Show Me the (Diversity-Driven) Money!

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

 

Last year, PMI published its A Case for Diversity report, which explains the value of diversity to businesses. There are a lot of really interesting facts in there, but let’s start with a couple that are right at the front:

• 88% of project leaders feel as though culturally and gender-diverse teams increase project value.
• 83% of project leaders believe that international team members increase project value.

Those are significant majorities and shouldn’t be ignored by any organization.

In the year or so since that report came out, many organizations have decided to adopt working models that continue to support distributed employees and teams at a rate far higher than before the pandemic, and that creates more opportunities than ever to embrace diverse teams. If the environment makes it easier, and leaders say it benefits the projects, then shouldn’t embracing diversity be a no-brainer?

The case for diversity
To me, it certainly should. Projects succeed because people work together—collaboration drives better solutions than individuals will ever come up with on their own. Part of that is because collaboration allows for all of the different backgrounds, skills and experiences that people have to come together to develop improved solutions and approaches.

So, it is logical that the more diverse and varied individual backgrounds are, the…

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