Reply All is my favorite podcast. It bills itself as “a show about the internet.”

The latest episode is about diversity in Silicon Valley, approached through the lens of a black engineer who recently quit his job at Twitter. It is fascinating and absolutely worth a listen.

One of my favorite parts is an example that comes around the 23:50 mark. It illustrates the value of having diverse perspectives when it comes to solving problems as a team, and how things like culture and geography can shape that in important ways. I hadn’t heard this concept explained so clearly and compellingly before.

Here’s the example, related by a researcher:

It turns out, if you’re British, or if you’re African American from the south, not as a rule but generally speaking you’re likely to keep your ketchup in the cupboard. If you’re not British and you’re not African American from the south, you tend to keep your ketchup in the fridge. And you can think, ‘Viva la difference, who cares?’ Right?

 

But it actually does matter because suppose you run out of ketchup. If you’re out of ketchup and you’re a ketchup-in-the-fridge person, what are you gonna use? Well you might use mayonnaise, you might use mustard, because those are the things you think of as next to ketchup. Right? If, alternatively, you’re a ketchup-in-the-cupboard person and you run out of ketchup, what’s next to the ketchup in the cupboard? Well, malt vinegar.

The host summed it up:

So, the more diverse the backgrounds, the more associations you get, and the more paths to solving the problem. And there are a lot of real life examples of this.

This really resonated with me. I think I’ve always understood intuitively that diversity has benefits for teams, but in terms of explaining exactly why, this made the case in a concrete and intelligible way.

I am sure I will have an opportunity to use this “next to ketchup” to make the case for more diverse perspectives on teams, and I look forward to doing so.