Diversity Isn’t the Goal—Better Decisions Are; So We Are Seeing What We Could Not See
There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from believing you understand how the world works. It is rarely loud or boastful. More often, it is quiet, unexamined, and reinforced by experience that appears to confirm it. For much of my early life and career, I carried that confidence with me. I had grown up in a middle-class environment where stability was assumed, education was expected, and opportunity—while never guaranteed—felt accessible enough to be taken for granted. I went to a good college, served in the Navy, and later moved into leadership roles where decisions were made, strategies were formed, and outcomes could be traced, at least in part, to the quality of one’s thinking.
It was only when I began teaching high school in Savannah, Georgia, that this sense of understanding began to unravel.
The school was located in a community where most students were Black and living in poverty. I had encountered discussions of inequality before, of course. I had read about it, heard about it, perhaps even believed I understood it in an abstract sense. But abstraction has a way of softening reality. It removes urgency. It creates distance. What I encountered in that classroom was not abstract.
Students came to school wearing the same clothes day after day. Some were unsure where they would sleep that night. Others were navigating pregnancies, legal trouble, or simply the daily strain of surviving in an environment where the future was not something to be planned for so much as something to be endured until it arrived. The rhythms of their lives were different from anything I had experienced. Where I had been raised to think in terms of what came next—college, career, advancement—many of them were focused on what came now: food, safety, stability.
It struck me then that different socioeconomic conditions do not simply shape opportunity; they shape orientation. The middle class tends to look forward, imagining and preparing for a better future. Wealth, when it accumulates across generations, often turns its attention backward, toward preservation and legacy. But poverty compresses time. It anchors attention in the present, because the present demands it.
I couldn’t have learned that from a book. I couldn’t have understood it from data. I had to see it through someone else’s eyes.
That realization marked the beginning of a shift in how I understood diversity—not as a moral imperative or a social program, but as a fundamental requirement for seeing reality more clearly.
It was this lens that I carried with me recently while listening to a New York Times roundtable discussion on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The conversation itself was striking not because it resolved anything, but because it did something far more rare: it allowed people with differing views to sit with the tension, to agree in part, disagree in part, and continue talking. In a climate where DEI has become both politicized and, in many cases, misunderstood or reduced to caricature, The New York Times discussion captured something essential—how fragmented the debate has become, and how often participants are speaking past one another.
Listening to it, I found myself less interested in who was “right” and more interested in what the conversation revealed: That we are often operating from entirely different orientations. Some participants spoke from lived experience—specific, personal, immediate. Others leaned on broader patterns and statistical framing. Both were valid. Neither fully connected with the other.
It was, in many ways, a mirror of what I had seen in Savannah, and later in leadership rooms: a failure not of intelligence, but of shared perspective.
That lesson had surfaced earlier in a more unexpected way.
One of my students, a junior who had taken on a leadership role in our program, approached me with an idea. He had attended a summer program where he had been introduced to orienteering—a navigation exercise using maps and compasses—and thought it would be valuable for the group. It had never occurred to me. By that point, I had spent two decades in the Navy, leading teams and managing complex operations. And yet, a student with a single week of exposure had identified an opportunity I had entirely overlooked and never would have thought to introduced it.
We built the exercise together. I created a topographical map of the campus, distributed compasses, and designed a course that required students to navigate and solve problems along the way.
And then, in the middle of it, another student quietly declined to participate.
When I asked why, she responded without hesitation: “I’m black. I don’t need to know this.”
The statement landed with a force that was difficult to process in the moment. It revealed a boundary that had nothing to do with ability and everything to do with perception—an internalized understanding of what was “for her” and what was not. What made it more striking was the context: the idea itself had come from another Black student. The opportunity was not being imposed from the outside; it had emerged from within the group. And yet, for her, it remained out of bounds. Sadly, in her mindset, it was not for her because of who she identified who she was.
It was a reminder that diversity is not simply about who is present in a room, but about the range of possibilities people believe are available to them. It shapes not only what we see, but what we think is worth seeing.
