Our brains are designed to make quick judgements.
Among the group of people, a person with grey hair, a nice suit, and a fancy title on his business card may appear as an important person. At the same time, we may ignore a young ordinary-looking guy.
We don’t know who can be our best contacts in business unless we speak to both. So, ideally, we should be non-judgemental and give equal time to both. But we know we are biased based on our beliefs.
Similarly, we have biases based on people’s prior experience too. So, we like to engage people with Finance experience to solve financial issues. There is value in this thinking process. However, we will likely get a more out-of-the-box solution if we involve people from diverse backgrounds and experiences.
I have experienced many lightbulb moments brainstorming domain-specific problems with a team of diverse backgrounds.
The story’s moral is that we must engage with people with an open heart and mind. We must proactively monitor our default biases and engage superstars for our initiatives.
