PTDoes thinking differently help teams decide better?
A survey of 257 professionals on cross-functional project teams examined how diversity in ways of thinking relates to teamwork, creativity, communication and the quality of decisions. Explained in 13 screens.
One meeting, five minds
In a cross-functional team, people from different areas work together on a temporary project and make decisions that matter to the organization. Each of them sees the same problem in a different way.
Click each seat at the table to hear who is sitting there.
Illustrative scenario created for this page: the quotes do not come from the research. The definition of a cross-functional team is taken from the dissertation (Section 2.1).
The difference that doesn't show in the photo
Diversity has two levels. On the surface are the differences you can see, such as job role, education, gender and ethnicity. Below it lie values, beliefs and ways of thinking: that is where cognitive diversity, the focus of the research, lives.
The four bottom layers are the four questions of the scale used to measure cognitive diversity (Van der Vegt and Janssen, 2003). The iceberg is a metaphor. Source: Sections 2.3, 2.4 and 3.1.
Five pieces, one question
The research set out to learn how cognitive diversity relates to decision quality, and what role three everyday team processes play. Click a card to see how each piece was measured.
All questions were answered on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Altogether there are 91 statements about the team. Source: Section 3.1 and Table 3.
2,776 clicks, 257 responses that count
The questionnaire circulated online, via WhatsApp and LinkedIn, between June and August 2025, aimed at people who work or have worked on cross-functional project teams. Hover over each stage.
- 2,776
visits to the questionnaire
- 812
started answering; 358 stopped partway
- 454
answered to the end
- 257
valid responses, used in the analysis
Questionnaires answered too quickly, or with the same answer repeated in a row, were discarded. Before data collection, 7 people tested whether the questions were clear.
Source: Sections 3 and 4.2. The figure 812 is the sum of those who finished (454) and those who stopped partway (358).
Who answered
People at many levels, from junior staff to CEOs, almost all based in Brazil and with plenty of project experience. Pick a breakdown.
The full map: 10 links, 8 confirmed
Each arrow is a link the research tested. The thicker the arrow, the stronger the link. Dashed arrows were not confirmed. Click an arrow or a piece.
How to read the numbers: the path coefficient (β) shows the strength of the link; here, the closer to 0, the weaker. A link counts as "confirmed" when the chance that it is a fluke falls below 5% (p < 0.05). Source: Tables 31 and 32.
Teamwork is the engine of conversations and ideas
Lined up, the two strongest links both start from teamwork: where people coordinate and cooperate well, communication flows (0.497) and ideas emerge (0.428).
Height proportional to the coefficient (β). Grey bars: links not confirmed. Source: Table 31.
From diversity, a small but real nudge
Cognitive diversity is linked to all four other pieces. The effects are modest, but the one that goes straight to decision quality (0.223) is the largest effect reaching the decision in the whole model.
Move the slider and compare two teams that are identical in everything except diversity of thought.
An illustrative reading of the coefficients in Table 31. In the dissertation, β indicates by how many standard deviations one piece changes when another changes by one standard deviation and the rest stay the same. The standard deviation works as a common ruler for different scales. This is an association measured at a single point in time, not proof of cause.
Talking well is not enough
Of the three team processes, only creativity has a direct bridge to the decision. Once the other pieces are taken into account, communication and teamwork add nothing to decision quality. Try crossing.
This does not mean communication and teamwork don't matter: they are strongly linked to each other and to creativity (screen 8). What does not appear is a direct link from them to the decision. Source: Table 31 and Section 5.
Decisions depend on much more
Each glass shows how much of the differences between teams the model manages to explain. Communication is nearly half full. Decision quality sits at 13.5%: most of it comes from factors the research did not measure.
Measure used: R² (Table 30). The possibly missing factors are pointed out by the author herself in the limitations (Section 8).
So what?
For the author, managing cognitive diversity goes beyond hiring different people: you need to create conditions for differences to turn into ideas, and for ideas to turn into good decisions.
For managers and project leaders
Make room for people to disagree without fear. Use structured brainstorming and role rotation, and put several alternatives on the table before deciding. Communication is there to explore points of view, not to reach a quick consensus.
The author also suggests dosing diversity according to the project phase: encourage it while searching for ideas and align during execution.
Implications from the dissertation · the suggestion about phases was not testedFor HR and team assessment
Looking only at the end result hides the path. Intermediate indicators, such as creativity, collective learning and the number of alternatives considered, help show whether the team is making the most of its differences.
Implications from the dissertationFor people who work in teams
Thinking differently from the group is a resource. In the study, creativity was the only direct bridge between team processes and the decision: a different perspective carries more weight when it becomes a concrete proposal.
Our readingFor society
Valuing different ways of thinking is a matter of inclusion and also of competitiveness: organizations open to a variety of reasoning styles, experiences and worldviews tend to be more innovative.
Social implications from the dissertationWhat this research does not say
- It shows associations, not cause and effect. The data were collected at a single point in time, and each person answered about all the pieces, which may inflate some links.
- Diversity was measured with 4 questions. The concept still has no consensus definition, and a short measure may leave nuances out.
- The sample does not represent the whole country. It was a convenience sample, with 80.2% of responses from São Paulo and 46.7% from the services sector.
- The model explains little of the decision (13.5%). Centralized decision-making, psychological safety and remote work are among the pieces that may be missing.
- Indirect paths were not tested. This page shows only the direct links. Testing routes such as diversity → teamwork → creativity → decision is one of the suggested next steps.
NASCIMENTO, Tatiane Teixeira Neri do. A influência da diversidade cognitiva na tomada de decisão estratégica em projetos de equipes multifuncionais. [The influence of cognitive diversity on strategic decision-making in cross-functional team projects]. Master's dissertation (Business Administration) — Graduate Program in Business Administration, Mackenzie Presbyterian University, São Paulo, 2025. Advisor: Prof. Dr. Fellipe Silva Martins.
Research supported by CNPq (Brazil's National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) through Mackenzie's scholarship program. The data were analyzed with structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM, in SmartPLS 4), with 5,000 bootstrap resamples.
This interactive version simplifies the work for a general audience; the theoretical framework, the full scales and the discussions are in the original text.