Since Anshula Chowdhury began building social investment management platform Sametrica as CEO, the question of building a diverse team has been one of the most important to her. When building a startup, the lines between and family are blurred — and often, employees think of their best ideas while at home.
“If we don’t have diversity of experience and teams, we can’t actually create the type of disruptive change we’d like to in our company,” Chowdhury said. At TechToronto, Chowdhury outlined the ways that companies can think about building a diverse team.
Chowdhury made the point that diversity in itself wasn’t good enough; companies need to focus on having diversity lead to innovation. “We as companies need to hire for diversity and also have a culture of innovation in our companies,” said Chowdhury. “If we think about companies more as villages and communities, there’s an opportunity out there to create a culture of diversity that leads to profit.”
Companies should build their companies without silos, clear goals, and decentralize communication. “The idea is that people tend to hang out with people who look or talk like them. To make diversity work, investing in innovation means forcing people to talk to someone they might not want to hang out and have a bear with, but would actually have a lot of expertise for them.”
Watch the whole talk below:
