The Cost of Thinking Alike

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We like to be surrounded by people who think similarly to us. This makes us feel safe and keeps our ego satisfied. There is nothing particularly bad about it, because it’s hard to imagine a workplace where every decision becomes a constant battle over who is right. The issue is that what feels like alignment can sometimes be nothing more than similarity.

That distinction becomes especially important in environments where diverse perspectives are essential to making balanced decisions. When a group of people shares very similar beliefs and opinions, it’s harder to see the full picture. The paradox is that the more similar the group becomes, the more natural that similarity can feel. If the culture rewards people who fit in, hiring someone who thinks like everyone else isn’t seen as a problem. Rather, it’s seen as preserving the culture.

Culture is one of the most misinterpreted terms I see on a daily basis. It’s an umbrella term that you can use to describe anything. It’s broad enough to explain almost anything and vague enough to avoid explaining anything precisely. If something doesn’t work, or works weirdly, or you don’t understand it, you can blame culture. It becomes a good excuse not to solve the ambiguity, which I also fell into many times. I used to say, “It’s a cultural problem.” Is it?

Similarly, we construct a box we call culture fit. It has an undefined shape, usually the size of us, and it’s not one-size-fits-all. Everyone in the org has their own. It’s filled with our alter ego, so the conditions for culture fit are closer to the mental model of the box’s owner than the company values slide deck. In the end, it turns personal preference into organisational criteria.

When similarity becomes the default, teams gradually lose their ability to make informed, balanced decisions. They can move fast, but their solutions are limited by the perspectives available to them. When people hire other people similar to them, in the end, all of them are fairly the same. The most dangerous part is that you rarely notice the perspectives you don’t have.

Hiring is just one place where this bias becomes visible. The same bias happens even when there is no hiring decision involved. We don’t just prefer people who think like us. We tend to perceive their work as better, too. When we see a document or code from a person with a different writing style or structure, we tend to rate it lower than work from a person who is similar to us, even though this doesn’t impact the value at all. Or when someone disagrees with us often, even though they are right, we like them less than someone who agrees with us frequently.

When I was a newbie in management, my hiring decisions were to hire people like me, often unconsciously. Realisation came later when I noticed my biases taking place. I had a team of people for whom conflict was an unfamiliar term, but our growth was linear at best. Not every conflict is productive, but a team that never challenges itself is probably not as aligned as it thinks. Now, I prefer to have a very varied yet focused team, with people who have different approaches, risking more conflicts and more “what I believe” discussions. In return, the team has more room to grow, because narrow picture is no longer the limiting factor.

A strong culture shouldn’t make everyone think alike. Rather, it should make it safe to think differently and still move in the same direction.

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