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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
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"An interesting read for anybody curious about the human story and our development in society."
—Irish Tech News
"Groundbreaking guide...innovative and accessible."
—SanFrancisco Book Review
In The Neurodiversity Edge, renowned Oxford-trained cognitive scientist, neurodiversity expert, and business leader, Dr. Maureen Dunne presents a pioneering framework to harnessing the power of neurodiversity to navigate the most important human resources revolution in the modern era.
Did you know that an estimated 1 in 5 people are “neurodivergent”—have a mind that works differently, such as the autistic, ADHDers, the dyslexic, synesthetes, and other unique neurotypes—and that the vast majority are motivated, capable, and unemployed?
This indispensable guide is based on more than two decades of immersive cognitive science research, case studies, stories from neurodivergent voices, in-the-trenches work with hundreds of organizations from start-ups to global Fortune 500 titans, and Dr. Dunne's own lived experiences as a neurodivergent employer, entrepreneur, board member, and CEO. Too many unique minds and perspectives on the sidelines, and too many organizations beset by groupthink, innovation-stagnation, and a lack of access to qualified new candidates. The Neurodiversity Edge takes you all the way from why to what and to how, delivering practical insights that build on a new foundational framework:
- Cultivate a values-driven approach to building a culture of sustained authentic inclusion where everyone can thrive
- How to improve the interview process to avoid missing game-changing talent
- Develop a hybrid office protocol that works for everyone and a support infrastructure that aligns with universal design principles
- Discover why Google's Project Aristotle found that innovation and performance hinge on psychological safety
- Uncover and eliminate the destructive influence of unconscious cognitive biases
- Take a graphic tour into the wonders of the human mind
- Understand unique problem-solving abilities such as lateral thinking, visual-spatial thinking, multisensory thinking, leaps of creative insight, hyperfocus, and many more
- How to articulate and implement organizational goals and measure progress toward them
The Neurodiversity Edge is an essential guide for executives, board directors, human resources professionals, managers, recruiters, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, allies, educators, nonprofit leaders, and anyone with an interest in better understanding neurodiversity, authentic neuroinclusion, and the human mind.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Ground Rules
The Crux of the Matter
A Mystery Story
The Organizing Premise
Notes
Part I
: Why
Chapter 1
: A Tale of Two Worlds
Neurodiversity World 2.0
The Strength-Based Framework
Thinking from Thirty Thousand Feet
Notes
Chapter 2
: The Perils of Groupthink
Groupthink Is a Breakdown in Community-Level Efficacy
Thinking Right and Wrong
The Groupthink Recipe
Notes
Chapter 3
: The Economics of Neurodiversity Inclusion
The Structural Labor Shortage
The Game-Theoretic Exacerbation
The Winds of Change
Notes
Chapter 4
: The Hitchhiker's Guide to Cognitive Diversity
Perpendicular Thinking in Flatland
A Guided Tour Through Kinds of Minds
Graphic Depictions of Diversity of Minds
Copernican Moments
From Community Level Back to Individual Level
Notes
Part II
: What
Chapter 5
: From Why to How
Culture Is as Culture Does
The Pyramid of Neuroinclusion
Case Study: Neuroinclusion from the Ground Up
Note
Chapter 6
: Thinking Outside Check-the-Box
Checking the Box
Courting Disaster
Notes
Chapter 7
: Neurodiversification Versus Culture Fit
Culture Expansion > Culture Fit
Neurodiversification Is Culture Expansion
Implementation
The Neurodivergent Leader Paradox
Notes
Chapter 8
: Tricks Minds Play
A Safari through the Jungle of Cognitive Bias
Summary
Notes
Part III
: How
Chapter 9
: Building a Sturdy Foundation
Psychological Safety Is Paramount
Permission to Think Freely?
Bullying Continues in Adulthood
Risk Requires Trust in Safety
How to Get There
Notes
Chapter 10
: Recruiting for Cognitive Diversity
Notes
Chapter 11
: Accommodating Humans
Case Study: Confusion Is a Failure to Communicate
Supporting Humans to Their Full Potential
Strategies to Better Accommodate Humans
Notes
Chapter 12
: Workplace Flexibility
Remote, In-Person, or Hybrid?
