When boards talk about diversity, the conversation often narrows to a single dimension. Diversity is wider than that. It includes race and gender, and it also includes skill, profession, geography, age, the size and type of organization a person comes from, how long they have been part of the membership, and the lived experience they bring to a decision. A board can look varied on one of those dimensions and still be uniform on the others.
Why boards tend toward sameness
No one sets out to build a board of people who think alike. It can happen through an ordinary mechanism. Sociologists call it homophily, the tendency of people to form ties with others who resemble them (McPherson et al., 2001). Recruitment often runs through the networks current directors already have, and those networks tend to share professions, communities, and experiences.
Stenling et al. (2023), studying Swedish national sport organizations, found that nomination committees can shape a board’s composition before any election occurs, through how formal their process is, how much they rely on personal networks, and how transparent they are. When the pool is drawn from familiar circles, the ballot can reflect those circles, even when every candidate is well qualified and every director acted in good faith.
What sameness looks like from inside
A board drawn from one network often feels efficient. Meetings move smoothly, members share shorthand, and agreement comes easily. That ease is real. It can also carry a tradeoff that is easier to see from outside the room. When everyone at the table has led the same kind of organization, lives in the same part of the region, or trained in the same profession, the questions no one thinks to ask may be the same questions for everyone. An unasked question does not announce itself. It can feel like consensus.
Skill shows this clearly. A board strong in finance and operations may have no member who has worked in technology oversight, member communication, or program delivery, and the gap tends to become visible when a decision lands in it.
A story about location
Member correspondence about a proposed policy change can come mostly from one part of an organization while other parts have not yet written. Two explanations fit that pattern, and they point in opposite directions. Either the others were reached and saw no concern, or they were not reached at all. The record may not be able to tell the two apart. The members who wrote are often engaged and sincere, and the members who did not write may be just as engaged. The structure can let one group’s voice stand in for the whole membership, without anyone intending it.
What the recruitment record shows
On paper, a board may show a full roster, open elections, and a nominating process anyone can enter. Members who have not yet seen someone from their region, profession, or career stage in a leadership seat describe the same board as further away than the documents suggest. Both accounts are accurate. I have read files where the correspondence about a policy change came from one region, and the roster had no way of showing whether the silence elsewhere was consent or distance.
Because the mechanism that produces sameness runs steadily, diversity across these dimensions grows when a board chooses it, across recruitment, committee appointments, leadership pipelines, and the voices it seeks out before it decides. In my view that effort is a counterweight to a structural current most organizations carry, including the well run ones. A board that can name the kinds of difference it would not notice missing has already found where its next growth sits.
No two organizations are in the same position, so there is no single answer to hand you here. If something above matched what you are seeing on your own board or in your own department, the useful next step is a short conversation about your situation instead of a general answer.
Request a 15 minute conversation, call 402-230-7473, or write to info@ibconsultingusa.com.
Mel K Meier, DBA is the founder of iB Consulting USA, a woman owned, WOSB certified advisory firm. She serves boards, associations, and executive teams through board advisory, organizational diagnostics, portfolio company diagnostics for private equity sponsors, speaking engagements, and governance assessments. She helps boards, associations, leadership teams, and private equity sponsors see how an organization is governed and how it performs, leading to areas of opportunity to improve performance, clarity for decision making, and support for strategic planning.
