Leveraging the Benefits of Cognitive Diversity

Cognitive diversity arises in groups where people differ in knowledge, beliefs, ideas, preferences, opinions, assumptions, and perspectives. A higher level of cognitive diversity is related to better performance and faster solutions. (Reynolds & Lewis, 2017) Cognitive diversity, transactive memory (the ability for people in a group to access and use the information held by others), and open-mindedness are all significantly associated with the creative generation of new knowledge. (Mitchell & Nicholas, 2006) Most significantly, a compelling empirical study of cognitive diversity in software development teams by Lix et al. (2020) found that cognitive diversity benefits are "positive when the group is engaged in ideational tasks and negative when the group performs coordination tasks."

Curiously, higher levels of cognitive diversity have been detected in teams from industries where disruptions are larger and more frequent, suggesting that some enterprises have naturally evolved to more cognitively diverse models to survive disruptions. (Aldridge 2019)

Unfortunately, cognitive diversity has been shown to negatively impact cohesion (that tight-knit feeling), particularly within leadership teams. (Miller et al., 1998) This can be mitigated by actively defending against ambiguity, conflicts, feelings of insecurity, and establishing policies that drive group interests over individual interests. (Younis 2019). Mindfully managing how information is surfaced and shared also helps to draw out the positive aspects of cognitive diversity. Team mental models (explicitly through communications, schedules, plans and processes) and implicitly through consensus-building are needed to unlock the benefits. (Schilpzand & Martin, 2010)

Caveats

• Research is mixed on linking performance and business results to cognitive diversity. This is not surprising since cognitive diversity is only one of the factors that drives performance, so it is difficult to isolate in studies. Aldridge (2019) for example did not find a link between cognitive diversity and performance, but did find that transformational leadership is more likely to drive performance than other models. Transformational leadership "can foster the utilization of the potential, but frequently untapped, benefits entailed by both demographic and informational/cognitive team diversity." (Kearney & Gebert, 2009)

Other Resources

• Marvin Minsky on Cognitive Diversity (heavy paper)
• Corritore et al (2020) in Harvard Business Review - a look at the intersection between cognitive diversity and "new analytics" like determining engagement from sentiment on Slack channels