Published
Matthew Syed’s book, Rebel Ideas, was the subject of this year’s Major Projects Association Prestige Lecture as well as a subsequent bookclub discussion, facilitated by Iain Minns of Arcadis. Martien Lathouwers, from the Arcadis Netherlands’ office, now reflects on the implications of Matthew’s ideas for major project organisations.
Our recruitment needs to become more rebellious, not least because nowadays there is a tendency to employ people who look just like the employees we already have; leading to more of the same perspectives when it comes to tackling complex problems. This is not helping make diversity work.
How do you design a recruitment process that can look at the person behind the CV, and try to diversity-score them based not just on his or her, immediately apparent, education and experience? That is a hard question to answer, since we rarely ask for more information from an applicant than “exactly how good a fit are you, for our company?”
I’ve tried to find an answer to this conundrum online. In 2014 you could use a great tool, that was available to map and score the breadth of your LinkedIn profile on the basis of the number of sectors in which you knew people, and how diverse the roles were that they were playing in those fields. How to Visualize Your LinkedIn Network · AllThingsGraphed.com The LinkedIn ‘InMaps’ were tremendous because they provided exactly the kind of the score we should have on our CV to reflect how widely you are connected. And, by extension, what we can learn about you, your curiosity, your interest in other people and other cultural experiences, all of which have led to this network.
Clearly what you will also want to know is if all your LinkedIn contacts have come about because all those diverse people join the same ‘orchid association’ (for example) to which you belong. This will lead merely to a deal of shared knowledge on Orchids rather than a network providing access to input from various sources in several different fields. In other words, do you actively use your network, or do you just dress yourself up with a lot of names you happen to know?
I asked myself the question, what I should investigate alongside my LinkedIn profile to score my own diversity of thinking and experience? The answer came down to what Microsoft analytics might do behind the scenes. I remember a few years ago when an automated email started arriving regularly, telling me how many minutes I spend in online meetings. It probably also measures how many useful keystrokes I do, but it can surely also analyse my Outlook- and social-activity- to see if I actually communicate with at least a part of my LinkedIn contacts, and whether our messaging is merely ‘all about orchids’ or on all kinds of topics. We need a tool that can count the number of unique contacts you have made, how often and will a variety of keywords (orchid, high speed rail…) to come up with a score. I am still looking for the analytics tool to do just that; one that is not so intrusive as to spy on me and report back to my boss!
I have realized that people who score highly on diversity usually have a tendency to jump from one thing into another, like a bee visiting flowers. When I looked at one colleague whom I consider is very diverse, I focused on her appointments diary. It turned out to be full and including such a diversity of topics with which she was involved that I consider are also part of the scoring algorithm
Next time I go to a job interview for a role where I want to work as a diverse thinker, and to be considered as such, I will bring a printout of my diary pages for the last couple of months; a record of unique contacts on various communication platforms; and the analysis I made in 2016 when the ‘InMaps’ tool was still up and running because, boy, did I score widely!
I just hope the prospective employer knows how to value what I bring, or at least that the three people on the other side of the table differ so much from each other that at least two of them understand the value of being diverse (and rebel) thinkers.
About the author
Martien Lathouwers, 49, married for 7 years and father of Esther, is a strategic thinker, delivering decision support for project managers and leaders. His main focus is on risk and opportunities in large infrastructure projects. He has worked at Arcadis for the past 22 years in the most diverse set of projects the company has to offer; from railway simulation and safety risk analysis, moving on to flood defences, dike and water-drainage projects, drinking water and sewage facilities, nature and water quality projects, scheduling, high voltage power lines for the wind at sea developments, highways, highspeed rail operation, traffic control, tunnel management, bridge and sluice renovation and maintenance, airport extension development, riverbed widening and ERTMS railway operation in rolling stock. Proudly one of the few who have seen the broad spectrum of Arcadis projects in all their rich diversity from close to.
2022’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) person-of-the-year, board member for the Personnel Association, active union representative and Workers Council member, focussing on social and HR issues. On top of all this, Martien has been a Supervisory Board member for a commercial debt reduction company (Modus Vivendi) for 17 years; Secretary of an NGO dedicated to community service and neighbourhood care via our all-is-for-free shop and a pluck-your-pick garden (Limoenz.nl). And, no surprises here, orchid lover and food creator with a food technology background, an MBA in Marketing, and a MA in Logistics Management.