Trish's Blog

If your teams removed job titles and backgrounds from the room, would there still be meaningful difference in how decisions are made?

Diversity is often reduced to what can be seen. Roles. Titles. Backgrounds. A checklist that feels complete because it is visible and easy to measure. But visible difference is not the same as Diversity of Thought. And this is where many leaders miss the point.

The real value sits elsewhere. In how people interpret the same situation in different ways. In what they notice and what they overlook. In the questions they feel able to ask, and the ones they choose not to raise.

That is the part most teams underuse. Because alignment can feel productive. It creates speed. It reduces friction. It looks like agreement. But often it is just the same thinking showing up in different roles.

Weird Wisdom® at Work starts from a different assumption. Value does not come from people thinking the same way. It comes from what becomes possible when they don’t. When perspectives are actually surfaced. When disagreement is explored instead of smoothed over. When someone says, “I see this differently,” and the room stays with it long enough for something new to emerge.

Without that, teams can look diverse on paper and still arrive at the same conclusions, in the same ways, every time.

So, I ask again, if your team removed job titles and backgrounds from the room, would there still be meaningful difference in how decisions are made?