between people with diverse perspectives. Finally, in 2009, the top two teams combined forces, combined their algorithms, and surpassed the 10% threshold. What happened in this competition is what Scott E. Page refers to as the " diversity bonus ." Diversity improves problem-solving and increases innovation which leads to better performance  and results for your organization. Our objective in this article is to explore the power of diversity in problem-solving and to provide three ways to improve problem-solving in your organization by activating diversity-embracing behaviors in your employees.

The Power of Activating Diversity of Thought

People tend to solve problems by first looking at their own experiences, habits, culture, and understanding. The brain does this to determine whether we have faced a similar situation before and if we know how to solve it. Psychologists refer to this as a " mental set. "

Mental sets save us time and energy in the decision-making process but can hamper our problem-solving abilities. Different perspectives lead to different kinds of solutions. For example, an obvious solution to one person may seem abstract or irrelevant to someone else. The more perspectives you have when analyzing a problem, the more likely you will consider a broader range of solutions. How can you show your employees how to embrace different perspectives in your organization?  To activate diversity , you need to create an environment that embraces the different ways individuals think, feel, and act. This is achieved by taking small actions over time to make inclusive behaviors a habit. Below we'll discuss three ways to help your team encourage diversity and inclusion when problem-solving. 

1. Make All Voices Count 

True diversity and inclusion mean that everyone in your team gets the opportunity to be heard. Sometimes though, we aren't conscious of who doesn't have a voice in a meeting or event. So, in many situations, the opinions of the most assertive people often carry the most weight. On the opposite side, women of color and other marginalized groups often don’t feel empowered to speak up. In your organization, do you currently have a balance between who gets to talk in meetings and who doesn't? 

In your next conference call or in-person meeting, take a back seat and mostly observe while still making sure that you participate when called upon. 

After your call, reflect on what stood out for you. Also, consider what strategies you can create to ensure that the only time people on your team aren't heard is because they are on mute! 

2. Welcome All Ideas

Organizations that embrace diversity solve problems by fostering an environment where all ideas are welcome. Embracing everyone's thoughts gives your team members the freedom to get creative without worrying about someone else's opinion. Don't miss out on your next great idea because someone was too embarrassed to share it. The next time you have a brainstorming session, encourage your team to share their thoughts, no matter how out of the box they are.  Afterward, reflect on what happened in the session: 

• What stood out for you when you encouraged all ideas?
• What can you leverage from what you have learned to enable your teams to share their ideas regularly?

3. Normalize Disagreements 

A team can only be truly inclusive and allow a wide diversity of thoughts and ideas if it’s possible for members to disagree with each other in an empathetic and considerate way.

Diverse perspectives continue to flow when we normalize disagreements. If your team doesn't have a good strategy for dealing with conflict, only the most forceful personalities will be the ones who get their way. 

Prepare yourself and your team for conflict with the following steps: 

• Don't make it personal
• Avoid putting down the other person's ideas and beliefs
• Instead of saying "you", use "I" statements to communicate how you feel, what you think, and what you want or need
• Listen to the other point of view without interrupting
• Avoid absolute statements

Final Thoughts 

The Netflix algorithm challenge is a perfect illustration of the importance of diversity in problem-solving. The contestants understood that combining different ideas and perspectives was the only way to progress forward. Likewise, organizations need to take this approach too. In this article, we explored how to activate behavior change in your employees by giving them small actions that they can use to be more inclusive when problem-solving. There are many other steps that organizations can take to embrace diversity.

If you are interested in other ways to activate inclusivity,  book a consultation to discuss creating a custom D&I program.

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Diverse group is the best solution for problem-solving tasks

• Jared Wadley

ANN ARBOR, Mich—A diverse group of problem solvers is more likely to outperform a team of the best and brightest problem solvers, a new University of Michigan study shows.

Individuals chosen from a diverse, randomly selected pool will offer different perspectives that could result in better solutions. Conversely, a group comprised of the best problem solvers is likely to take similar approaches, said Scott Page, a U-M political science, economics and complex systems professor.

“If the best problem solvers tend to think about a problem similarly, then it stands to reason that as a group, they may not be very effective,” he said.

Page conducted the research with Lu Hong, a visiting professor in U-M’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business and a faculty member at Loyola University in Chicago. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the paper this month.

In the study, diversity wasn’t necessarily meant to indicate identity diversity—differences in race, gender, age, or life experiences—but differences in how problem solvers encode problems and attempt to solve them. A person’s value to solving problems depends on his or her ability to improve the collective decision, the researchers said.

“A person’s expected contribution is contextual, depending on the perspectives and heuristics of others who work on the problem,” said Page, who is also a senior research scientist at the Institute for Social Research at Michigan. Heuristics are the variations in how people encode and search for solutions to problems.

Page and Hong tested their theory using computational and mathematical models, with each determining the best performance occurred when the problem-solving group was diverse.

Page noted that the collection of problem solvers could sit in a room together making a joint decision. These individuals might operate in a hierarchy, where each person works on a problem and passes his/her solution on to the next person, he said.

The researchers said the study’s results have implications for organizational forms and management styles, especially for problem-solving firms and organizations.

“In an environment where competition depends on continuous innovation and introduction of new products, firms…that take advantage of the power of functional diversity should perform well,” Hong said.

Page teaches an undergraduate course, “Theories of Diversity,” that focuses on the many implications of diversity. His course touches on topics ranging from the stability of political systems and ecosystems to the collective wisdom of crowds.

Web links: More information on Page and the project: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/diversity

More information on PNAS: http://intl.pnas.org/

http://www.cscs.umich.edu/diversity http://intl.pnas.org/

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Leveraging Diversity for Innovation and Problem-Solving

Published by hr consultants on january 26, 2024.

In today's rapidly evolving and highly competitive business landscape, organizations are constantly seeking innovative solutions to complex problems. One key driver of innovation and problem-solving lies in leveraging diversity within the workforce. By harnessing the power of diverse perspectives, experiences, and backgrounds, companies can tap into a wealth of creativity and unlock new possibilities.

