The wind blows all around the world but people’s reactions to it differ greatly from place to place: it may be simultaneously a blessing for sailors but a nightmare for farmers, for example… This kind of differences also shapes how differently people deal with tempos, tasks, noise or disorder within organizations.
Unintentionally following some of Laloux ideas about organizations (we just discovered his book very recently), at Vortex we believe that listening to different opinions, especially to those of people who do not think like you, is the only way to learn something. Like many companies, ours has a variety personality types (extroverts, introverts…), political opinions (we do not hesitate to talk about politics), ages (“life contexts”) and so forth. All mixed in a moderately chaotic atmosphere where conflicts sometimes arise.
But conflicts are necessary for progress. A company without them is probably sleeping or, even worse, dead. Sometimes, conflicts arise when leaving your comfort zone but, as explained in an earlier article (Why did we send the “wrong” people to the “wrong” places?) we are convinced that this is positive. Away from your comfort zone, facing differences -and a little bit of chaos- there are plenty of opportunities to experience conflicts that may make us grow.
Thus, although conflict and chaos may be an undesired secondary effect of differences, we believe that the later is a plus for our organization. As an “Escape Room” owner advised us once: the more diverse your team is, the more options there are to solve the “puzzles” or the challenges of your everyday work.
