'Diversity means better problem solving, more creativity and innovation'

As anyone who is familiar with corporate life will know, ‘diversity’, along with terms like ‘integrity’ and ‘trust’ are reoccurring words in the game of corporate bingo.

But there is a major difference between living your values and just listing them on your website.

One only has to look at a bank’s marketing efforts to see how they wish to be perceived: soft-focused photos of beautiful people staring out onto a bright future with a gender, race and generational balance that would be the envy of many financial services management teams.

Because diversity at the top of the house isn’t just important from an equal opportunities perspective, it is a strong predictor and driver of business success.

In their 2023 report "Diversity Matters Even More", McKinsey found that companies with greater gender and ethnic diversity on their boards were statistically more likely to outperform financially.  

And this is largely down to the power of cognitive diversity – the inclusion within a team of people with a wide range of experiences and backgrounds, who think, process knowledge, and learn differently from one another, resulting in higher levels of team collective intelligence.

Seeking discomfort is the key to growth.

Cognitive diversity within a team situation leads to better problem solving, increased creativity and greater innovation.

We only had to look to our clients past and present, who know a thing or two about building successful companies, to see how they, their business partners and their management teams had disrupted markets by thinking differently to one another – and their competitors.

And outside of the business realm, we see enormous diversity even within clients’ families.

Neurodiversity, disability, gender, age difference, cultural diversity, sexual orientation and, yes, cognitive diversity, can all be present not just within a single family, but sometimes even just within a couple.

This diversity amongst our clients also means that the family unit, the couple or close family member is as important to the wealth conversation as the wealth creator themselves; wealth creation is often borne out of this ecosystem: usually, but not always, a supportive family situation, involving elements of sacrifice on all sides.

Understanding this ecosystem is integral to understanding the wealth’s purpose.

Focusing only on the wealth creator can lead to a cognitively homogenous and one-dimensional wealth conversation, resulting in a strategy simply not fit for purpose.

It is important to us to build our business with this dynamic in mind.

Hiring people who think differently, approach problems differently and are open to challenge (and challenging others), is not always comfortable, but we know Six Degrees is stronger for it. After all, seeking discomfort is the key to growth.

Embedded now in Six Degrees’ DNA sits a related cognitively diverse approach to the wealth conversation, something that we call ‘right brain thinking’: Six Degrees' shorthand for thinking differently, creatively, and acknowledging the importance of our emotional worlds in the wealth journey.

It is this approach that enables us to put purpose at the centre of the conversation.

Six Degrees has so far grown to a team of four. It is largely incidental that we are a 75 per cent female, and 25 per cent neurodiverse business.

It is through cognitive diversity – the power of our brains thinking in different ways – where the collective becomes more effective than the individual.

We’re aware that this is easier to do at the start of the journey. The real challenge as we grow will be to retain this diversity of thought within a larger team, and how we evolve once purpose and right brain thinking are happily no longer a differentiator, but business as usual within the UK wealth conversation.

Oliver Saiman is co-founder of advice firm Six Degrees