Workplace Flexibility Is Key to Establishing Neurodiversification
Remote Control
Universal Optionality
Notes
Chapter 13
: Universal Empathy Network
The Double Empathy Problem
The Past Is Prologue
Mama, First Contact, and Bat Psychology
A Sense of Proportion
Notes
Conclusion: Neurodiversity and the Age of Transformation
Notes
Appendix: Tools to Inspire Authentic Neurodiversity Inclusion & Belonging
Sample Neurodiversity-Friendly Organizational Culture Checklist
Glossary of Terms
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 Technical inclusion vs. authentic inclusion.
Figure 1.2 Invention of alien fruits by neurotypicals (left) and ADHDers (ri...
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1 AI-generated art representing systems thinking.
Figure 4.2 Graphic depiction of mind highway system
Figure 4.3 Time as points in conceptual space.
Figure 4.4 Thinking is associative and experienced like the branches of a tr...
Figure 4.5 Graphic depiction of visual thinking from an autistic adult.
Figure 4.6 Jory Fleming's depiction of his mind.
Figure 4.7 The Ptolemaic model of the solar system. (Public domain.)
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 The Three C's of Codification, Conduct, and Culture.
Figure 5.2 The Pyramid of Neuroinclusion.
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Steel is an alloy that derives strength from elemental diversity....
Chapter 7
Figures 7.1 and 7.2: Breaking free from groupthink.
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 The four stages of psychological safety.
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Neurodiversity inclusion values statement.
Figure 10.2 Very few organizations offer training and resources throughout t...
Chapter 13
Figure 13.1
Conclusion
Figure C.1 My attempt to depict the perspective of an Oxford Don on the hist...
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Begin Reading
Conclusion: Neurodiversity and the Age of Transformation
Appendix: Tools to Inspire Authentic Neurodiversity Inclusion & Belonging
Sample Neurodiversity-Friendly Organizational Culture Checklist
Glossary of Terms
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
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“Skillfully written and expertly explained, yet practical every step of the way. A must for businesses, healthcare workers, recruiters, and anyone seeking a truly fresh perspective on cognitive diversity and the singular value proposition of authentic neuroinclusion.”
—Denise BrodeySenior Contributor, Forbes
“The Neurodiversity Edge is an absolutely transformative work, especially timely given the seismic shifts confronting today's organizations. As a serial entrepreneur and educator, I have witnessed firsthand the power of Dr. Dunne's pioneering frameworks in action within enterprises. Deeply rooted in rigorous research and enriched by practical insights from real-world implementations, this guide offers invaluable strategies for fostering inclusive environments that leverage the unique strengths of all individuals.”
—Shailu TipparajuCo-Founder, Examity, 4x Exits, Venture Fund Partner, Emerge Education
“If you're looking to enhance and leverage the diversity within your organization, then Dr. Maureen Dunne's groundbreaking guide is the book for you! The Neurodiversity Edge clearly and concisely explains how to cultivate an organizational culture that embraces the full spectrum of neurodiversity, and it does so using state-of-the-art cognitive science research, real-life anecdotes, and in-depth case studies. The practical and easily understandable tools it provides will help you ensure the inclusion and prosperity of people with cognitive differences, which will benefit both them and your organization. Innovative and accessible, the guide offers a comprehensive strategy for tapping into the vital resource that is cognitive diversity and building an organizational future where every mind is recognized as a valuable asset.”
—Erin BrittonSan Francisco Book Review
“This is the right book at precisely the right time. Our business, social, political, and environmental problems are increasingly complex. The traditional solutions, linear thinking, and consensual decision making that landed us here are woefully insufficient to create successful, socially responsible, and profitable social systems and organizations for the future. This text should be considered required reading for business management, human resource, and social science courses.”
—Therese Fitzpatrick, PhDSenior Vice President, Kaufman Hall
“Maureen Dunne dismantles the stereotypes that surround neurodivergent people and makes a powerful business case for true inclusion. The Neurodiversity Edge is an eye-opening read. It is also a practical manual for change.”
—Caroline GrossmanExecutive Director, Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
“An original and inspiring game-changer for neurodiversity employment today. In this book, Dr. Dunne makes a thoroughly compelling case for neurodiversity as a competitive advantage and does so with rare depth and insight. She also provides practical advice to companies for utilizing this competitive advantage. It is a book that speaks both to members of the neurodiverse community and to employers who will hire them.”
—Michael BernickFormer Director, California State Labor Department.
“An epiphany. It will open your eyes to the most underappreciated human resources opportunity of our time. A tour de force bursting with wit, humor, and rare insight while establishing a coherent framework of actionable strategies. An indispensable resource for businesses, government agencies, and other organizations eager to get ahead of the curve and the competition by proactively embracing cognitive diversity.”
