# Presentation: 025544

## How Diversity Enables Organizations

**Norman L. Johnson**
**NORMAN@LANL.GOV**
- Theoretical Division
- http:// ishi.lanl.gov

**Science of Diversity**

**Notes:**
Lisa  Gutierrez, Director for the Diversity Office introduces Dr. Johnson.

Please call me Norman. My message is more important than the messenger. 

Did you know that the reason that titles are rarely used here is a carryover of the war years?  when titles were considered a security risk.   This is one example of a positive social result from security.  Maybe the events over the last year will result in another....

I was asked to talk to you about the science of diversity (I have to admit that this is the oddest format for a talk I’ve ever given, but I can’t complain about the attendance) - 
but I realized that this talk is as much about how the science change my own views about diversity.  From being distrustful of it, to now realizing that it is key to understanding how many systems work well and how we will solve the really hard problems confronting the Lab and even Society.   

## Diversity - As the morally right thing to do

- My view, for a long time, was that supporting diversity was is morally the right thing to do
- And I naively assumed it was the same as affirmative action.
- It is difficult to think back to those times, but I believe the problem was that I viewed the world as a competitive.
- Where did that come from?
- I think it’s because  the idea of natural selection - or survival of the fittest – dominates our view of the world.

**Notes:**
My view for a long time was that supporting diversity was is morally the right thing to do and I naively assumed it was the same as affirmative action.  
It is difficult to think back to those time, but I believe the problem was that I viewed the world as a competitive.
Where did that come from? I think it’s because  the idea of natural selection - or survival of the fittest – dominates our view of the world. 

## From the Viewpoint of Natural Selection

**Higher performance results from selection**
**which reduces diversity. **
**Diversity lowers the global performance**
***Lower performance of unfit individuals ***
***leads to lower average population performance***

**Notes:**

The essential point is that under the simplistic paradigm of “survival of the fittest” - any diversity in a system lowers the overall performance of the whole.  The performance of the whole only is optimal when the “fittest” have survived - resulting in lower diversity.  

This is not a good model for diversity in organizations. 

## I was asked to “Make it Personal”

**Why am I  here today?**
**What made me become an advocate for Diversity?  Especially since I’m:   **

- White - Northern European
- Male
- Q- Cleared
- Ph.D.
- US born

**Notes:**
I was asked to make this talk personal.  Why should I be an advocate for Diversity?  I am a scientist who’s 
White, Northern European, 
male, 
Q-cleared, 
PhD (from a good school!), 
born in the US (my parents too!), and 
I can sit in an exit seat on an airplane.  
What do I have to gain from diversity?  I’m one of the haves - not the have-nots.   The reason that I’m here is a result of the result of a science experiment. 
The process that started 3 years ago - as a side interest of mine.  A group of us were asking questions on how information technologies, like the internet, will change the Lab, and society in general. We believed that  individuals solving their own problems can contribute to a problem solving capability much greater than themselves.
Our arguments were data-poor and lacking concrete examples. To give us a better argument, I did some idealized simulations.
I was successful and surprised at the results.  The study showed that diversity of experience - not performance or capability - was sufficient to solve problems better than an average individual, or even an “expert”. 
This role of diversity turned out to be a key feature in understanding the performance of many processes, from ecosystems to organizational structure, even  to understanding how society works.  That is why I am here today.  

## A Model for Solving Hard Problems

- A Model for Solving *Hard* Problems

- The Maze has many solutions - non-optimal and optimal.

- How can groups solve hard problems– without coordination, cooperation, or selection?

- In “Learning” the maze, individuals create a diversity of experience.

- Individuals
-   Solve a maze
-   Independently
-   Same capability

**Notes:**
(You must look at this viewgraph as an animation in a presentation mode - or as in the pdf files. 
Let’s look at the idealized simulations that I did. 
I asked the question: How can groups solve problems better - without coordination, cooperation or selection?   What I did was to have many individuals solve a maze - independently and with the identical capability.  
And they solved it without having a global perspective of the problem.  For example, at the beginning an individual has two choices - not knowing where the goal is, they randomly pick one path.  Then at the next junction, they pick from 3 paths, and so on.  Until they find the goal.   
This is an example of a path of an individual.  Note that in repeating the solution, the individual will cut off extra loops - remember the last time you went to a new restaurant again, you did not randomly like you did the first time - you optimized your solution.  
We see that the individual could improve their solution even more, but because they don’t have a global perspective, they cannot see how to make a shorter path. One individual cannot know everything.   Filling this gap is one way how diversity can help.  

## A Collective Solution

-  Paths of three individuals                  Collective path

- Solve the maze again *using the same individual capability*

- Combine to form a collective experience.

- Large collectives of individuals find the minimum path

-    and this performance correlates with diversity:
*The unique contributions of individuals to a group*

*Water-Cooler effect*

-    and this performance correlates with diversity.
-    Not from selection of individual performance or capability!

