I’ve just come back from a month in the US, and loved getting into the New York Times each morning. Read a great column by Nicholas D. Kristof giving Twitter a serve in the lead up to its launch as a public company. You may know that Twitter, symbol of out-front tech innovation is governed by a board of seven white men. Kristof echoes the Global Gender Gap’s 2013 report that tells us about the strong correlation between a country’s gender gap and its national competitiveness and income, given the value of talent in achieving strong productivity.
Kristof’s critique of Twitter’s governance is essentially about the failure of a herd mentality. It’d be as backward for Twitter to have an all woman as an all man board. It doesn’t do much to have one woman on a man board or one man on a woman board. ‘The best problem solving comes not from a group of the best individual problem solvers, but from a diverse team whose members complement each other. That’s an argument for leadership that is varied in every way, in gender, race, economic background and ideology’, states Kristof.
People on diverse boards and committees whether at corporate or community level are more likely to speak of discussion and decision making as invigorating and rewarding. It is this value that provides a major motivator for commitment to studying papers, attending meetings and coming to good decisions. Read the article here.
So how to achieve this quality of committee? Seems like intention is key to getting there. Actually taking a firm decision to achieve diversity is perhaps more difficult than saying over and over that it’s very hard to find the right people..
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