—Christopher Kennedy, PhDSenior Economist, U.S. Department of State
“My 40 years of business management experience and 10 years dealing with workforce development in Illinois tells me Dr. Dunne's perspective should be a key business HR initiative to address the coming labor shortages in America.”
—Tom Wendorf,Former Vice President, Simmons Company, Co-Chair, Illinois Workforce Innovation Board
“The most comprehensive and compelling case to date on why and how to harness the power of neurodiversity. An absolute must-read for leaders looking to future-proof their organizations for the coming paradigm.”
—Gustaf NordbäckFormer CEO, Financial Times and IE Business School Joint Venture
“The Neurodiversity Edge, collects [Dr. Dunne's] over 20 years of research, case studies and interviews to provide a guide for embracing neurological differences.”
—Inside Higher Ed
MAUREEN DUNNE
THE NEURODIVERSITY EDGE
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO EMBRACING AUTISM, ADHD, DYSLEXIA, AND OTHER NEUROLOGICAL DIFFERENCES FOR ANY ORGANIZATION
Copyright © 2024 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
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for the pathfinders and those who empower them to discover the space where we each can belong
Introduction
“Not at all silly,” said I, losing my temper; “here for example, I take this Square,” and, at the word, I grasped a moveable Square, which was lying at hand—“and I move it, you see, not Northward but—yes, I move it Upward—that is to say, not Northward, but I move it somewhere—not exactly like this, but somehow—” Here I brought my sentence to an inane conclusion, shaking the Square about in a purposeless manner, much to the amusement of my Grandson, who burst out laughing louder than ever, and declared that I was not teaching him, but joking with him; and so saying he unlocked the door and ran out of the room. Thus ended my first attempt to convert a pupil to the Gospel of Three Dimensions.
—Edwin A. Abbott, from Flatland, 18841
The genius of Edwin Abbott's classic, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), lies in how it constructs a universe that allows the reader to effortlessly awaken to the sense that we are constantly surrounded by solution pathways we are unable to perceive—or capitalize on—without access to new concepts outside our comfort zone or sphere of awareness.
Flatland injects the reader into the everyday household, economic, social, and political life of beings inhabiting a world bounded by just two spatial dimensions. We witness their trials, tribulations, and triumphs in entirely familiar terms and recognizable scenarios. But all of it happens in a world with only length and width—the Z-axis is every bit as alien to them as a fourth spatial dimension would be to us.
Abbott transports us across dimensional layers, first visiting the claustrophobic reality of one-dimensional life before being swept up into the mind-bending expanse of three-dimensional space. This is a great narrative trick, and it hits home.
As three-dimensional readers, we frown in bewilderment at the hapless Flatlanders and their failure to spot the N+1 spatial axis. If only they could see that new direction, we think as readers, they would have access to so many new possibilities. In the same breath, we are left with an almost urgent revelation that we might be in the same boat—surrounded by new directions and opportunities if only we could see perpendicularly to our familiar frame of reference.
Why are we starting with a Flatland metaphor? The short answer is that one of the defining premises of this book is that cognitive diversity is an N+1 axis for organizational culture. The long answer is the rest of this book.
This isn't a low-stakes game, either. To meddle with society's underlying neurodiversity zeitgeist is to meddle with the lives of perhaps about one of every five people on the planet. In fact, the numbers may even be much greater than that and growing at an unprecedented rate.
The results of a recent study by ZenBusiness showed that about half of the members of Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) identify with the neurodivergent umbrella. Twenty-two percent said they were “definitely neurodivergent” and 31% reported they were “somewhat neurodivergent.” The study was based on a survey that collected responses from 1,000 young adults between the ages of 18–25.2 Another study by Tallo reported that the vast majority of Gen Z job seekers (80%) would prefer to work for a company that supports neurodivergent people.3
This book is not your standard guidebook. There are plenty of practical tips, strategies, and actionable frameworks. But this is also a guide in a broader sense. Foreign travel often helps to foster respect, appreciation, and empathy for different customs and unfamiliar ways of tackling the mundane demands of everyday life. In that spirit, through first-hand accounts, anecdotes, thought experiments, unique explanatory devices, and case studies, this book endeavors to foster respect, appreciation, and empathy for the rich tapestry of human neurodiversity.
My hope is that, by the end of this book, you will not only be armed with valuable new tools but also feel that you have traveled on a journey that leaves you with a deep appreciation for all kinds of minds.
