Why We Need Rainbows

I love rainbows.

When I was kid my mom had two antique perfume bottles on her dressers that had big prisms as stoppers. I loved when the sun would hit them and cast rainbows all over the room. I would lie on the floor and watch the rainbows move across the ceiling.

Human Resource departments, and particularly Learning and Development, are like prisms. Employees come in like a ray of sunshine, hit the prism and all the composite parts of the employee come into view. We hire people to do a job, and then, very often, once they are with us for a while we start to learn how much more they have to offer. That’s when the employee hits the prism and we get a peek at all the colors inside. We’re generally happy to see the sun, and we’re usually pretty glad when someone new joins our organization because they’re going to fill a need. As we get to know them we see their full spectrum.

We need rainbows in our organizations. You don’t want all your employees to be lockstep thinkers. We need some diversity of thought, of ideas, of solutions. Einstein is reputed to have said, “We will not solve the problems of today using the same thinking we used when we created them.” That’s the approach we need to foster in HR. Don’t  be afraid to promote different ways of getting the job done. There are as many paths to productivity as there are colors in the rainbow. Celebrate them all.