Published March 2026
It’s time to expand the conversation from demographic diversity into cognitive diversity.
The Diversity Project did. Having relaunched as “Inclusion in Finance”, the mission of this cross-company initiative is to promote inclusion (creating cultures where opportunity is open to all talent) and to promote:
- Cognitive diversity: bringing together different ways of thinking to power better decisions
Why should you care? Because cognitive diversity is even more strongly linked to performance than demographic diversity alone.
The paper from “Inclusion in Finance” (Link) shows this while providing a brilliant and balanced overview of science and practice in the field of cognitive diversity.
A key takeaway: “The scientific evidence on the effects of cognitive diversity is very mixed. A few papers find a positive correlation with performance, but just as many find a negative correlation. Most papers find no correlation at all, or contrasting results [..].
These mixed results do not mean that cognitive diversity is irrelevant. Rather, it needs to be managed in a way that harnesses the benefits and mitigates the
costs, in contrast to an “add diversity and stir” approach. By analogy, the average active asset manager does not beat the market, but this does not mean that approaches to active asset
management are irrelevant.
[..] since it is tricky to get right, any organisation that succeeds will enjoy a significant competitive advantage.”
This rich paper boasts many more clever insights – I recommend reading it.
But it has sparked an important question that remained unanswered: how do I translate these insights into practice within an organisation?
I have developed the following framework to answer this question:
1) Define & Operationalise:
The paper defines cognitive diversity as “the range of expertise, experiences, information, perspectives, preferences, and ways of thinking within a team”.
Operationalising this definition for organisational purposes (e.g., measurement) is tough, but we have done this before – with demographic diversity.
Only when this fundamental grunt work of developing conceptual clarity and aligning it with key stakeholders is completed, can we move on to the next step.
2) Identify high-impact teams where resources for improving cognitive diversity shall be allocated to:
Yes, it is best if absolutely all teams are
trimmed to the highest level of competitive advantage. Nonetheless, it remains organisational reality that not all departments need to be superstars for a company to be successful. iPhones are
probably not going the sell even better when Apple’s accounting department is made-up of bookkeeping prodigies. Such departments may be considered like the coffee in a Pumpkin spice latte –
impactful and essential, but not the driving force.
3) Hire profiles with suitable characteristics of cognitive diversity:
If a team is already rich in profiles with the same way of thinking, it is time
to hire people with other ways of thinking. This sounds like a no-brainer but the paper showed that nearly all practitioners said it is very difficult to identify cognitive diversity at the
recruitment stage. Congratulations! As you’ve already defined and operationalised cognitive diversity, this will be a low-hanging fruit for competitive advantage.
4) Train cognitive diversity:
Instead of applying the same treatment to the whole team, reasonably divide them to have different levels of expertise, experiences (e.g., through varying
secondments), and perspectives (e.g., roles such as “the creative” or “devil’s advocate”).
5) Manage cognitive diversity:
Cognitive diversity may have different effects depending on your goals. Identify whether you want to “generate ideas”, “share ideas”, “coordinate”, or “build
affinity” and tailor diversity accordingly.
6) Experiment:
Referring to the above, which management intervention is actually impactful? For example, does restructuring meetings to have the leader
talk last increase diversity of opinions voiced? Conduct an experiment to find out. It only makes sense to implement interventions that actually work. Just like in medicine, we only want to take
those pills that have been proven to help us more than the other best pill.
This framework is a simplified viewpoint – a guiding mental construct as you translate the concept of cognitive diversity into the organisation. I am wishing you all the best in your endeavours. Please feel free to let me know on LinkedIn how it went.
P.S.: the paper from “Inclusion in Finance” referenced above has done a great job of summarising the research in its Appendix B. If only all business papers would share sources in this format, we would live in a much better-informed world.
And if these short research summaries would additionally include effect sizes and confidence intervals, it would not only make me a very happy nerd but would further strengthen science
communication.