Ground Rules
The concept of “neurodiversity” has many different interpretations, definitions, and manifestations. But all of them roughly overlap around the central premise that neurodivergent people—such as the autistic, ADHDers, the dyslexic, the dyspraxic, synesthetes, the hyperlexic, the dyscalculic, and those identifying with other cognitive differences—deserve to be valued and seen as members of the natural spectrum of human cognitive diversity. A strengths-based lens helps manifest this value and guide others to see that neurodivergent people are just people with unique strengths and challenges.
I use “neurodivergent” in a manner that reflects the current best-supported scientific framework, which means that the degree of neurodivergence in any one individual is independent of any ideas about cognitive ability, intelligence, knowledge, or aptitude.
In other words, if I told you I planned to introduce you to someone tomorrow, and I further informed you that this person has been diagnosed with ADHD, or identifies with an emerging term called VAST (variable attention stimulus trait), you would have no basis to extrapolate that fact into any preconceptions about that person's intellectual capabilities, general knowledge, or capacity to successfully perform any given task or role.
Put another way, intellectual capability is entirely independent of the presence or absence of a neurodivergent cognitive profile. An autistic person may, for example, be either highly intellectually gifted or have an intellectual disability, or fall anywhere in between, just like any person. The same can be said of ADHDers or the dyslexic, or, for that matter, those with blue eyes or left-handedness or perfect pitch or dark hair or an anxiety disorder or a cleft palate.
This is a very important point to acknowledge at the outset.
In addition, as I use the terms here throughout, an individual can be either neurodivergent or neurotypical but not neurodiverse. Only a group of multiple individuals can be neurodiverse and only if it is populated by both neurodivergent and neurotypical members. I use the terms “neuroinclusion” and authentic neurodiversity inclusion interchangeably. A terminology resource guide appears in the Appendix for easy access to definitions and explanations of concepts, cognitive typologies, and terms used throughout this book.
The legacy framework for understanding neurodivergent people is generally known as the deficit-based perspective, or the medical-deficit model, which still dominates how most people view neurodivergence at all levels of culture today. According to this model, any given person is either neurotypical or dysfunctional. For decades, this framework has formed the basis for how we evaluate students, employees, parents, children, active community members, artists, public intellectuals, next-door neighbors, and everyone else.
The deficit-based perspective is a colored lens through which most of us have viewed cognitive differences all our lives, and the collective experience of that reality has sown hidden, deep-seated biases that are not only counterproductive to organizational outcomes but also run contrary to a growing body of research, as we will cover in the chapters ahead.
Levels of support needs are as varied and diverse as neurodivergent people themselves. Some people identify as disabled while others identify as simply being wired differently. I believe that a strength-based approach empowers everyone to reach their full potential but does not imply that support and accommodations are not needed or important. Nor does a strength-based perspective change any legal obligations such as those defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As emphasized in the Pyramid of Neuroinclusion introduced in chapter 5, a culture of psychological safety, trust, transparent communication, support, work adaptations, and empathy is essential for all to thrive.
Possibly, the most important shortcoming of the pure medical-deficit perspective is that it orients us, by default, toward a set of standards inextricably tied to seeing neurotypical cognitive profiles as inherently more valuable or more acceptable than neurodivergent profiles without an appreciation of the rich diversity of gifts and talents that often go hand in hand with neurodivergent cognition.
It's a bit like the hidden, deep-seated bias we all share about understanding the Earth from a north-is-up assumption. There's no fundamental reason to place north as the central orienting direction when viewing a map or globe. More to the point, there are plenty of times when seeing the world “upside down” can offer important insights about the layout of the planet. Yet we all end up feeling a bit uncomfortable looking at a map until we turn it so that north points up.
The net result is the habitual pattern, in most of the business world, to define workplace rules, performance assessments, and hiring practices by a set of standards that, at root, are ultimately just about turning our perception map until neurotypical “points up.”
From this perspective, “different” equals “deficient.” That puts neurodivergent people at an instant and unfair disadvantage: unfair to neurodivergent employees who are cast aside despite having applicable skills and motivation, and unfair to the organization's other employees—as well as to customers, partners, and shareholders.
In short, it's a lose-lose framework for two reasons: first, it blinds us to the untapped substantive value to be reaped from hardworking, motivated, skilled and possibly uniquely talented people traveling through life with a cognitive profile compass that doesn't orient toward neurotypical; and second, because that mentality fosters a game-theoretic landscape that incentivizes everyone to try to appear neurotypical, forcing millions of talented people to literally waste their lives away in a likely futile acting audition when they could just be themselves instead and possibly help us solve real problems.
