Maximising cognitive diversity for organisational innovation
Part of the “SORTED” solution is sortition. Often referred to as a democratic lottery or in its crudest sense, random selection. The practice is not new. It was the pillar of the original democracy in Ancient Greece, and it is the accepted means by which a jury is selected. However, it is through its modern application in deliberative citizen processes, most notably Citizen Assemblies, that its credibility has been redeemed. There are hundreds of successful examples from the so-called deliberative wave to evidence.
The political benefits are widely touted. By its nature, it extends the opportunity for participation. It removes the influence of vested interests and softens the corrupting influence of power. As a result, deliberations and in turn, decisions, are more considered and collaborative.
This alone makes it a viable mechanism for organisations who seek to make decisions more equitably. Especially in people centred organisations, such as worker cooperatives.
However, putting aside values and focusing on performance. There is a significant case to be made that the appropriate use of sortition can help all types of organisations make better decisions better. The key concept that this relies on is ‘cognitive diversity’.
The logic underpinning this has become widely accepted and it is outlined expertly by Matthew Syed in his book ‘Rebel Ideas’. To quote directly from his own website:
“Research shows that individuals and teams with diverse thinking – a variety of experience, expertise, and opinions – are much better equipped to deal with complex problems and have higher levels of collective intelligence.
Cognitive diversity can strengthen any institution or team; it challenges hierarchies, encourages constructive dissent, and forces us to think again about where the best ideas really come from. It also offers individuals the ability to improve personal performance by breaking free from the echo chambers that surround us all.”
There many ways organisations can embrace cognitive diversity. They can extend training opportunities to embed a flexible thinking. They can improve recruitment practices to attract people who ‘think differently’. They can build partnerships with organisations outside traditional understanding of expertise.
They can also use sortition. It is after all a tried and tested method for opening the space for non-conventional voices to be heard and valued.
To illustrate this, I’ll link it to Syed’s core thesis and interlink this with explaining why and how sortition offers a solution to ensuring that teams and organisations can foster the rebel mentality fundamental for success.
Overreliance on individual intelligence
The first assumption of cognitive diversity is that an individual, no matter how intelligent only has a subset of knowledge. This may be sufficient when the context is narrow and technical, let’s say a doctor performing a heart transplant. However, if we are exploring the international trade in body parts to get the organ to the operating table the complexity increases. As the cause and affect are undefined and unpredictable. We cannot rely on an individual to navigate the legal, ethical, logistical challenges on their own. We need complex collaboration.
This is a good starting point to debunk a common misconception around sortition. It is not about randomly selecting an individual to replace another. It is about selecting a diverse group to navigate complex challenges.
2. Smart individuals don't make an intelligent group
This second stage is where we start to diagnose many of problems that afflict our executives. For reasons attributed to human nature. Smart, well qualified people, tend to share the same social networks, cultural context, educational background and as a result, the same decision-making circles. Innovation is sacrificed on the altar of homogeny. It is why cognitive diversity is so important. Successful organisations have come to recognise this.
So where can sortition play a role? By definition, random selection disrupts conformity. It doesn’t follow a pattern of sociability and networks. Everyone has an equal opportunity to participate. We need smart, well qualified people; however, we need to ensure that their contribution isn’t blunted by replication. If the path to ideation and decision making is held with a small cluster of ‘clones’, who have followed a standardised route to authority, the opportunity for innovation is blunted. Therefore, utilising methods to help prevent this, incorporating ideas from the widest possible net, will help organisations move beyond this.
3. The optimum diversity
This is what all organisations, governments and teams looking to solve complex issues should be aiming for. This is partly why Citizen’s Assemblies have proven to be so impactful as tool for policy making. By engaging a broader cross section of society with diverse understanding and experiences, it gives the space for more innovative ideas to emerge. There are recent case studies to point to how this can be successfully applied to organisations. Meta ran a deliberative process to inform the company’s responsibility for the Metaverse it is creating. Although, not strictly about sortition. There are also successful case studies of executives using ‘shadow boards’ to increase the diversity of ideas show there is space to expand these types of practices.
