Professional Documents
Culture Documents
p. 80: ‘When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are
more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new
reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.’
o ‘What is important for our purposes, however, is not whether the Iraq intervention
was right or wrong, but how different people responded to the new
evidence…According to a Knowledge Networks poll published in October 2003,
more than half of Republicans, who had voted for George W. Bush, simply ignored it.
They said that they believed the weapons had been found.’
p. 102: ‘If it is intolerable to change your mind, if no conceivable evidence will permit you to
admit your mistake, if the threat to ego is so severe that the reframing process has taken on a
life of its own, you are effectively in a closed loop. If there are lessons to be learned, it has
become impossible to acknowledge them, let alone engage with them.’
- For gender, the executive team shows the strongest correlation. Having gender diversity
on executive teams specifically is shown to be consistently positively correlated with higher
profitability.
- Ethnic and cultural diversity is correlated with profitability. Companies with the most
ethnically diverse executive teams – not only with respect to absolute representation but
also a variety or mix of ethnicities – are 33% more likely to outperform their peers on
profitability.
- Ethnic and cultural diversity on executive teams is low. In the UK, 22% of university
students identify as black and minority ethnic, but only 8% of UK executives do.