T-Mobile's Joy Stanfield (center) with members of her Team of Experts. (Image courtesy of T-MOBILE)
How can we be more creative? Some people swear by long walks or hot showers to free the unconscious mind. Others come up with new associations by employing constraints, thinking "inside" rather than outside the box.
It's more complicated, though, if a team needs to innovate. When members of a group have a lot in common, with similar points of view and shared biases, it's likely that unconventional ideas will be disregarded or not even surface. But a team made up of people with widely different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives can consider a problem from many angles. And with leadership that values difference, team members will feel empowered to explore approaches that would, otherwise, never be considered.
Making use of diversity within a team to generate new ideas and solve problems is called creative friction, and two companies in very different industries are turning that to their advantage. T-Mobile, the global telecommunications giant, and Fortis Lux Financial, a boutique financial services firm based in New York, embrace diversity as a moral good and social imperative but are also very aware of the competitive advantage that accompanies it.
I spoke with Holli Martinez, Vice President, Diversity & Inclusion, and Joy Stanfield, Team of Experts Manager, from T-Mobile, and Sunita Bajaj, Managing Director, and Felix Malitsky, President and Founding Partner, from Fortis Lux Financial, about how they drive innovation with diverse teams.
Benjamin Wolff: Tell me about your background and how it shapes your identity at work.
Joy Stanfield: I'm 67% Native American and a lesbian. T-Mobile was the first job I had where I could truly be myself. At other jobs, no one knew I was gay, I couldn't wear my hair the way I wanted to, or show my tattoos. I had to hide the things that make me who I am.
Sunita Bajaj: Currently, over 50% of our executive leadership team is comprised of immigrants, and a third of the team are females. I'm an immigrant myself. I came to New York City from New Delhi, India, and I've been here for 27 years, so this is home.
Holli Martinez: What's been helpful for me at T-Mobile is that I have an MPA [Master of Public Administration] degree rather than a more typical MBA. That unusual education has given me a different lens and an ability to think outside the box and look at problems in another way.
Felix Malitsky: I'm a white male, was captain of the football team in high school, studied economics and history, and have been in the military. If someone looks at me diversity is probably not the first thing that jumps out at them. But I'm an immigrant. Growing up Jewish in Odesa, Ukraine, we dealt with a lot of anti-semitism — my parents changed our family name so they could get jobs, and my brother and I wouldn't be picked on in school. I know what it's like to have to hide who you truly are.
Wolff: The words "Diversity" and "Inclusion" are often used together or interchangeably. But they're quite different, aren't they?
Martinez: Diversity is a noun. It's what makes each of us who we are. Inclusion is the verb. It's what we do with our diversity — how we present our unique perspectives, how we create an environment where people are comfortable sharing their ideas. There can never be too much diversity, but sometimes there's not enough inclusion or we're not leveraging it correctly.
Stanfield: We focus on inclusivity because you can have a very diverse group, but if people don't feel like they belong or are part of something bigger it's not going to produce any results.
Wolff: How do you balance inherent diversity — the difference you're born with — and acquired diversity — the difference you earn through experience?
Bajaj: You certainly want people on your team who look different — that's your inherent diversity. At the same time, with a different look comes new experiences and relatability. So the two are connected.
Martinez: I prefer the terms visible and invisible. You can't look at me and know that I'm a parent, but you can see that I'm female and middle-aged. If employees sense that a company is not handling the visible diversity well, they won't trust an organization with the invisible.
Holli Martinez, Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion, T-Mobile, speaking at T-Mobile's "Insight Out" event. (Image courtesy of T-MOBILE)
Wolff: Does having a diverse team — with its many opinions — risk inefficiency and slowing down the creative process?
Martinez: Innovation happens when you know that your ideas will be heard and taken seriously. Obviously, if there are different perspectives in the room it's going to take longer, and there'll be some friction in trying to understand someone else's point of view. But that's ok. Inclusion means rewarding creativity and fresh ideas, no matter the source.
Bajaj: Creative friction is good because it generates lots of ideas. But there needs to be a point where you converge. A plan does have to be accepted by everyone and implemented. What makes that possible? Our common goal — the vision that binds us all together.
Wolff: How does diversity shape the way members of a team think about problems and develop solutions?
Malitsky: The saying used to be, "Knowledge is power." But today we can look up anything we want — so now it's implementation and accountability. Let's say you're a single mom and part of our financial services team, and you're working with a client who is also a single mom. You know the challenges. If you can help the rest of the team understand that it's very powerful. From an emotional standpoint, from a connection and support standpoint, it adds a lot of value to our organization.
Stanfield: One of our top zip codes has about 60% single-parent households. I talked to people on my team who were single parents to figure out what we could do to help these customers and keep them with T-Mobile. They explained to me that, for single parents, time is everything. Anything that can give single parents time back into their day is a big deal. So we really started leaning on the self-service option.
Felix Malitsky, President, Fortis Lux Financial (center) with members of the Fortis Lux team. (Image courtesy of FORTIS LUX FINANCIAL)
Wolff: Can you train a team to welcome new ideas?
Stanfield: Every week we meet as a group — all 40 people on my team. We're constantly bouncing ideas off one another. But it doesn't just happen. You create an atmosphere where we're open to other people's ideas. Then you build on that, and it gets better and better.
Martinez: One of the things we do is provide opportunities for stretch assignments where employees work on cross-functional projects and move to new teams, so they're not stuck in one line of business or one way of thinking for too long. The spark of creativity happens when they have these expanded opportunities.
Wolff: What advice can you give to companies who want to create more diverse teams to better reflect the communities they are a part of?
Malitsky: If your organization is not as diverse as you want it to be, look in the mirror. You have to be honest. In our case, we knew that African Americans are a certain percentage of the population in the New York metro area, yet the percentage of our advisors was a lot lower. We had to ask, "What are we doing wrong? What can we do better?" Then we sat down with influential people in that community and had a very transparent conversation. So we've improved, and we've made a conscious effort to do so.
Martinez: Being able to measure success is critical to improving. You can do that quantitatively and qualitatively. At T-Mobile we track attrition rates per demographic, career movement and retention. But we also look at stories — like when an employee says that they feel safer at work than in their community, or when a female employee is excited to see three women on the senior leadership team and they can now see their pathway to success. The inclusive culture to celebrate differences is so ingrained that it can't be taken away. It's how we operate.
Malitsky: Three years ago we had 89 financial professionals. Today we have more than 200 professionals and hundreds of support staff. But almost every person has come to us through word-of-mouth. We're not on college campuses, we don't have to post on Monster. When you create a culture where you take care of people, and you're genuinely loyal to them, it's amazing what happens.
This interview was edited and condensed.
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Published here on Forbes.com
November 10, 2019