However, building a truly diverse and inclusive workforce is not without its challenges. In this discussion, we will explore the importance of diversity in driving innovation, the benefits of embracing different perspectives for problem-solving, and the strategies organizations can employ to empower diverse teams for collaborative solutions.

By the end of this exploration, you will gain insights into how leveraging diversity can be a catalyst for innovation and problem-solving, propelling organizations towards success in an increasingly complex and dynamic business environment.

Key Takeaways

• Diversity fosters creativity and innovation by tapping into a wide range of perspectives, experiences, and ideas.
• Collaborative problem-solving allows for the integration of multiple viewpoints and the identification of comprehensive solutions.
• Emphasizing empathy, understanding, and open-mindedness helps break down biases and stereotypes.
• Cultural diversity fuels creativity and innovation through the unique perspectives and experiences of individuals from different backgrounds.

The Importance of Diversity in Innovation

Diversity plays a crucial role in driving innovation and problem-solving within organizations. Promoting inclusion in innovation and maximizing the potential of diverse teams are key factors in leveraging diversity for innovation and problem-solving.

When organizations embrace diversity, they are able to tap into a wide range of perspectives, experiences, and ideas. This diversity of thought fosters creativity and innovation, as individuals from different backgrounds bring unique insights and approaches to the table. By promoting inclusion in innovation, organizations create an environment where all team members feel valued, respected, and encouraged to contribute their diverse perspectives.

Maximizing the potential of diverse teams involves creating a culture that encourages collaboration and open communication. This enables team members to share their ideas freely, challenge assumptions, and engage in constructive debates. With a diverse team, there is a greater likelihood of identifying a wider range of solutions and approaches to complex problems. The combination of different perspectives and experiences can lead to breakthrough innovations and more effective problem-solving.

Moreover, diverse teams are more adept at understanding and addressing the needs of a diverse customer base. By incorporating a variety of viewpoints, organizations can develop products and services that cater to a broader range of customers, driving business growth and success.

Building a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce

With a solid foundation in leveraging diversity for innovation and problem-solving, organizations can now focus on building a diverse and inclusive workforce to further enhance their potential for success. Inclusive hiring practices play a crucial role in this process. By actively seeking out candidates from different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, organizations can create a workforce that reflects the diversity of the communities they serve. This not only brings a wide range of ideas and insights to the table but also fosters a culture of inclusivity and belonging.

To ensure the success of inclusive hiring practices, organizations should implement diversity training programs. These programs help educate employees about the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, as well as provide them with the tools and skills needed to create an inclusive environment. By promoting empathy, understanding, and open-mindedness, diversity training helps break down biases and stereotypes, allowing individuals to work together more effectively.

In addition to inclusive hiring practices and diversity training, organizations should also create policies and procedures that support diversity and inclusion. This includes promoting equal opportunities for career advancement, providing resources for employee support and development, and fostering a culture of respect and appreciation for all individuals.

Embracing Different Perspectives for Problem-Solving

Embracing different perspectives is essential for problem-solving.

Diverse perspectives bring a range of experiences, knowledge, and ideas to the table, which can drive innovation and creativity.

Collaborative problem-solving is particularly beneficial in diverse teams, as it allows for the integration of multiple viewpoints and the identification of comprehensive solutions.

Diverse Perspectives Drive Innovation

Different perspectives are vital for driving innovation and solving complex problems effectively. When a diverse group of individuals with varying backgrounds, experiences, and expertise come together, their unique viewpoints can spark creativity and lead to innovative solutions. By incorporating a wide range of perspectives, organizations can tap into a wealth of knowledge and insights that may not be accessible otherwise.

To illustrate the power of diverse perspectives in driving innovation, consider the following table:

Collaborative Problem-Solving Benefits From Diversity

Collaborative problem-solving is enhanced by the inclusion of diverse perspectives, as it fosters a dynamic and comprehensive approach to finding effective solutions. Embracing different perspectives brings numerous benefits and advantages to the problem-solving process.

• Increased creativity : When individuals from diverse backgrounds come together to solve a problem, they bring unique insights and experiences that can spark innovative thinking. This diversity of thought leads to fresh ideas and creative solutions that may not have been possible with a homogeneous group.
• Enhanced problem-solving capabilities : Diverse perspectives offer a wider range of approaches and strategies to tackle complex problems. By considering multiple viewpoints and incorporating diverse knowledge and skills, teams can develop comprehensive and well-rounded solutions.
• Improved decision-making : Collaborating with people from different backgrounds helps to mitigate biases and blind spots that may exist within a homogeneous team. By embracing diversity, teams can make more informed and objective decisions, minimizing the risk of overlooking important factors or making flawed judgments.

Uniting Different Viewpoints Strengthens Solutions

Bringing together a diverse range of viewpoints strengthens problem-solving solutions by promoting inclusivity, empathy, and analytical thinking.

When individuals from different backgrounds and experiences come together to address a problem, they bring with them unique perspectives and insights. These different viewpoints enable a more comprehensive understanding of the issue at hand and open up new pathways for innovative solutions.

Inclusive problem-solving processes foster an environment where every voice is heard and valued, leading to a deeper sense of empathy and understanding among team members. This empathy allows for better collaboration and the ability to consider multiple perspectives when developing solutions.

Analytical thinking is also enhanced when diverse viewpoints are united, as it encourages critical evaluation of ideas and fosters a culture of creativity and innovation.

Leveraging Cultural Diversity for Creativity

Cultural diversity has the power to fuel creativity and innovation.

When individuals from different backgrounds come together, their unique perspectives and experiences can lead to fresh ideas and solutions.

Cultural Fusion for Creativity

In a world rich with diverse cultures, how can we harness the power of cultural fusion to fuel creativity and innovation?

Cultural fusion refers to the blending of different cultural elements that occurs through cross-cultural exchange. By leveraging cultural fusion, we can unlock new perspectives, ideas, and approaches that lead to enhanced creativity and innovation.