“Eighty-two percent of the participants said that they would recommend this format (deliberative participation) as a way for the company (Meta) to make decisions in the future.”
How to utilise sortition to guarantee diversity? The best practice for sortition is generally a two-step process. The first being the initial random selection and the second is stratification to ensure the assembly demographically representative. This isn’t the same tokenistic inclusion. The second step helps realign the assembly’s diversity from a skewed profile of respondents. For example, an invitation to a climate assembly would appeal less to a climate sceptic. However, for the sake of cognitive diversity their contribution would be valuable. Arguably, on an organisational level there is less need to account for nuance, as long as there is criteria to recognise ‘difference’, be it department, education level or years experience
Of course, not every irregularity can be accounted for, as shown by the gaps in the above picture. In fact, the only possibility for full coverage is to include everyone. However, once we accept the importance of human dialogue, this doesn’t scale, unless built into a wider process. Therefore, our best option is to optimise the cognitive diversity of the group. From there, we can make judgements on the best way to scale this by judging the complexity in relation to wider restrictions, be it time or money.
HOWEVER
For cognitive diversity to be practically effective, it needs to be managed appropriately. Extending this to applying sortition and participatory principles, this comes down to the fundamental importance of selection design and facilitation. What use are the best ingredients, if no one understands how to make cake!
4. Diverse but not necessarily aligned
The key aspect of utilising sortition to productively maximise cognitive diversity is in the selection design. The goal is to optimise the diversity within the contextual frame. The most obvious way this is done for Citizen Assemblies is to make the selection specific to a geographical area. If I were to be selected for the Paris Citizens Council, I would certainly have a different perspective than most, although not much of it relevant to what the Council wants to achieve.
The second way is through the two-step process. The initial round of random invitations asks people to volunteer to participate. Some may argue that participation for these processes should be mandatory as is with jury service. However, I would argue that by forcing people to participate, they are more likely to be resentful and their contribution to the cause muted.
Defining the boundaries for selection within organisations is much more open to interpretation. Where there is a public interest in the topic, for instance, a utility company wanting input on their policy for community partnership. There would be a benefit to expanding the selection to include members of the public, as with a Citizens Assembly. However, for an internal strategy discussion it would make sense to focus this on employees. Similarly, if the topic was redesigning an internal policy process, it would make sense to select from within the teams that are impacted by this. The key here is stakeholder mapping and interpreting to what degree a stakeholder has the relevant diversity of knowledge to contribute.
5 + 6. Diverse teams with a dominance dynamic collapse
These last two features are features that the process design should be set up to circumvent. With Citizen Assemblies, the dominance dynamic plays out in more discreet ways. For example, when they aren’t given appropriate authority, their impact is muted such as the case with UK Climate Assembly, which was relegated to an advisory role. Similarly, this dynamic can appear on a micro scale, with certain participants dominating the table conversations. It is here where the facilitation plays a vital role in creating the space for everyone to contribute.
There are lessons to be learned here for organisations. It requires brave leadership to embrace the uncertainty and maintain trust in the process. It also requires setting up the right culture and training to embrace of these new ways of working and not default to the security of familiarity.
That is the role that experts can play to ensure that these processes are set-up and executed effectively. The hope for my own organisation, SORTED, is to draw on the expertise of experienced deliberative practitioners to ensure that lessons from deliberative processes can positively impact innovation within organisations. There are of course, many global practitioners linked to the Democracy R&D network, well placed to support this transition.
Over the past decade, the deliberative wave in local and national governments has opened the space for deep thinking and creative solutions to shared challenges. There is an opportunity for organisations, especially those who are designed to embrace complexity to utilise these practices to accelerate innovation. Once leaders begin to recognise that the space created by these practices can be an important catalyst for deep thinking and creativity - they will invite and celebrate it. The first challenge is to find organisations brave enough to embrace this new paradigm of human potential...