To return to the Flatland metaphor, the pure deficit-based perspective forces us to live trapped in two dimensions, oblivious to the N+1 axis of cognitive diversity—invisible, yet all around us, ready to be tapped to help us escape an unnecessarily bounded and limiting way of understanding people, teams, and skills.
The Crux of the Matter
One in every five people you see each day may be living in a world defined by systematic and counterproductive exclusion from the opportunity to productively contribute to society. In terms of human capital potential, this is a devastating failure. Morally, it's a plague of injustice.
Countless contributions are being forsaken that might otherwise add value to all our lives and, in the same breath, offer millions of talented but sidelined people—our siblings, parents, children, and spouses—a path toward genuine actualization.
Through a social infrastructure of customs, linguistic conventions, habits, assumptions, rules, social scripts, traditions, institutional protocols, technology, and cultural legacy effects, we produce “society” every day—in our schools, at our workplaces, at social events, and in our households.
Occasionally, we become collectively aware of something amiss in the fabric of that process. And sometimes such an awareness crystallizes enough to force a paradigm shift—the revelation that we have been looking at some specific and important dynamic all wrong and to our distinct collective practical and moral detriment. Hopefully, the strength of such a crystallization of awareness will be strong enough to propel us collectively on to a different path aligned with an alternative framework.
In essence, there's a vast gulf between (1) being willing to hire token neurodivergent people and provide them access to cosmetic accommodations as part of a PR agenda and (2) genuinely understanding and embracing authentic neurodiversity inclusion as a powerful long-term strategy for organizational success.
Neurodivergent people perceive the world differently when compared to their neurotypical peers, but we also diverge from each other. We each take in unique details, hold distinct assumptions, create new patterns and frameworks to view a problem, and, ultimately, offer different solutions.
One key axis of reasoning in this book is that these types of differences are inherently valuable. Different perceptual tendencies and different ways of forming conclusions add to the diversity of thought available to any group of people, whether it's a community, an organization, a small company, or any other social context where a bunch of people have come together to make things work for each other.
The ideas and methods considered when making important decisions within an organization are narrowed when everyone on a team is highly cognitively correlated. That narrow band of cognitive and experiential tendencies can present risks and undermine the upside. Under such conditions, creativity and innovation can be stunted, and potentially catastrophic risks and vulnerabilities are more likely to go undetected.
In addition, divergent thinking broadly correlates with increased innovation. We will cover the research as we go, but the basic premise shouldn't be all that controversial: most instances of innovation involve thinking about something in a new or unconventional way.
While I will be clear from the start that this book does not purport to speak for all neurodivergent people, I have found that many neurodivergent people across typologies are gifted lateral and nonlinear thinkers in some form. Yet, most of our shared everyday communal world is linear—built by linear thinkers for linear thinkers—creating a natural friction.
As a result, there are many examples of neurodivergent trailblazers who have put an indelible stamp on our shared history. We can say for certain with some, such as Sir Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Tori Amos, and Dan Akroyd, to name a few, because they have publicly disclosed their neurodivergence. Many historical figures have also been widely speculated about in terms of potential neurodivergence due to recorded observations of behavior patterns that fit with this notion, including Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, Andy Warhol, Woodrow Wilson, and Thomas Jefferson. Naturally, we will never know for certain.
However, and this really gets to the crux of the matter, neurodivergence aligns with other outlier lists as well—lists that are hard to reconcile with each other: it turns out that neurodivergent people may be reflected disproportionately on the “Nobel Prize winners” list while also being disproportionately present on the “currently or formerly incarcerated” list, the “unemployed or underemployed” list, and the “suicide risk” list.
One of the central questions I will explore in this book is the following: How can neurodivergent people be responsible for a disproportionate share of our important innovations while most are so strikingly left out of the economy or on the margins of society?
The answer, as we will see, has a great deal to do with built-in biases. For example, a 2020 survey of UK employers revealed that a shocking 50% openly admitted that they would not hire a neurodivergent job seeker.4
Society has institutionalized standards for elements such as job interviews, evaluations, and everyday office politics. And this averaging dynamic for social scripts imposes clearly identifiable biases that work against people with minds that don't sync up well with standard expectations for how people “ought” to think, act, and strategize. The chapters to follow will target and expose these unproductive biases.
I'll also explain why the neurodiversity paradigm, and its mission, can and should be couched within an actionable framework for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). A culture of appreciation and belonging for cognitive diversity—a diversity of thought and of ways of thinking—is just as valuable to organizational and societal success as are other forms of diversity typically included in the continuously evolving DEI context.