**Notes:**
Here are paths of three individuals.  If we form a “collective experience” from their three paths, and then apply the same rules for using the information (pick the most-used path), you see that a shorter path is found for the collective than for any of the individuals.  
The social equivalent of this process is the so-called water-cooler effect: you randomly meet someone that provides you with a critical piece of information that you needed to solve your problem, not because they thought it was an important (they don’t have a global view of everything either!), but because they were solving their own part of the maze that overlapped with yours. 
What happens if we combine many individuals into a collective? We find that the collective path is a minimum solution to the maze!  Even though none of the individuals have any concept of a short path or a global perspective.  Just by solving a problem of interest to themselves, they contribute to a better solution than seen from their own perception.  All of this occurs without defining what is a best path or even measuring paths. 
Why does this happen?  I found that the shortest path correlated with diversity, defined as unique contributions of the individual to the collective!   Low diversity (when everyone has the same information) leads to no or little collective improvement – does this sound familiar? 
In what other ways does diversity help?  

## Diversity and Robustness

**Noise:  Replace “valid” information with “false” information**

- • Individuals are very sensitive to noise
- 10 steps become 21 steps
- Lack of experience

- • Collectives are insensitive
- 10 steps become 9 steps
- Contingency from diversity

**Notes:**
Diversity is often associated with robustness in nature.  What about here?   
Take the path of one “high” performing individual.  Then add some noise to their information.  What is the robustness of their solution to this noise?  
As you see, because the noise sends the individual off into regions of the maze where they have no experience, they must resort to a random search until they find their old path.   This makes the individual very sensitive to noise.  Remember when you took a wrong turn in going to the new restaurant? 
Now look at a collective.  Because the collective has information throughout the maze, the effect of the noise is not detrimental. In fact, in this case it actually improves the solution.  Therefore, the diversity of the collective leads to contingencies that make it very robust. 

## Development of Cooperation

-      Loss of global robustness

**Diversity leads to Collective Benefits**
-      Individual and global improvement without selection
-      System-wide robustness

**Notes:**

This is a view graph putting the whole story together -Diversity expresses itself in three distinct states:  Natural selection, collective benefits, and exclusive cooperation. 

## The Business Argument

- Informal learning is the source of 70% of our work knowledge
- Two year, $1.6 million DOL study of Motorola, Boeing, Ford, etc.
**Why are centralized, formal sources lacking?**
- $100-120 billion a year is spent on formal training programs,
- Yet in complex situations, how is the “best training” determined?
**Why are these informal sources helpful? **
- Individual problem solving in a common environment.
- Diversity gives unique perspectives (not about optimal performance).
- Individuals contribute to something much greater than they perceive.
**How do we tap the huge collective resources?**
- Investment in Enabling Diversity activates Informal Learning.
- Individuals expression, Listen to others, Mixing communities.

**Notes:**
What is the business argument?  There was an interesting study that investigated where workers, in organizations much like Los Alamos, get their information needed to do their job.  It was done by having workers keep track of all their sources of information.  What was found was that up to 70% of our knowledge comes from informal sources, particularly random social encounters - like at the water cooler.  
Why are formal sources lacking?  If the problems are perfectly understood, it is easy to determine what training and sources of information are necessary.  But in our complex world, we don’t understand the big picture (just like in the earlier maze solutions) and we can’t say what the “best” is. 
What are the alternatives?  A system is already in place: Informal learning comes from the chaotic social interactions.  They work because of the diversity of unique approaches to problem solving by all of us.  From this perspective, it’s unfortunate that we associate diversity with ethnicity. I realized that there is greater variety within my own family (same genes and upbringing) than there are differences between the “average” person of different ethnic groups (the difference between the means is much less than the standard deviations!). 
One way to look at investment in diversity awareness is to enable our informal processes, enabling diversity.  There are huge untapped resources present in just the people in this room, let alone the Laboratory as a whole.  To better enable these processes, we need to Express ourselves more, Listen to others and Mix outside of our chosen, maybe restricted, communities.  

## Where do you want to be? 

-     Inflexible interactions – Fragile systems

- Where do you want to be?

**Diversity leads to**
-    Solution of hard problems by individual “paths”
-    Robust systems

**Diversity leads to Conflict and Competition**

**Notes:**
Summary

## For more information

- Check out the documents at the website: _[http://](http://ishi.lanl.gov/)__[ishi](http://ishi.lanl.gov/)__[.](http://ishi.lanl.gov/)__[lanl](http://ishi.lanl.gov/)__[.](http://ishi.lanl.gov/)__[gov](http://ishi.lanl.gov/)_
- Particularly the Documents page at the Diversity web site: _[http://](http://ishi.lanl.gov/diversity/documents_div.html)__[ishi](http://ishi.lanl.gov/diversity/documents_div.html)__[.](http://ishi.lanl.gov/diversity/documents_div.html)__[lanl](http://ishi.lanl.gov/diversity/documents_div.html)__[.](http://ishi.lanl.gov/diversity/documents_div.html)__[gov](http://ishi.lanl.gov/diversity/documents_div.html)__[/diversity/documents_div.html](http://ishi.lanl.gov/diversity/documents_div.html)_