> I mean, this is one of the most important reasons behind DEI; that a more diverse team can perform better than a less diverse one because the team is more capable of identifying their blind spots.
That was oversold though: 1) DEI, in practice, meant attending to a few narrow identity groups; 2) the blind spots of a particular team that need to be covered (more often than not) do not map to the unique perspective of those groups; and 3) it's not practical to represent all helpful perspectives on every team, so representation can't really solve the blind spot problem.
Thought provoking critiques of recent implantations. Number 2 seems like a catch-22 though — how does the group with agency identify their own blind spots?
I would recommend if anything a life-experiences checklist of the team collectively. Did any of them hail from rural poverty? Urban poverty? Did they attend a fancy dinner party? Were or are they disabled in some way? Can they read? Did they do factory work? Customer service work? Did any not go to colllege? Did they go to college?
All those questions build a picture of perspectives they may have missed. The real hard part is figuring out which ones are germane to the circumstances involved. Books not being accessible to the illiterate should have gaps and even collectively you should expect a career bias.
An auto engineering team may or may not have anybody with factory floor experience but all will have worked in the auto industry. They would be expected to be more familiar with the terms by necessity. Thus they may need external focus groups to jusge ledgibility to outsiders.
> I would recommend if anything a life-experiences checklist of the team collectively. Did any of them hail from rural poverty? Urban poverty? Did they attend a fancy dinner party? Were or are they disabled in some way? Can they read? Did they do factory work? Customer service work? Did any not go to colllege [sic]? Did they go to college?
I think such a wide-ranging exercise is likely to waste time and not help the team's performance. It might serve some other purpose, but improving team performance is not it.
> An auto engineering team may or may not have anybody with factory floor experience but all will have worked in the auto industry.
An auto engineering team with some guy who used to work on the factory floor is exactly the kind of diversity that I think would actually improve team performance.
That was oversold though: 1) DEI, in practice, meant attending to a few narrow identity groups; 2) the blind spots of a particular team that need to be covered (more often than not) do not map to the unique perspective of those groups; and 3) it's not practical to represent all helpful perspectives on every team, so representation can't really solve the blind spot problem.