Here are three ways in which cultural fusion can foster creativity:

• Broadening Perspectives : Cultural fusion exposes individuals to different ways of thinking, enabling them to see problems and solutions from multiple angles.
• Encouraging Collaboration : When people from diverse cultures collaborate, they bring together their unique experiences and knowledge, leading to the generation of innovative ideas.
• Inspiring Unconventional Thinking : Cultural fusion challenges traditional norms and encourages individuals to think outside the box, empowering them to break free from conventional patterns and embrace fresh approaches.

Diverse Perspectives Spark Innovation

Building upon the concept of cultural fusion and its impact on creativity, the next subtopic explores how diverse perspectives can ignite innovation by leveraging cultural diversity.

When individuals from different cultural backgrounds come together, they bring with them a wealth of unique experiences, beliefs, and values. This diversity of perspectives fosters a rich environment for creativity to flourish.

By incorporating diverse viewpoints, organizations can tap into a broader range of ideas and approaches, leading to more innovative solutions.

Inclusive problem solving is essential in leveraging the power of diversity and creativity. It involves actively seeking out and valuing diverse voices, ensuring that everyone has a seat at the table and feels heard and respected.

Empowering Diverse Teams for Collaborative Solutions

Diverse teams, with their unique perspectives and backgrounds, have the potential to bring about innovative and collaborative solutions to complex problems. When empowered and given the right tools, these teams can leverage their diversity to drive impactful change.

Here are three ways to empower diverse teams for collaborative solutions:

• Foster an inclusive environment :

Creating a safe and inclusive space where team members feel valued and respected is crucial. Encourage open dialogue, active listening, and the sharing of diverse viewpoints. This will allow for the exploration of different ideas and perspectives, leading to more comprehensive and innovative solutions.

• Provide equal opportunities for participation :

Ensure that everyone on the team has an equal opportunity to contribute and be heard. Avoid favoritism and unconscious biases that may hinder certain team members from fully participating. By valuing and leveraging the unique strengths and experiences of each team member, you can tap into their full potential and drive collaboration.

• Promote diverse leadership :

Empower diverse team members to take on leadership roles and responsibilities. By having leaders who represent the diverse makeup of the team, you can foster an environment where everyone's voices are heard and valued. This will not only boost team morale but also lead to more inclusive and effective decision-making.

Overcoming Challenges in Implementing Diversity Initiatives

When implementing diversity initiatives, organizations often encounter various challenges that require thoughtful consideration and strategic approaches. These challenges can arise from both internal and external factors, and addressing them is crucial for the success of diversity initiatives.

One common challenge is resistance or lack of support from within the organization. Some employees may view diversity initiatives as unnecessary or even as a threat to their own positions. Overcoming this challenge requires effective communication and education to help employees understand the value and benefits of diversity in the workplace. It is essential to foster an inclusive culture that embraces diversity and creates a supportive environment for all employees.

Another challenge is the difficulty of measuring the impact of diversity initiatives. While organizations may implement various strategies to promote diversity, it can be challenging to quantify the outcomes and assess the effectiveness of these efforts. To overcome this challenge, organizations can establish clear metrics and evaluation methods to track progress and measure the impact of diversity initiatives on employee engagement, team performance, and overall organizational success.

Furthermore, ensuring diversity initiatives are sustainable and integrated into the organization's long-term goals can be a challenge. Many organizations may treat diversity as a standalone initiative rather than embedding it into their overall business strategy. To overcome this challenge, organizations should integrate diversity into all aspects of their operations, including recruitment, talent development, decision-making processes, and leadership development.

Measuring the Impact of Diversity on Innovation Success

To accurately measure the impact of diversity on innovation success, organizations must establish clear evaluation methods and metrics that capture the tangible and intangible outcomes resulting from diverse perspectives and experiences. Measuring diversity impact requires a thoughtful and comprehensive approach that takes into account various factors and indicators. Here are three key considerations for organizations looking to assess the influence of diversity on innovation success:

• Quantitative Metrics :

Organizations can use quantitative metrics such as the number of diverse employees in leadership positions, the percentage of diverse teams, and the number of patents filed by diverse employees. These metrics provide a quantitative measure of diversity and innovation success, allowing organizations to track progress over time.

• Qualitative Assessment :

In addition to quantitative metrics, organizations should also conduct qualitative assessments to understand the impact of diversity on innovation success. This can involve conducting interviews, surveys, and focus groups with employees to gather insights on how diversity has influenced their ability to innovate and solve problems.

• Innovation Outcomes :

Organizations should evaluate the impact of diversity by examining the outcomes of their innovation efforts. This can include assessing the number of successful product launches, revenue growth, customer satisfaction, and market share. By analyzing these outcomes, organizations can determine the extent to which diversity has contributed to their innovation success.

In conclusion, embracing diversity is not just a moral imperative, but a strategic advantage for organizations seeking to foster innovation and solve complex problems.

By building a diverse and inclusive workforce, organizations can tap into a wealth of different perspectives, experiences, and cultural backgrounds, which can lead to more creative and effective solutions.

It is crucial to empower diverse teams and overcome challenges in implementing diversity initiatives to fully leverage the potential of diversity for innovation success.

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How diversity makes us smarter, being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, diligent, and hard-working..

The first thing to acknowledge about diversity is that it can be difficult.

In the U.S., where the dialogue of inclusion is relatively advanced, even the mention of the word “diversity” can lead to anxiety and conflict. Supreme Court justices disagree on the virtues of diversity and the means for achieving it. Corporations spend billions of dollars to attract and manage diversity both internally and externally, yet they still face discrimination lawsuits, and the leadership ranks of the business world remain predominantly white and male.

It is reasonable to ask what good diversity does us. Diversity of  expertise confers benefits that are obvious—you would not think of building a new car without engineers, designers, and quality-control experts—but what about social diversity? What good comes from diversity of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation? Research has shown that social diversity in a group can cause discomfort, rougher interactions, a lack of trust, greater perceived interpersonal conflict, lower communication, less cohesion, more concern about disrespect, and other problems. So, what is the upside?

