With a new year on the horizon, now’s the perfect time to turn the lens inward a little where your business is concerned and see if there are any areas that are ripe for improvement to really help you flourish in 2023, with a little bit of tender loving care.
Whether you’re a startup or an established brand, it’s important not to become too stuck in your ways. If you feel as though you’ve started to stagnate for whatever reason, it may be that it’s the company culture you need to review, so you can find out exactly what it is that’s holding you back.
This is where the cognitive diversity theory could really come into its own, allowing you to free your mind, so to speak, and start evolving, growing, innovating and developing your business model to ensure resilience now and well into the future
What is cognitive diversity?
Cognitive diversity theory relates to how bringing together a variety of different people, each with their own thought patterns and ideas, perspectives and problem-solving strategies, could yield positive results for business.
To achieve this, staff recruitment campaigns will need to be focused on the concept of hiring for culture-add, as opposed to culture-fit… so it’s key for businesses to adopt a growth mindset and keep an open mind, acknowledging that their traditional way of working may not necessarily be the most effective way any more.
The business landscape changes very quickly and it’s important to grow and change alongside, otherwise it can be very easy to get left behind.
Since people are and should be at the heart of every organization, building a workforce that isn’t resistant to change and which actively looks for new opportunities and areas for growth will only ever stand you in excellent stead.
Be an innovator
No doubt you have already established a diverse workforce in terms of age, gender and ethnicity, but cognitive diversity can take this one step further and help you free your business from conformity of thought, as well.
What will be key is ensuring that you’re actively encouraging new ways of thinking and new ways of operating and, to deliver this, you need to make sure employees feel safe to try out new ideas without fear of consequences if they don’t quite go to plan.
A good first step to take when implementing cognitive diversity theory in the workplace is to see how and where you could build relationships between departments, teams – and even your competition – to help gain new insights and drive successes onwards.
What you are sure to find – and probably relatively quickly – is that diversity of thought ultimately leads to innovative decision-making… and this is what will see you flourish and thrive as time goes on.
Looking for further business model innovation? Get in touch with Si2 today.