Diversification in the workplace, or team, or the board room. Why is this important? What sort of diversification is needed? If you took investments as your primary context, you would argue that diversification is to mitigate your risk, as by spreading your money across different types of investments, you can better survive a sudden loss in one particular area; be that stocks, property, bitcoin or banking. If diversification is therefore about risk, what is the risk we could face in our teams, our business or our boardrooms? The risk of missed ideas, differing opinions, different lived experiences, or challenging views, beliefs and perhaps innovative solutions. Homogeneous (anti-diverse) groups tend to share the same experiences, thinking, methods, and beliefs to come at a problem from the same lens. This doesn’t make it wrong, but it does make it less creative and therefore less likely to evolve (quickly). When forming your group, build it with people that can offer you difference. Different perspectives and ideas through their different experiences and knowledge (cultures, industries, roles, genders) as well as energy diversity (different ages and personalities) and different ways of thinking (cognitive diversity). Magic can happen when you put very different people together in a room to look at the same problem or idea. Coming at this from multiple different angles will give you a greater chance of finding innovation and progress. It will be less “risky” than not.

I’ve been broadening my podcast playlist in recent months and have been really into Alex Hormozi and Think Media. These guys are epic and offer great insights around building up a team, a business and ultimately an empire. Alex Hormozi reframes this idea the idea of infinite purpose (a past concept I’ve shared) when he talks about his 85 year old self called Solomon. The name is in reference to the Solomon Paradox, where the biblical King Solomon who was known for giving good advice by struggled to apply it himself. Hormozi, applies the image of him as an 85 year old sitting on his porch, with his children and grandchildren all living a healthy and happy life. Every he therefore does, is in preparation of this future image. He asks himself, what would Solomon in this situation? Would Solomon be approve of this action? If he isn’t making Solomon proud, then he won’t entertain the idea.

I’ve been thinking about what it is that professional players really want. I’ve boiled it down to three things. They want to WIN. They also want to IMPROVE. They all want to ENJOY their daily environment. I don’t know many athletes (and coaches for that fact) that don’t want all three. If the professional athletes demand this, then surely coaches of all levels should be thinking about how fill all three of these buckets! In a recent podcast episode with Richard Bell, Richard spoke about the notion that in the film industry, you can only have 2 of Good, Cheap and Fast, never all three! By looking at the lens of the athlete, maybe we should only recruit athletes that offer at least 2 (of 3) of Helping the team Win, Striving to Improve their ability and bring JOY to the environment. I can accept the athlete that helps us win and is positive in the overall environment, but doesn’t care about getting better. I can manage the athlete that helps us win and works to improve but is an “energy vampire” around the group. I can be patient with the athlete that is developing whilst adds joy, but doesn’t have great impact on the teams overall performance. I CANNOT recruit any athlete that only wins (but detracts from everything else), or is the clown (brings laughter but nothing else), or only a developing athletes (doesn’t help win or brings joy to the environment. Food for thought….

Sir Clive Woodward is an incredible coach whom I have spoken about before. A new concept he has developed is what he calls the ‘3D Learning method’ that aims to identify, capture and act on lessons learned. The three Ds are simple: Discover, Distil and Do. “They are all key to developing a great team through learning: Discover what’s working, and what’s not; Distil that down to a few key points; and then Do: really go hard on getting the execution right.” Plan, simplify to inform and then act/execute. #coaching #strive

The idea that by writing out your ideas in depth (tested on logic) as opposed to just bullet points (half-baked idea), the depth and clarity of your thinking will pay greater dividends. Individuals also have more creative and varied ideas than groups. But they also have more bad ideas. So you will need to flush out the bad ideas first. To use brainwriting with a group, to tease out the best ideas in great depth, start by asking everyone in your group to write down their ideas. Then individually ask them to share them with the group. The group will give feedback on the suitability of each idea and suggest which ideas should be taken forward in the process (filter towards quality). Combining the power of individuals creativity with the strength of collectedness that groups provide. This works best if people do not know whose idea is whose, so elect a narrator, to present the ideas as neutrally as possible to the group. The next steps would be more brain writing on the idea(s) and allocation of next steps, delegation of tasks and timelines. Take the wisdom of crowds to make the ideas with higher potential succeed and unlock the potential in the whole group, not just from not the loudest individual, most enthusiastic speaker or the boss that has the most compelling ideas always. #dothework #strive