The fact is that if you want to build teams or organizations capable of innovating, you need diversity. Diversity enhances creativity. It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Diversity can improve the bottom line of companies and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations. Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think.

This is not just wishful thinking: It is the conclusion I draw from decades of research from organizational scientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and demographers.

Informational diversity fuels innovation

The key to understanding the positive influence of diversity is the concept of informational diversity. When people are brought together to solve problems in groups, they bring different information, opinions, and perspectives.

This makes obvious sense when we talk about diversity of disciplinary backgrounds—think again of the interdisciplinary team building a car. The same logic applies to social diversity. People who are different from one another in race, gender, and other dimensions bring unique information and experiences to bear on the task at hand. A male and a female engineer might have perspectives as different from one another as an engineer and a physicist—and that is a good thing.

“We need diversity if we are to change, grow, and innovate”

Research on large, innovative organizations has shown repeatedly that this is the case.

For example, business professors Cristian Deszö of the University of Maryland and David Ross of Columbia University studied the effect of gender diversity on the top firms in Standard & Poor’s Composite 1500 list, a group designed to reflect the overall U.S. equity market. First, they examined the size and gender composition of firms’ top management teams from 1992 through 2006. Then they looked at the financial performance of the firms. In their words, they found that, on average, “female representation in top management leads to an increase of $42 million in firm value.” They also measured the firms’ “innovation intensity” through the ratio of research and development expenses to assets. They found that companies that prioritized innovation saw greater financial gains when women were part of the top leadership ranks.

Racial diversity can deliver the same kinds of benefits. In a study conducted in 2003, Orlando Richard, a professor of management at the University of Texas at Dallas, and his colleagues surveyed executives at 177 national banks in the U.S., then put together a database comparing financial performance, racial diversity, and the emphasis the bank presidents put on innovation. For innovation-focused banks, increases in racial diversity were clearly related to enhanced financial performance.

Of course, not all studies get the same results. Even those that haven’t found benefits for racially diverse firms suggest that there is certainly no negative financial impact—and there are benefits that may go beyond the short-term bottom line. For example, in a paper published in June of this year , researchers examined the financial performance of firms listed in  DiversityInc ’s list of Top 50 Companies for Diversity. They found the companies on the list did outperform the S&P 500 index—but the positive impact disappeared when researchers accounted for the size of the firms. That doesn’t mean diversity isn’t worth pursuing, conclude the authors:

In an age of increasing globalization, a diverse workforce may provide both tangible and intangible benefits to firms over the long run, including increased adaptability in a changing market. Also, as the United States moves towards the point in which no ethnic majority exists, around 2050, companies’ upper management and lower-level workforce should naturally be expected to reflect more diversity. Consequently, diversity initiatives would likely generate positive reputation effects for firms.

Evidence for the benefits of diversity can be found well beyond the U.S. In August 2012, a team of researchers at the Credit Suisse Research Institute issued a report in which they examined 2,360 companies globally from 2005 to 2011, looking for a relationship between gender diversity on corporate management boards and financial performance. Sure enough, the researchers found that companies with one or more women on the board delivered higher average returns on equity, lower gearing (that is, net debt to equity), and better average growth.

How diversity provokes new thinking

More on diversity.

Read about the meaning and benefits of diversity .

Discover how students benefit from school diversity .

Learn about the neuroscience of prejudice .

Explore the top ten strategies for reducing prejudice .

Large data-set studies have an obvious limitation: They only show that diversity is correlated with better performance, not that it causes better performance. Research on racial diversity in small groups, however, makes it possible to draw some causal conclusions. Again, the findings are clear: For groups that value innovation and new ideas, diversity helps.

In 2006, I set out with Margaret Neale of Stanford University and Gregory Northcraft of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to examine the impact of racial diversity on small decision-making groups in an experiment where sharing information was a requirement for success.

Our subjects were undergraduate students taking business courses at the University of Illinois. We put together three-person groups—some consisting of all white members, others with two whites and one nonwhite member—and had them perform a murder mystery exercise. We made sure that all group members shared a common set of information, but we also gave each member important clues that only they knew. To find out who committed the murder, the group members would have to share all the information they collectively possessed during discussion. The groups with racial diversity significantly outperformed the groups with no racial diversity. Being with similar others leads us to think we all hold the same information and share the same perspective. This perspective, which stopped the all-white groups from effectively processing the information, is what hinders creativity and innovation.

Other researchers have found similar results. In 2004, Anthony Lising Antonio, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, collaborated with five colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles, and other institutions to examine the influence of racial and opinion composition in small group discussions. More than 350 students from three universities participated in the study. Group members were asked to discuss a prevailing social issue (either child labor practices or the death penalty) for 15 minutes. The researchers wrote dissenting opinions and had both black and white members deliver them to their groups. When a black person presented a dissenting perspective to a group of whites, the perspective was perceived as more novel and led to broader thinking and consideration of alternatives than when a white person introduced  that same dissenting perspective .

The lesson: When we hear dissent from someone who is different from us, it provokes more thought than when it comes from someone who looks like us. It’s a result echoed by a longitudinal study published last year, which tracked the moral development of students on 17 campuses who took a class on diversity in their freshman year. The analysis led the researchers to a robust conclusion: Students who were trained to negotiate diversity from the beginning showed much more sophisticated moral reasoning by the time they graduated. This was especially true for students who entered with lower academic ability.

Active Listening

Connect with a partner through empathy and understanding.

This effect is not limited to race and gender. For example, last year professors of management Denise Lewin Loyd of the University of Illinois, Cynthia Wang of Oklahoma State University, Robert B. Lount, Jr., of Ohio State University, and I asked 186 people whether they identified as a Democrat or a Republican, then had them read a murder mystery and decide who they thought committed the crime. Next, we asked the subjects to prepare for a meeting with another group member by writing an essay communicating their perspective. More important, in all cases, we told the participants that their partner disagreed with their opinion but that they would need to come to an agreement with the other person. Everyone was told to prepare to convince their meeting partner to come around to their side; half of the subjects, however, were told to prepare to make their case to a member of the opposing political party, and half were told to make their case to a member of their own party.

