Re-framing Diversity through the Lens of Star Trek: Voyager

Deck

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Star Trek: Voyager

Diversity

Demographic

Experiential

Cognitive

Bias

Thinking Fast

Thinking Slow

Mental Models (How to Think)

Inversion

Prove me wrong vs. What am I missing?

The Map is not the Territory

There will always be flaws and nuance

Circle of Competence

Being right vs. Being successful

Perspective

How one looks at a problem

Heuristic

How one searches for a solution

Re-Framing

IQ

  • Intelligence Quotient
  • Ability to learn, not what you know
  • Doesn't change much after childhood

EQ

  • Emotional quotient
  • Ability to recognize one's own emotions and others
  • Changes over time

Emotional Intelligence of Groups

  • Source (HBR): bit.ly/ei-hbr-2001
  • Teams who develop greater emotional intelligence (EQ) boost their overall performance
  • EQ: Trust among members, a sense of group identity, and a sense of group efficacy
  • At the heart of these three conditions are emotions, like the ability to listen

What do you hear about great groups? Not that the members are all really smart, but that they listen to each other.

Anita Wooley, Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon

What is the logical solution?

Tuvok

On the contrary, the demands on a Vulcan's character are extraordinarily difficult. Do not mistake composure for ease.

How do we evaluate talent?

B’Elanna Torres

If I sprain my ankle, at least I feel something […] I'm not trying to kill myself! I'm trying to see if I'm still alive.

I want to hire the most qualified

How do you define
most qualified?

Hint: What is your perspective and heuristic?

Perspective

How one looks at a problem

Heuristic

How one searches for a solution

You must change your perspective to arrive at a new heuristic

Innovation

Consider this...

Why do diverse teams outperform?

  • The Out-group Advantage (Northwestern 2010)
  • Teams focus on facts
    • Alter the behavior of a group’s social majority
  • Facts processed more carefully
  • More innovation
    • Dodge the costly pitfalls of conformity, which discourage innovative thinking

The Difference

  • Scott Page
  • Professor of Complex Systems, Political Science, and Economics
  • Published 2007
  • bit.ly/scottpage-difference

Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem

Conditions

  • The problem must be hard
  • Each solver has a local optima to the problem
  • An improvement can be made to a non-optimal solution
  • Large pool of solvers to form a decent-size collection

 

Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem

Mathematical simulation models
http://bit.ly/div-v-ability

Counter

thecollegefix.com/post/20375/

ams.org/notices/201409/rnoti-p1024.pdf

Counter-Counter

bit.ly/1juIvFI

ams.org/notices/201501/rnoti-p9.pdf

What the model tells us

Think of people as collections of tools

Ability is a reflection of the applicability of those tools to a given set of problems.

Problem solvers with diverse perspectives may have trouble understanding solutions identified by other agents.

Dr. Scott Page, Professor at Univ. of Michigan

Seven of Nine

But that is irrelevant.

EQ

What if...

Open source could make the world a better place by requiring

equity and emotional intelligence

integral to its interoperability

Mental Models

Inversion

Prove me wrong vs. What am I missing?

The Map is not the Territory

There will always be flaws and nuance

Circle of Competence

Being right vs. Being successful

Common-Knowledge Effect

A decision-making bias where teams overemphasize the information most team members understand instead of pursuing and incorporating the unique knowledge of each team member

nngroup.com/articles/common-knowledge-effect

What's the catch?

Not Efficient and More Difficult

Lots of time and practice and mistakes

Miscommunication

Things get missed, especially remotely

Vulnerability

Failures may hit deeper

Most Common Pitfall

Hanlon's Razor

Assumption of nefarious intent

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a mistake."

Captain Janeway

Keep your shirt tucked in; go down with the ship; and never abandon a member of your crew.

To Solve Difficult Problems

 Ability - people with lots of tools

 

Diversity - people with distinct tools

Nurture emotional intelligence

To Effectively Collaborate

Re-frame the perspective

Sources
Groups are smarter with women - http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/ar/1
EQ (HBR link) - http://www.mindsetmatters.com.au/Portals/0/dox/building%20emotional%20intelligence%20of%20groups.pdf
Group Intelligence Correlates More with Social Aptitude than IQ - http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/10/collective-intelligence-and-th/
Being an Ally as a Person with Privilege - http://www.scn.org/friends/ally.html
Risk of Speaking Up - http://www.ashedryden.com/the-risk-in-speaking-up
21st Century Talent Spotting: Potential Trumps Brains, experience, and competencies - http://www.egonzehnder.com/files/_b_77ddd4d.pdf
Mathematical Model of Diversity - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/science/08conv.html
Scott Page: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Schools, Societies - http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~spage/thedifference_content.html
Diversity Trumps Ability - http://www.crowdsourcing.com/cs/2008/05/chapter-6-the-m.html
Scott Page, Lu Hong Research - http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16385.full
http://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/now-voyager-the-least-beloved-star-trek-offered-some-of-the-franchises-strongest-feminist-messages
http://www.startrek.com/page/star-trek-voyager

https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/20375/
https://www.knightfoundation.org/articles/having-uncomfortable-conversations-a-new-communications-imperative

Thanks for listening

IDIC

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DrupalGovCon 2023: Re-framing Diversity through the Lens of Star Trek: Voyager

By fmitchell

DrupalGovCon 2023: Re-framing Diversity through the Lens of Star Trek: Voyager

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