Diversity is key: what product teams can learn from microbes

Have you ever been to a forest? I bet you have. So, maybe you've noticed that there are lots of different species around: plants, animals, insects, even mushrooms. And if, by chance, you had a microscope in your pocket and looked even more closely, you would find tens of thousands of species of microbes right under your foot. They collaborate with each other and with other forest inhabitants to channel nutrients, quickly adapt to changes in the environment, and support life.

Nature knows that diversity is the key to building something healthy and resilient, so she puts many different organisms in one place and empowers them to work together. She's been doing this quite successfully for hundreds of millions of years, so we can trust her wisdom.

We humans also believe in diversity and apply this approach to some of our endeavors. We know that a healthy diet is a diverse diet, that when building our investment portfolio we shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket, and that an abundance of small businesses fuels industry development and innovation when a dominance by a tiny number of big corporations can quickly lead to corruption and degradation. We even believe in democracy to some extent. So, why then, when building teams, do we often overlook diversity? Why treat it merely as a necessary evil - something to tick off a checklist for a report, rather than truly encouraging it?

To be honest, I came to this realization quite recently myself. My thinking used to go like this: if I have two candidates for a job, I need to objectively select the best one without considering their gender, skin color, or origin. It's a perfectly legitimate logic, except for one thing - the word "best". The way we define "best" doesn't account for the benefits that diversity brings to the table.

We naturally gravitate towards people who look like us, speak like us, have similar experiences, and come from the same culture. This makes sense when you consider our history: in the days of tribes, fitting into a group was crucial for survival. But today, the world is way more complex than it was in the hunter-gatherer times, and things change at an unprecedented rate. To strive teams need to consider orders of magnitude more variables and adapt quicker than ever. When you put it this way, it's clear that a diverse group that works well together will be better equipped than a group of people who are very much alike.

It's so tempting to hire someone who loves Star Trek, listens to Queen, and owns an iPhone. You just feel they're the perfect fit for your team. They even prefer the same type of beer and cook eggs just like you. Surely, you're meant to work together!

That couldn't be further from the key to success.

What's truly important are shared values and a common "WHY." Put simply, team members should believe in the same thing, want the same outcome, and dream the same dreams. That's the core similarity they should possess. The more diverse everything else is, the better.

Here are a few examples from my own experience in various projects where diversity on the team (even very limited) allowed us to learn something, find issues, and improve the product:

It's not enough to hire a diverse team, you need to empower it, allowing every person to be comfortable expressing their thoughts and making an impact. It's common for leaders to overlook this and continue running the business as usual without acknowledging the problem. It's hard to notice when someone isn't being heard if it isn't you, so we need to take active steps in this direction.

If team members feel that they are not empowered, they will either leave or, worse, learn to behave like everyone else and keep their opinions to themselves. This approach will benefit neither them nor the company.

The deeper I delve into understanding how ecosystems function and thrive, from microbes to human communities, the more I realize the profound impact of diversity. And I am continually surprised at how little we think about and encourage it. Even worse, we artificially simplify everything around us, creating monocultures and destroying natural complexity. We believe this makes things more efficient and easier to control, but in reality, we're creating vulnerable systems that increasingly lack resilience in a rapidly changing world.

• Diversity is the key to a healthy diet, healthy finances, a healthy market, healthy politics, and healthy teams.
• Nature is smart (just look at microbes). Learn from it and embrace diversity.
• Seek shared values, not shared tastes.
• Simply hiring a diverse team isn't enough, empowerment is the key.
• Diverse teams are resilient because they adapt quickly, a key trait in our ever-changing world.

*Image credit Midjourney. Please excuse her for teeth and hands, she's doing her best ;)
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