The result: Democrats who were told that a fellow Democrat disagreed with them prepared less well for the discussion than Democrats who were told that a Republican disagreed with them. Republicans showed the same pattern. When disagreement comes from a socially different person, we are prompted to work harder. Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not.

For this reason, diversity appears to lead to higher-quality scientific research.

In 2014, two Harvard University researchers examined the ethnic identity of the authors of 1.5 million scientific papers written between 1985 and 2008 using Thomson Reuters’s Web of Science, a comprehensive database of published research. They found that papers written by diverse groups receive more citations and have higher impact factors than papers written by people from the same ethnic group. Moreover, they found that stronger papers were associated with a greater number of author addresses; geographical diversity, and a larger number of references, is a reflection of more intellectual diversity.

What we believe makes a difference

Diversity is not only about bringing different perspectives to the table. Simply adding social diversity to a group makes people  believe  that differences of perspective might exist among them and that belief makes people change their behavior.

Members of a homogeneous group rest somewhat assured that they will agree with one another; that they will understand one another’s perspectives and beliefs; that they will be able to easily come to a consensus.

But when members of a group notice that they are socially different from one another, they change their expectations. They anticipate differences of opinion and perspective. They assume they will need to work harder to come to a consensus. This logic helps to explain both the upside and the downside of social diversity: People work harder in diverse environments both cognitively and socially. They might not like it, but the hard work can lead to better outcomes.

In a 2006 study of jury decision making, social psychologist Samuel Sommers of Tufts University found that racially diverse groups exchanged a wider range of information during deliberation about a sexual assault case than all-white groups did. In collaboration with judges and jury administrators in a Michigan courtroom, Sommers conducted mock jury trials with a group of real selected jurors. Although the participants knew the mock jury was a court-sponsored experiment, they did not know that the true purpose of the research was to study the impact of racial diversity on jury decision making.

Sommers composed the six-person juries with either all white jurors or four white and two black jurors. As you might expect, the diverse juries were better at considering case facts, made fewer errors recalling relevant information, and displayed a greater openness to discussing the role of race in the case.

These improvements did not necessarily happen because the black jurors brought new information to the group—they happened because white jurors changed their behavior in the presence of the black jurors. In the presence of diversity, they were more diligent and open-minded.

Consider the following scenario: You are a scientist writing up a section of a paper for presentation at an upcoming conference. You are anticipating some disagreement and potential difficulty communicating because your collaborator is American and you are Chinese. Because of one social distinction, you may focus on other differences between yourself and that person, such as their culture, upbringing and experiences—differences that you would not expect from another Chinese collaborator. How do you prepare for the meeting? In all likelihood, you will work harder on explaining your rationale and anticipating alternatives than you would have otherwise—and you might work harder to reconcile those differences.

This is how diversity works : by promoting hard work and creativity; by encouraging the consideration of alternatives even before any interpersonal interaction takes place. The pain associated with diversity can be thought of as the pain of exercise. You have to push yourself to grow your muscles. The pain, as the old saw goes, produces the gain. In just the same way, we need diversity—in teams, organizations, and society as a whole—if we are to change, grow, and innovate.

This essay was originally published in 2014 by Scientific American. It has been revised and updated to include new research.

About the Author

Katherine W. Phillips

Katherine W. Phillips, Ph.D. , is the Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics Management at Columbia Business School.

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Diversity Leads to Better Solutions. Here’s why.

• March 4, 2021

The advantage of using data to drive innovation and business results is often discussed, with mounds of evidence backing up its efficacy. However, data by itself has 0 value. It is people that dissect data (digital or analog) to extract the information required to solve tough problems. It makes sense, then, to talk about how the human component of our systems affects the quality of our solutions.

Among the human factors that lead to extraordinary performance, team diversity has been one of the least understood and highly under-utilized levers at our disposal.

I’m not writing this post to convince you that maximizing diversity will improve business performance. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that diverse teams produce more favourable results (yes, those are all links) in business and scientific domains.

I want to explore the mechanism behind the phenomenon. How does diversity lead to desirable outcomes? We can use formal models derived from evolutionary biology and statistics to arrive at the fundamental forces leading to this interesting outcome.

If your medium of choice is video, feel free to skip the rest of the post altogether and just watch me present these concepts with animated hand-waving.

If you prefer to read the material instead, the rest of the blog covers the exact same material in textual form.

Problem-Solving Formalized

If we want to talk about how diversity affects the quality of our solutions, we have to first formally define what it means to solve a problem.

We have some problem → P

We propose some solution → S

Our solution has some value to us → V(S)

We want to maximize the value in a limited timeframe

If we were to visualize the value of all potential solutions to our problem it might look something like this:

Perspectives

You can look at a particular problem from different perspectives . Perspectives are nothing new. For example, to represent a particular point on a plane, you might use a cartesian perspective with the point represented as X and Y coordinates or a polar perspective where the point is defined by an angle and a length.

The choice of your perspective will greatly influence your ability to represent solutions to the problem. If you want to represent a straight line, it makes a lot more sense to use the cartesian perspective, whereas to represent arcs, the polar perspective might be a more appropriate encoding.

Here’s another example. Let’s say you’re apartment-hunting. The perspective you choose to use will have a big impact on your satisfaction with the apartment you will find.

• Luxury → Square Footage
• Convenience → Proximity to the subway line
• Education → Quality of nearby schools

When you view a problem through a particular perspective, you end up with a continuous landscape of potential solutions defined by that perspective.

For example, consider you’re a chocolate bar manufacturer who wants to maximize the value function V(S) of the number of chocolate bars a new product would sell.

