Dealing with diversity

One of the wonders of the world for me is its diversity.

Diversity has become a buzzword in business. Companies, it is argued, should have a diverse workforce — in terms of age, gender, nationality and other cultural dimensions — if they want to maximize their chances of international success .

This hit home to me when reading through the 200 or so Business Spotlight readers' surveys that we have received so far. (If you haven't filled yours in yet, please do so.)

For every person who loves a particular topic in Business Spotlight, there seems to be another who hates it. Negotiating? Essential! Negotiating? Irrelevant! Denglish? Fascinating! Denglish? Awful!

At a recent feedback session on Business Spotlight issue 1/2009, an intern told us that she was sick of reading articles about the financial crisis. A few hours later, a reader sent me an e-mail asking for more articles on — yes, you guessed it — the financial crisis.

This doesn't mean that there are no trends at all. But publishers, like politicians, have to be careful about making generalizations on the basis of single voices. We all tend to hear more loudly those opinions that we ourselves agree with.

So how can we publishers find our way through this jungle of diverse opinions? Here are some suggestions:

• Listen to each indiviudal opinion and take it seriously. It's what that person thinks.
• Get large enough samples to see the trends of opinion.
• Don't forget minority rights. If 60 per cent agree with X, up to 40 per cent are against it. And vice versa.
• Provide a variety of material. Accept the fact that not everybody will like it all.
• Offer specialist material for particular groups (such as engineers) and listen to their specific feedback.

Dealing with diverse views is fascinating and frustrating, heartening and humbling. But our task as publishers is to deal with this diversity intelligently — and also to present our own visions for content.