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Comment by hrktb | Hacker News Reader

I think consistency is overrated, and a cause of countless undue issues.

We seem to mostly agree that diversity is important, and having employees from different background help bring different ideas and solutions to the table, react with more agility on unforeseen situations.

On a fundamental level, applying the same vision and forcing the same values and rituals on everyone looks to me at odds with what diversity is supposed to bring.

As an aside, if a company has a credit card processing division and mini-game producing divisions, I'd see a clear case for them to not have the same values nor the same priorities, and in the end the same culture. That's what I also felt reading accounts from UX designers at Google in the early days, when they seemed to be crushed by the 100% data driven culture from which they tried to carve a small niche.

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>On a fundamental level, applying the same vision and forcing the same values and rituals on everyone looks to me at odds with what diversity is supposed to bring.

IMO the difference is that consistency brings people together to agree on the same goals but diversity brings different perspectives on how to reach said goals. It's a bit of nuance, like the distinction between strategy and tactics.

Having disjointed strategy wreaks havoc because people can't agree on what's ultimately important in determining success. Differing tactics brings a bit of experimentation to the table where groups may try out different paths but are all honed in on the same end goal.

I've worked in organizations that couldn't align on strategy and it was horrendous. One level wanted the focus to be on creating an organization that is known for high-quality "world-class" work. The other wanted to move fast and bring in as much work as possible, sometimes at the detriment of quality. Leadership couldn't get on the same page and it created a fracturing of the workforce into competing camps, neither of which trusted (and at time worked to undermine) the other.

Personally, I believe consistency is an indicator of defined process.

Consistency can still produce negative results, but, because it is a defined process, it is much easier to ‘pull the levers’, and wrangle the process into an outcome you want.

Serendipity is great, but it really does take a special group of people for that synergy to work, absent a process.

I think of it like a good band.

Yes, I think at an individual level there needs to be clear rules and expectations, and the sense of belonging to a coherent group sharing the same values.

It's more at an organization level where I see the need to have niches accomodating groups that have different dynamics, perhaps goals and working patterns.

Another instance of that could be customer support centers, who work hand in hand with the product and dev centers, while having wildly different composition, processes and targets from the rest of the company.

I guess it depends on how hard it is enforced. In the end, consistency is something gray and not black and white.

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