You can look at the problem from the perspective of calories or chewiness of the new chocolate bar. The choice of perspective impacts the shape of your landscape.

With calories, you have a peak in value on the left for the calorie-conscious snackers and another peak for the sugar lovers, but once the amount of calories per bar becomes absurdly high, nobody would buy it.

Chewiness yields many more peaks because there’s no clear or useful relationship between sales and the bar’s chewiness. These peaks are called local optima, and better perspectives tend to have fewer peaks, making the solutions easier to navigate.

Fewer peaks are desirable because when you propose a solution and all adjacent possible solutions have lower values, finding a better solution is tricky unless you think outside the box. The fewer the peaks, the less chance you have of getting stuck.

The Perfect Perspective

There is a perfect perspective that yields a landscape with only 1 optimum. This landscape is known as a Mt. Fuji landscape.

An example of a Mt. Fuji landscape is the size of a shovel when moving snow. As when the shovel size is small little snow can be moved, and when it is too large, the snow becomes too heavy to displace.

Mt. Fuji landscapes do not only apply to simple problems. Consider the following 2-player strategy game. We have cards 1 through 9 and each player takes a turn to pick a card, trying to end up with 3 cards which add to 15.

You can imagine the amount of strategy that might be involved to prevent your opponent from getting the right cards.

It doesn’t have to be difficult to solve with the right perspective. There is a Mt. Fuji perspective that orders the cards into a magic square. A magic square is a grid of numbers that add up to 15 for all rows, columns, and diagonals.

All of a sudden, our difficult strategy game turned into a game of tic-tac-toe with a simple optimal decision tree.

The neat thing is that we know a Mt. Fuji landscape exists for every problem out there.

Savant Existence Theorem For any problem, there exist many perspectives that create Mount Fuji landscapes.

One simply has to order the potential solutions in such a way that yields such a landscape? If the ordering exists, so does the perspective.

The problem is that this perfect perspective is extremely difficult to find in most cases.

Consider this. With only 15 potential solutions to some problem there are 15! ways to order the solutions. Thats 1.3 trillion perspectives.

We need some way to more efficiently navigate the solution space.

This is where we come to heuristics

A heuristic is an imperfect but practical approach to problem-solving that is known to work most of the time for reaching an approximately optimal solution.

There are many heuristics you’re probably familiar with.

The most common heuristic is “hill-climbing” or gradient ascent. Using this heuristic, you move towards the closest adjacent possible solution to the current solution that yields a noticeable improvement. Most incremental improvements fall in this category.

As you can see, this can work well but runs the risk of getting stuck at a local optimum. This is well known to machine learning practitioners who rely on gradient descent to find parameters to a function that minimizes prediction error.

Another heuristic could be “do the opposite.” You may have practiced some form of this by playing “devil’s advocate”.

One example of this is can be seen in the field of marketing. Most marketers put their most valuable assets behind an email-capture form to collect leads.

Some marketers do the opposite. Instead of giving value after some obstacle, they deliver value upfront, hooking the audience with the quality of information provided, leading them to willingly give their email to learn more. This solution can have superior engagement and even collect more emails.

Yet another example of a heuristic in the realm of management is “ big rocks first “. If you have a bunch of goals for the year and all your effort is spent on the small goals, the big items on that list will not get the attention they need to move the needle.

You may be asking yourself the million dollar question:

“Are there heuristics that are better than others for all problems?”

Unfortunately, the answer is no. This is has been proved by the No Free Lunch Theorem , which states that unless you know something about the problem being solved, no search algorithm is going to perform better than any other when searching over all solutions.

The Effect of Team Diversity

Now that we have the vocabulary, we can bring it all together. Up until now, I’ve been vaguely saying “diversity” leads to better outcomes. What kind of diversity?

In order to come up with better solutions we need diverse heuristics as well as diverse perspectives. Of course, these are highly correlated with gender and ethnic diversity.

Since no single heuristic is better than any other over all solutions, we need diverse heuristics in order to find more optima in our landscapes. For example, if our solution space is a grid and I look up, down, left, and right to find the best solution, we may converge to an optimal solution much faster if you look diagonally as well.

Diverse perspectives have a very interesting effect on the shape of the solution landscape of the entire team. Imagine we have 2 team members Hans and Hanna, each with a unique perspective.

Note that solutions A, and B in Hans’ landscape represent the exact same solutions A and B in Hanna’s landscape. In other words, the different perspectives yield the same locally optimal solutions in both landscapes.

Who has a better perspective? Hanna has fewer peaks (meaning fewer places to get stuck), so her perspective may be more useful. We can also look at this from the “perspective” of the average value of local optima for each person. The average value of each person’s optima is known as the individual ability .

Looking at ability , we can see that Hanna’s locally optimal solutions also have a higher average value than Hans’.

Having a diverse set of local optima across team members means that if one team member gets stuck at an optimum, they can check if any other team members have a better solution, and simply continue the search from there.

In general, we can make the following claim:

Claim A team can only get stuck on a local optimum that’s shared by every single member .

Team ability tends to be higher than any individual’s ability because having fewer local optima for the team implies fewer local peaks eroding the average value.

This effect is multiplied with the addition of additional team members. However, the beneficial effect on team ability only materializes if there is diversity in individual perspectives. If all team members share the same perspective, you do not get a reduction in the overlap of local optima, surrendering any gains that would provide.

The Fine Print

The model above neglects some factors that influence the effectiveness of diversity on outcomes.

Imperfect Communication

We are not perfect communicators. It is not possible for me to transplant my ideas into your head for you to understand the value of my solution. One way to minimize error introduced by skipping verbal communication and producing an artifact representing the solution so you can observe it directly.

Lack of Inclusion

If I invite you. to the meeting but don’t include you in a meaningful way, your unique perspectives, heuristics, and solutions are going to waste.

The Value Oracle

Until now I assumed that the value of any particular solution is obvious to the whole team. In reality, we do not have some “value oracle” giving us the exact value of our potential solutions.

