How not to be brought down by the way you’re brought up

This is the third part in my series of writing that was too hot for my book, ‘How To Get To Great Ideas’. And this one is a quick read.

This post is all about upbringing. It's the nurture rather than the nature side of things. As a university-educated Glaswegian brought up in a conservative, religious household, I have a different perspective on things to a high-school dropout brought up as an anarchist in a Welsh fishing village. Varying perspectives are valuable. Yet most industries end up with recruitment practices that result in very similar-minded people entering their workforce. So group-think sets in.

And that's a problem if you're after valuable ideas.

Most offices are wildly unrepresentative of the market they serve. In my advertising career, I would often find myself with a group of Oxbridge graduates talking about lottery tickets or oven chips or payday loans - things that never made an appearance in any of our day-to-day lives. Like many industries, the marketing world I worked in would often recruit from universities. They believed that enduring four years of lectures, hangovers and sexual experimentation made you a great candidate. Year after year, they hired the same kinds of people and showed them how to fit into the organisation and think the right way.

This kind of recruitment isn't just elitist (writes the white, middle class, university educated, male author), it also results in a homogenous, similar-thinking workforce. A group of people with similar experiences naturally results in confirmation bias. When you are surrounded by people who say the same things you were thinking, you tend to believe that's the only way of seeing the world. It's a form of mass delusion.

A great way to prevent this kind of misguided group-think from happening is to include people from different backgrounds with different perspectives. For some organisations, that would mean having non-university educated individuals on a similar level with the university educated ones. And for other organisations, it would mean having some privileged, university educated people working alongside high school dropouts. It could mean professional workplaces embracing housewives, addicts, former prisoners and individuals from backgrounds that might make you feel uncomfortable.

Of course, most organisations will baulk at this kind of approach. Fortunately for them, it's also possible to do it without going all-in. Simply by bringing in outsiders as you need them on specific projects, you can avoid the curse of homogenised mono-thought. It's a good idea to mix it up a bit and bring in different kinds of people each time. A dentist, a street sweeper, a horse breeder and a sex worker will each offer you different perspectives and approaches. Aim to bring in individuals who are quite different to the people in your organisation. The more divergent these thought-challengers are, the more value they can offer you.

There are plenty more of these pieces to come. I had to cut about 20,000 words from my manuscript, after all! You can see the last post on trauma here. And the first post on diversity here. 

But it’s probably best to just read the stuff that actually made it into the book by searching for ‘How To Get To Great Ideas’ in your local book store or Amazon.