At the end of the day, we face a critical choice about the type of world we want to live in.
We can live in a world where millions of uniquely talented but quirky people are left to suffer massive underemployment and ostracism, while masking who they really are, and perhaps getting by through government assistance. Or we can proactively support the actualization of human potential for everyone, reaping the benefits of a wellspring of creativity and new perspectives that could open the door to untold future innovations, better hedging against groupthink, and the knowledge that millions of would-be outcasts have been accepted into the fold, finding a productive and self-affirming place in the fabric of our culture and economy.
This book argues for the latter case.
It also argues that authentic neurodiversity inclusion is an ascendant concept in our culture, meaning that most organizations will likely adopt some version of this principle over coming years—whether by proactive choice for maximum value or through reactive and grudging late-adopter acquiescence to some form of social or regulatory pressure.
These two arguments for embracing authentic neurodiversity inclusion are both important and compelling. Authentic neurodiversity inclusion is (1) an unambiguous moral and ethical social value and (2) probably inevitable for most organizations in the long run in any case, whether by choice on your terms or by pressure on someone else's.
However, this book will concern itself most with arguing the point from yet another direction: authentic neurodiversity inclusion is a critical organizational value. If properly implemented, it offers a competitive advantage for any business by expanding the breadth of cognitive resources available for innovation, creativity, group decision-making, strategy, motivation, and loyalty, as well as massively increasing the pool of available talent by connecting innovative organizations with skilled people eager for a chance to contribute.
A Mystery Story
How is it possible that an identifiable and definable group could be both obviously valuable and undeniably excluded? Part II dives deeper into this mystery and offers a framework to reverse course and strengthen organizational culture from the bottom-up. But there's an important point to be made at the outset: deepening the mystery—because it will become relevant for how firms react to awareness of the first mystery and its origins—how is this group not currently an explicit part of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) organizational frameworks?
This question, in turn, raises other questions as well: What do we really mean by “DEI”? Is the goal to put our finger on the scale enough to weigh simultaneously and materially in favor of moral justice and economic functionality? If so, how are we not including in DEI organizational goals a specific and identifiable contingent of society that has clearly been discriminated against in terms of appropriate employment opportunities despite mounting evidence of its potential to offer productivity and workforce value?
Make no mistake, a culture of belonging is an important part of this story, especially given the crucial importance of intersectionality among the neurodivergent.
It has been well established in prior research—as we will see along the way—that firms genuinely invested in improved inclusivity metrics, more broadly defined, have been shown to increase financial returns and productivity while also serving a valuable public moral imperative and reaping rewards in reputational value (especially those first into the breach).
Companies with more diverse management teams demonstrate, on average, 19% higher revenues due to increased innovation and 9% higher margins.5
The mechanism behind that data appears to be linked to the relationship between diversity in background and diversity in perspective. In other words, groups with a wider range of lived experiences tend to bring to the table a wider range of available ideas. That expands the menu of available ideas in discussion during problem solving, planning, and other strategic activities.
Traditional diversity theory argues that diversity among those involved in corporate strategy discussions provides a hedge against the perils of groupthink. Neurodiversity may be just as powerful an asset. Neurodiversity represents a different way of thinking, and there is an inherent value to being different. A team of neurotypical people, no matter how smart or well-educated, is subject to the twin risks of missing new opportunities and ignoring unrecognized threats.
The scales have tipped: the future is likely going to belong to organizations that manage to accommodate cognitive diversity proactively rather than those that fail to confront the issue, hiding behind claims of a lack of expertise. We need unique problem solvers more than ever, especially considering that we are at an inflection point of accelerating change due to the integration of artificial intelligence into nearly every aspect of our daily lives. Skills of the future, such as lateral thinking, systems thinking, visual-spatial thinking, creativity, and hyperfocus, can often be found in neurodivergent populations where employers have not been looking—or where standardized hiring processes have historically sidelined such talent from consideration. The path from here, with respect to including neurodiversity at all levels of the business economy, is about how, rather than if, why, or whether.
The winners will be organizations that manage to weed out implicit biases from interviews and hiring practices and effectively integrate and retain a talent pool made up of all kinds of minds. Many corporate giants such as Ernst & Young, Google, Ford, JPMorgan, Microsoft, SAP, and Wells Fargo have been underscoring the numerous gifts that neurodivergent workers offer employers in recent years.