In these cases, we have to rely on the aggregation of our experts’ predictions to give an accurate estimate of the value of each solution. This brings us to our next topic, the “wisdom of crowds.”

The Wisdom of Crowds

Although predictions made by individuals tend to be innacurate, when you start combining predictions of multiple individuals, you tend to get a prediction that is quite close to the mark.

For example, let’s say we have 3 individuals making predictions for an outcome with an actual value of 18.

Individually, they do not do a good job with their predictions, but they are only off by 1 in their average prediction.

We can define the error of each individual prediction as the difference between the prediction and the actual value. In order to prevent positive differences to the actual value from cancelling out the negative differences when calculating the average individual error, we can square the individual errors to get rid of negative values.

Similarly, we can calculate the prediction diversity of the predictions by measuring the difference of each prediction to the average prediction . We square the terms once again to dispose of negative values. In statistics, this diversity term is also known as the variance of the sample.

Having have defined error and diversity we can now unlock the diversity prediction theorem .

Diversity Prediction Theorem Crowd’s Error = Average Individual Error – Prediction Diversity

Although this looks like pseudo-math, the definitions I’ve given you are all that’s necessary to expand the term and prove that the equivalence is valid.

Formally, this is defined as the following formula

c = The average prediction of the crowd 𝜽 = The actual value s i = The prediction of the i th individual n = The number of individuals

This simple formula continues to tell us the same story: without diversity, there is no wisdom in crowds.

When there is a small individual error, the crowd’s error is also low, and diversity doesn’t play a role, because our problem is easy.

When our problem is difficult, the individual predictions will not be accurate, driving our crowd’s error up. The only way to reduce the crowd error is to add diversity to the mix.

Signal Independence

Sometimes, even if you introduce diversity, you can be missing out on all the benefits by not having processes in place that extract value from the unique perspectives and heuristics.

For example, during a brainstorming session, if everyone in the room is participating in the same discussion, we tend to fall in the trap of group-think and lose the individual genius that comes from our diverse team. It would be much better to have everyone ideate in parallel and then work together to converge on the highest-value solutions.

This notion is well-supported by research that demonstrates that even with a slight correlation between team members’ predictions, you are getting only a small fraction of the signal that could have been harvested from independent perspectives.

It’s quite astounding, that even with a correlation of 0.2, 9 experts add no more signal than 3 experts with independent perspectives. With a higher correlation of 0.4, you’ll have a tough time getting anything more than the equivalent of 2 independent experts.

How does this correlation come about? It can come from the experts discussing the problem together or even with a person they know in common. It can also arise from sociocultural factors such as sharing a similar cultural or educational background.

Further Reading

This has been only a shallow dive into the topic of diversity and how it affects our organizations. We have covered some of the why, but the hard work of making diversity a normative part of our work culture remains a challenge worth examining.

Most of the material for this post is based on work done by Scott E. Page. Specifically, the application of ideas from evolutionary biology (fitness landscapes) and computer science (heuristics) to the field of innovation was derived from his book “The Model Thinker.”

There are also 2 other books by the author that expand on the ideas presented here in great detail.

If you would like to explore work done around the tangible business benefits of diversity, you may enjoy these resources:

• HBR – Teams Solve Problems Faster When They’re More Cognitively Diverse
• Mckinsey – Diversity wins: How inclusion matters (or the detailed report )
• TED – How Diversity Makes Teams More Innovative
• World Economic Forum – The business case for diversity in the workplace is now overwhelming
• Nature – These labs are remarkably diverse — here’s why they’re winning at science .
• HBR – The Other Diversity Dividend

If you have insights about implementing the systems required to make diversity a first-class concern, please contribute to the conversation in the comments or on the social network of your choice.

• Diversity , Inclusion , Innovation

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2 Responses

If in the formula “Crowd’s Error = Average Individual Error – Diversity” you can decrease the crowd error by increasing the diversity independent from the individual error, then you can increase the diversity to the point that the crowd error is zero! Or even negative. The formula is correct though. So maybe something is wrong with the assumption that you can increase diversity independent from the individual error?

You’re final intuition is correct! They are not independent! You can see that in the fact that both terms ” Average Individual Error” and “Prediction Diversity” depend on the individual’s prediction.

The proof is embedded in the formula. The algebraic manipulation is a bit gnarly, but it can be done!

First, we’ll start by expanding the right-hand side of the equation, which consists of two terms: the average individual error and the prediction diversity.

1. Average Individual Error:

\[ \frac{\sum{(S_i – \theta)^2}}{n} = \frac{\sum{(S_i^2 – 2S_i\theta + \theta^2)}}{n} \]

2. Prediction Diversity:

\[ \frac{\sum{(S_i – c)^2}}{n} = \frac{\sum{(S_i^2 – 2S_ic + c^2)}}{n} \]

Subtract the prediction diversity from the average individual error:

\[ \left( \frac{\sum{(S_i^2 – 2S_i\theta + \theta^2)}}{n} \right) – \left( \frac{\sum{(S_i^2 – 2S_ic + c^2)}}{n} \right) \]

\[ = \frac{\sum{S_i^2} – 2\theta\sum{S_i} + n\theta^2 – \sum{S_i^2} + 2c\sum{S_i} – nc^2}{n} \]

Simplify the equation by cancelling out the \(\sum{S_i^2}\) terms and dividing each term by \(n\):

\[ = \frac{- 2\theta\sum{S_i} + n\theta^2 + 2c\sum{S_i} – nc^2}{n} \]

\[ = -2\theta\frac{\sum{S_i}}{n} + \theta^2 + 2c\frac{\sum{S_i}}{n} – c^2 \]

Now remember that \(c = \frac{\sum{S_i}}{n}\), so we can replace \(\frac{\sum{S_i}}{n}\) with \(c\):

\[ = -2\theta c + \theta^2 + 2c^2 – c^2 \]

\[ = \theta^2 – 2\theta c + c^2 \]

This is the expanded form of \((c – \theta)^2\), which is the left side of the equation.

