Book synthesis

Cognitive diversity: the secret of dream teams

Optimizing teamwork is more important today than it has ever been. You may think that going solo will allow you to reach your goal more quickly, but, in fact, pooling diverse talents allows you to generate disruptive solutions that are tailored to our turbulent times. Author Shane Snow argues that the most enterprising companies routinely promote healthy confrontation between opposing points of view because collective intelligence can’t be conjured out of thin air: it needs to be worked on. If you don’t handle your team properly, its diversity can quickly become a disruptive force that shatters collective work. A subtle balance is necessary to take advantage of the differences between your employees and attain optimal collaboration. Within a dream team, divergent views create a wealth of ideas that combine to produce exceptional levels of performance.

Diversity: a fundamental virtue for innovating and adjusting

Is your organization faced with increasingly complex problems that are impossible to solve using methods that have worked in the past? Snow recommends upping the cognitive diversity of your troops. Your teams should be made up of a patchwork of different profiles, points of view, and skills. These should be rich and varied enough to fashion tailor-made answers based on the synergy between the contrasting approaches employed.

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