Imagine you were tasked with helping an organization understand the diversity of its staff composition. Your first task is an internal assessment, starting with a determination regarding potential bias in a hiring manager's decisions. Would you prefer to examine each of the hires one at a time or look at performance in the aggregate? I bring this up because the other day I heard a fascinating observation - when hiring managers fill one opening, they tend to reinforce the status quo; when they hire multiple people at once, they are more likely to bring in novel skills. This observation seems to speak to the same hunch as implied by my hypothetical assessment - when it comes to diversity, some feel simultaneous decisions lead to better outcomes.
I think there is something important in all that but I don't want to overstate my support for this hunch (which looks a lot like a process-oriented argument for quotas). Given the speculative nature of the above, it would be foolish to consider it a framework for some ironclad rule; this simply feels true to me, but more research is needed before it should be considered a tactic. Even if you do agree with me - which hardly seems like a given - there are plenty of examples that suggest this is not true across all forms of selection; there is not enough time in the day to list every college accused of selection bias. Perhaps most importantly of all, if the question of diversity in the workplace was a simple matter of batching decisions, there would be no issue to speak of at all, at least in the sense of what a hiring manager should do (I must note that I suspect TOA would fill many column inches in such a world regarding the rate of implementation, but let's leave that alone for today).
But there is no need to wait for more investigation into this idea before making use of some of the information at its foundation. After all, a hiring manager is someone who makes hiring decisions, so any insight into how people make decisions should be immediately valuable. The underlying concern here is the question of change, particularly within the context of a status quo. If I need to purchase coffee and I go to the store intending to buy just one bag, I'll probably come home with a similar style to one that I've drank in the past, if not an exact repeat of a prior product; if instead I go intending to buy ten bags, I suspect I become more likely to come home with a different style among my choices. It seems that everyone has a certain internalized idea of the appropriate balance between preserving the status quo and trying something new; the superior hiring manager recognizes this reality and accounts for its influence in any decision.
This understanding alone might not be enough if an organization's culture forces the balance too far toward a preference for the status quo. I can foresee why this might be true in a team where roles are strictly defined according to position; the challenge is compounded if one position alone retains responsibility for certain vital functions. The reliance on one position for a specific task means hiring someone lacking even one quality from a list of battle-tested qualifications will feel too risky for those adverse to trying new ideas; the eventual new hire is destined to reinforce the status quo. But the solution isn't to change risk-aversion, a natural human quality; the idea should be to redefine roles such that multiple team members share in any crucial responsibility, effectively limiting the potential damage that can be caused by a new hire who cannot immediately replicate a predecessor's success.
I feel an organization should always redefine roles as a first step toward identifying opportunities for increasing diversity. Unlike implementing the newest fad that ignores the underlying realities of human nature, a self-analysis that determines why the system causes team members to prefer the status quo points to the structural problems that support the existing culture. Although every organization is unique, the one truth that applies to them all is that whenever there is a diversity question the answer isn't in the future but the past; the processes, systems, and structures that produced the status quo will always reinforce it, no matter the good intentions of any initiative or the tireless efforts of any individual.