So we have shown that the left and right side of the equation are equivalent!

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Everyday problem solving across the adult life span: solution diversity and efficacy

Affiliation.

• 1 Center for the Study of Lifespan Development, Psychology Department, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky, USA. [email protected]
• PMID: 22023569
• PMCID: PMC3746011
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2011.06207.x

Everyday problem solving involves examining the solutions that individuals generate when faced with problems that take place in their everyday experiences. Problems can range from medication adherence and meal preparation to disagreeing with a physician over a recommended medical procedure or compromising with extended family members over where to host Thanksgiving dinner. Across the life span, research has demonstrated divergent patterns of change in performance based on the type of everyday problems used as well as based on the way that problem-solving efficacy is operationally defined. Advancing age is associated with worsening performance when tasks involve single-solution or fluency-based definitions of effectiveness. However, when efficacy is defined in terms of the diversity of strategies used, as well as by the social and emotional impact of solution choice on the individual, performance is remarkably stable and sometimes even improves in the latter half of life. This article discusses how both of these approaches to everyday problem solving inform research on the influence that aging has on everyday functioning.

© 2011 New York Academy of Sciences.

Publication types

• Aging / physiology
• Aging / psychology*
• Choice Behavior
• Life Expectancy*
• Problem Solving / physiology*

Grants and funding

• R24 AG039350/AG/NIA NIH HHS/United States

2024 Global Climate Challenge

How Can we get rid from Waterlogging Problem in a City?

Sayed Huzaifa Mumit

Our Organization

What is the name of your solution, provide a one-line summary of your solution..

Production of Methane Gas from Rainwater and Carbon dioxide

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

In what country is your solution team headquartered, what type of organization is your solution team.

Not registered as any organization

What specific problem are you solving?

When it rains in Bangladesh many city areas go underwater and waterlogging in the streets. These cities are situated on the riverside. The project was conducted to solve this problem and to get benefits from the environment. The procedure was Collecting rainwater samples in a flask or large area requires separating pure water vapor in a balloon or any alternative container. Reduced heat, analogous to condensation, causes it to form liquid water. Now, need to separate hydrogen gas from water using the best method of electrolysis at an affordable cost. The production of hydrogen gas is one of the final products that produces methane gas. Now, pure carbon dioxide needs to be collected from any source in a wolf bottle or any other alternative container, like a flask. Collected hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide need to be mixed in a bottle. Mixed gases are called water gases, and where they need to provide heat, therefore, they become methane gas, and as a side product, water vapor is also produced. But when products need to decrease heat, like condensation, then methane gas will separate. The final product will grow the country’s economy by exporting and meeting the needs of citizens.

What is your solution?

The environment will also be balanced if carbon dioxide emissions decrease. Produced Methane gas can be utilized in manufacturing to drive or power motors and turbines. The energy released is used by industries such as pulp and paper, food processors, petroleum refineries, and firms that work with stone, clay, and glass. Businesses may use methane-based combustion to dry, dehumidify, melt, and clean their products. It is also utilized to generate energy for illumination. Some other countries where yearlong wet places exist have a great chance to use them. This country can grow their economy and also meet their mineral needs. Some Places in many countries are Emei Shan, Sichuan Province, China Average annual rainfall: is 8169mm. Kukui, Maui, HawaiiAverage annual rainfall: 9293mm.Mt Waialeale, Kauai, Hawaii Average annual rainfall: 9763mm. Etc.[c.1] It was easy to collect samples. But the large area will require a cost. The product can be profitable after being exported outside of the country. Water also produces methane, s

water can be recycled while rainwater can’t be collected. In the street when water together to make the project profitable and directly or indirectly increase the quality of life of the people for whom it was conducted. Here the graph shows the previous four years of data on the waterlogging road of Chittagong city in percent. The red dot shows a blocked road by rainwater, and the green dot shows an unblocked road. Graph 2: Here Climate chart of Chittagong city[c.2] Some data on air pollution by carbon of Chittagong, Bangladesh: The mission inventory of Chittagong city is 20 X 32 km2, with the pivot point at 377374.00 mE and 2472510.00 mN and cell resolution of 1x1 km2.The whole Chittagong City Corporation region, as well as sections of the Sitakunda, Hathhazari, Raozan, BoalKhali, Patiya, and Anowara Upazilas, are included.[9]

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

In Bangladesh, many cities and towns go underwater during the rainy season. Bangladesh has a value geographically; it has 6 seasons, of which 3 are mostly rainy. Chittagong and Dhaka have a common waterlogging problem due to all the canals containing trash and pollution. If using the method or experiment explained above, we collect rainwater, purify it, and then produce methane gas, it can meet the demand of certain areas where people live in middle-class families, and after meeting the demand, we can export it outside Bangladesh. The cost of production will be lower than the procurement cost of methane from minerals.

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

My team Will contact the government and after getting permission then will contact the Industries that emit CO2. To Capture CO2 there will be a contract. 

Then talking with the municipality mayor about collecting the rainwater from the street where waterlogged. 

Both will bring a Factory and Use the procedure of the research to produce methane gas and distribute it to the nation.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Which of the un sustainable development goals does your solution address.

• 3. Good Health and Well-Being
• 6. Clean Water and Sanitation
• 7. Affordable and Clean Energy
• 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
• 9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
• 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
• 13. Climate Action

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Please share details about why you selected the stage above..

I have developed the Model for solving specific cities and environmental disasters.

Production of Methane Gas from Rainwater caused unwantedly fro Climate changes By Carbon dioxide Emission.

Why are you applying to Solve?

It has several answers, 

The growth of the economy by exporting, To get rid of the people of the city. CIlmate changes or the disasters of nature to get rid.To meet the demand of the people.

In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?

• Product / Service Distribution (e.g. delivery, logistics, expanding client base)
• Technology (e.g. software or hardware, web development/design)

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Solution team.

The Solve team will review your report and remove any inappropriate content.

Why is this item inappropriate?

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