This perspective carries with it an implicit moral imperative driven by the simple fact that the neurodiversity community represents a huge piece of our society; according to some estimates, 50 to 60 million Americans identify as neurodivergent, and the percentage is even higher in many countries around the world.6
If we have the choice to take a step that stands to offer more opportunities to more people and at the same time drive greater innovation and productivity throughout the economy, is that a difficult choice?
Do we prefer a world where a fifth or more of our population is left out of the equation, relegated to an artificial second-tier status, structurally unable to actualize their potential? Or one that values all individuals fairly for the skills and talents each of us uniquely possesses? Wouldn't we all prefer to live in a world where the seeming misfit segments of our collective whole find a suitable home in the evolving twenty-first-century economy?
In the marketplace for labor, the neurodivergent and our many talents have been historically undervalued—and, due to unprecedented changes in the role technology stands to play in our economy over coming years and likely decades, we appear destined to need unique minds more than ever.
The Organizing Premise
This book is the result of more than 20 years of research, interviews, in-depth discussions, and organization client relationships, as well as my own lived experiences as an entrepreneur, board director, social impact investor, researcher, executive, and consultant.
My aim here is to convince you that authentic neurodiversity inclusion is not only an essential ideal for every organization, and a strong competitive advantage for first movers for very specific, compelling, and evidence-based reasons but also that it is an ideal only accessible to organizations willing to commit to deep work at the very foundations of organizational culture.
There are neurodiversity-at-work-type guides and playbooks out there full of useful tips for managing neurodivergent employees. These are important, but without working on organizational culture at the DNA level, I have found over many years of close observation that such approaches are akin to a fad diet plan—you will lose 10 pounds in two months, but fast-forward another six months, and you're right back where you started. Improving an unhealthy weight situation on a sustained basis is about much more than being told too many carbs are a problem. It's about relationships, family life, deeply ingrained habits, financial stress, sleep disorders, feeling valued, and potentially many more variables that are all part of a deeper overall problem where unhealthy and unwanted weight gain is just one superficial symptom. You aren't going to catalyze lasting change with only a new fad diet handbook filled with tricks for losing pounds fast. It may drive short-term gains toward a desired outcome but nothing more.
In much the same way, organizations aren't going to gain access on a sustained basis to the fruits of authentic neurodiversity inclusion—a significantly wider pool of talent, a massive expansion in diversity of thought and lived experience, creativity, loyalty, and groupthink immunity, among other dynamics—without embedding a deeper values-driven approach.
In other words, the path I am offering here is not a superficial makeover or even cosmetic surgery. This is gene therapy. To work, this must be a change at the DNA level of an organization's culture because, as a core value, it permeates every facet of every department at every organizational level, from the mail room to the boardroom.
Luckily, that doesn't make it any harder as a path. It just implies a different focus—a focus not on maintaining a list of accommodative practices for the quirky people at the office but, instead, a focus on transporting the entire organization from one world where there are quirky people with special needs and normal people without them to a different world, where there exists a wide range of types of people and a system of universal accommodation that works for everyone—a world where the broadest possible range of cognitive diversity is celebrated as an asset.
Part I will answer the question: Why should an organization be interested in authentic neuroinclusion and belonging? This will span technology, innovation, cognitive diversity, labor supply, and public brand and reputation factors, which are all significant and well established in this field. We examine cognitive strengths with a more in-depth focus on embracing autism, ADHD, dyslexia, synesthesia and other cognitive profiles.
Now armed with the sense that authentic neurodiversity inclusion is a crucial value to embrace, Part II focuses on answering the question: What should an organization do to manifest that value? We will cover the goal of a durable and authentic culture of neurodiversity inclusion among all tiers of an organization by introducing The Pyramid of Neuroinclusion, which forms the conceptual basis for an actionable framework to help formulate and achieve objectives aligned with this core value. Psychological safety and trust is introduced as the bedrock of an inclusive, thriving organizational culture. From there, teams can benefit from diversity and flourish with a focus on inspiring transparent intraorganizational communication, accessible workplace supports, universal design principles, and an empathy infrastructure to bridge gaps in shared experiences.
Finally, Part III will answer the question: How can an organization set about achieving the objectives implied by the Pyramid of Neuroinclusion in terms of strategies and tactics? This is where we drill down further, adding nuance to our discussion of universal design, recruitment processes, hiring decisions, workplace support, and employee retention to build a thriving organizational culture with inclusivity as a core value. This will also be augmented by exclusive access to indispensable tools and resources found in the Appendix and on the book's companion website (www.TheNeurodiversityEdge.com), which has been designed to aid in implementation and management of the process.