In the years since, particularly in my work as a peer advisory chair, I have come to view diversity less as a social aspiration and more as an operational necessity. The purpose of a peer group is to expose blind spots. Leaders, especially those at the top of organizations, are often insulated by their own success. They rely on experience, intuition, and a relatively narrow set of inputs. Left unchecked, this can lead to a form of intellectual closure—a confidence in one’s perspective that is reinforced by the absence of meaningful challenge.
John Boyd offers a useful framework for understanding why this happens. He described decision-making as a function of orientation—the mental model through which we interpret reality. That orientation is shaped by our genetic heritage, our cultural traditions, our previous experiences, and the ongoing process of analysis and synthesis. It is not static. It is constantly being formed and re-formed as we attempt to make sense of the world. In Boyd’s language, in order to survive on our own terms, we need to be in a continual process of destroying our old mental models and have the capability to build new ones. If we don’t or can’t then we will become “disoriented and confused” and then “eventually be defeated by a reality you no longer understand.”
If the inputs into that system are too similar—if our experiences, cultural exposure, and interactions are all drawn from the same narrow band—then orientation becomes constrained. We do not simply see less; we become less capable of seeing.
A homogeneous leadership team does not just agree more easily. It orients in the same direction. It filters reality through the same assumptions. And in doing so, it risks missing what lies outside that frame.
Diversity of thought expands orientation. It introduces friction into analysis. It forces synthesis across different perspectives. It allows leaders to see not only what is directly in front of them, but what might otherwise remain in the periphery.
This is not primarily a moral argument. It is a competitive one.
And yet, much of the public conversation continues to miss this point. Instead, it tends to frame diversity as either a corrective measure or a distortion of meritocracy. Critics argue that DEI initiatives can become discriminatory themselves, disadvantaging some groups in the name of helping others, while supporters counter that the concept has been politicized and widely misunderstood.
Both arguments contain elements of truth. Both, when taken in isolation, are incomplete.
What often goes unexamined is the system itself.
A true meritocracy requires that the best people rise to the top. But it also requires that people have a genuine opportunity to develop the capabilities that allow them to compete. The distinction matters. Lowering standards undermines performance. Expanding access strengthens it.
I am, in many ways, a beneficiary of expanded access that others did not historically have. My parents owned a home. Their parents owned a home. Education was expected, supported, and financed. Those conditions were not universally available, particularly in earlier generations where government policies explicitly restricted access to housing and opportunity for minorities. The effects of those policies did not disappear when they were repealed. They echo across time, shaping who arrives at the starting line and how prepared they are to run.
To acknowledge this is not to diminish individual achievement. It is to understand the environment in which achievement occurs.
For leaders, the implications are practical.
The question is not whether to pursue diversity as an abstract goal, but whether the organization is capable of understanding the world it operates in. If the people making decisions all share similar experiences, similar networks, and similar assumptions, then the organization is operating with a limited field of view.
Expanding that field of view requires intention. It requires seeking out perspectives that do not come naturally. It requires engaging with people who do not look like you, think like you, or share your background. It requires, at times, choosing discomfort over familiarity.
This is not about quotas. It is about access. It is about ensuring that the table is large enough—and visible enough—for the best ideas to emerge, regardless of where they originate. What barriers limit access and what is your role in erecting or removing those barriers.
It is also about aspiration. When people see others like themselves participating, contributing, leading, and rising, they begin to imagine a larger future for themselves. That matters. Employees who can see a path forward are more likely to engage, contribute, and stretch toward something greater. Representation is not simply symbolic; it helps people believe that growth is possible.
Because the best ideas rarely come from where you expect them. And the next generation of leaders may not step forward if they cannot see a place for themselves to stand. If you ignore diversity, you are not standing still. You are narrowing your perspective. You are also narrowing the ambition of people who might otherwise help your organization grow.
If you embrace diversity—not as a slogan, but as a discipline—you expand your ability to see, to decide, to compete, and to develop people who believe they have a future in the organization.
The goal is not diversity for its own sake.
The goal is clarity.
The goal is participation.
The goal is an organization where more people can see clearly, contribute fully, and aspire to lead.
And that kind of clarity requires more than one way of seeing.