Just in case you thought diversity was a modern obsession, peddled by management consultants and politically correct Human Resources teams, here’s a quote from John Scotus Eriugena, Irish philosopher who lived 1200 years ago:
‘Beauty is unity in diversity.’
It took me a while in my career to understand the value of diversity. I really got it when I went on secondment to LOCOG, organisers of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. LOCOG was phenomenally diverse. It had to be. The different bits of organisation demanded input from hundreds, literally, of different professional specialists. People who understood 26 different sports. People who understood crowd control. People who understood opening ceremonies. Public transport. Drug-testing. Accommodation. Accreditation. Timing systems. Press. Broadcast. Publicity. Feeding armies of volunteers. Feeding finely-tuned athletes. Flag protocol. And on and on. Unsurprisingly, these specialists all bring different approaches, all have different backgrounds, experiences and understandings. Bringing them together is an extraordinary feeling. But it didn’t stop there.
As the Games move around the world, from host to host, they generate a multi-national group of specialist staff who move from games to games. There were 33 different nationalities on my team at LOCOG, many more across the organisation, all with different cultures, ideas and ways of doing things. It was a rich resource. The trick was to generate an environment where everyone could put their ideas and experience in the open, and where the team could use that in improving our plans and delivery. It was rarely 100% straightforward. But it was a foundation stone in London 2012’s amazing success.
And once you’ve had your eyes opened, you see it all around. London’s thriving economy comes in part from the city’s unparalleled diversity. It is a relatively new thing. Take a look at this map of London’s most spoken second languages that has recently been trending on twitter: http://i.imgur.com/udnwMUM.jpg. London has had immigrant communities for centuries, but not on the scale or with the diversity of today; and businesses haven’t always known how to create the all-important unity in diversity.
In my short time in Macedonia I have begun to see the diversity of Macedonia, and not just in its different communities and cultures. I so look forward to working with it over the next few years. And we hope to see diversity here on this new blog. A diversity of ideas, of topics, of discussions. For that, we need your involvement. The floor is open. Feel free to join the discussion.
Welcome.
Charles Garrett, British Ambassador to Macedonia