Notes
1
. Abbott, Edwin A. 1884.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
. London: Seeley & Co.
2
. Zen Business Research Report, 2023. “New ZenBusiness Research Finds Class of 2023 Sees Neurodiversity as an Asset in Leadership & is Primed to be the Most Entrepreneurial.”
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230614082058/en/New-ZenBusiness-Research-Finds-Class-of-2023-Sees-Neurodiversity-as-an-Asset-in-Leadership-is-Primed-to-be-the-Most-Entrepreneurial
3
. Tallo July Report, 2021. “Workplace neurodiversity is important to Gen Zers.”
https://www.hrdive.com/news/gen-z-hiring-recruiting-neurodiversity/604453/
4
. Institute of Leadership & Management. n.d. “Half of All Leaders and Managers Would Not Employ a Neurodivergent Person.” Retrieved March 8, 2023.
https://www.institutelm.com/resourceLibrary/half-of-all-
leaders-and-managers-would-not-employ-a-neurodivergent-person.html.
5
. Boston Consulting Group, 2018. “How Diverse Leadership Teams Boost Innovation”.
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/how-diverse-leadership-teams-boost-innovation
6
. CDC. n.d. “Data & Statistics on Autism Spectrum Disorder.” Last reviewed April 4, 2023.
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html
.
Part IWhy
Chapter 1A Tale of Two Worlds
“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”
—Wayne W. Dyer
As a very simple visual metaphor, imagine a performance line representing an individual's skillset across a variety of domains. It goes wildly up and down, representing powerful skills in math, poor performance in debate, all-star status in statistics and logic, and abysmal proficiency at retention of historical models. Now add another individual with a performance line that's mostly a mirror image of the first. It peaks where the other troughs and vice versa. Finally, let's add two more individuals to this group, each with performance lines that peak and trough at still different points. Together, the four individuals make up a diversified portfolio of cognitive profiles with very different strengths and weaknesses.
Now, let's imagine four new candidates. In this second group, all members have very similar performance lines: they all score “pretty good,” “average,” or “slightly below or above average” at every skill—none extraordinarily good or terribly bad at anything.
Which group of four should you hire?
The painfully obvious answer is both! Just as painfully obvious is the notion that either one, without the other, would contain the seeds of its own destruction in the context of a competitive market economy facing rapid evolutionary and revolutionary transformations ahead. It is through the complementarity of different cognitive profiles, working together, that we arrive at the optimal configuration. And, naturally, evolution got there before us.
It turns out that some researchers now believe certain beehives have a minority cohort that behaviorally diverges from the rest of the hive in terms of responding to honeybees' most important social phenomenon: the waggle dance—a figure-eight dance performed to share information with other members of the colony about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new nest-site locations.
Some researchers believe that about one-fifth of the bees in a honeybee hive ignore waggle dance instructions, instead flying off in apparently random directions, while the other 80% of the bees in the hive follow instructions effectively and pursue the endorsed objective.1
I am not in any way suggesting that neurodivergent individuals are comparable to non-waggle-dance-following bees. However, the example points out something important about the difference between thinking about individual-level traits versus thinking about community-level traits.
Through the lens of a deficit-based perspective, those divergent bees are failures because they won't or can't behave according to the standard expectations for proper bee behavior. However, it turns out that divergent bees appear to be a significant strategic asset for honeybee hives. The divergent cohort of the hive bucks the norms, charts a new course, and widens the scope of the hive's territorial reconnaissance operations and its behavioral matrix. At the end of the day, this divergent minority appears to account for a disproportionate share of new pollen discoveries, helping the whole community thrive.
In other words, the whole of the hive community is a complex system. Analyzing each member with only an appreciation for differences according to individual-level standards obscures value at the system level.
The deficit-based perspective sees a group of five bees. It recognizes four of them with gold stars for successfully fitting in. And it bemoans the other one—the misfit—who has totally failed according to established protocols and standards of bee conduct.
But the strength-based perspective sees a completely different picture: “divergent-inclusive hives,” at some point in the evolutionary past, decisively outperformed “divergent-unfriendly hives” in a Darwinian scramble for dominance. And this victory came not despite, but precisely because of, the behavior of the divergent cohort in the hive.
In other words, at the community level (or at the organizational level), including individuals with divergent traits produces powerful value that would be unattainable through any other configuration. The challenge is being able to implement that community-level realization in the course of individual-level relationships and management within the fabric of a thriving organizational culture.
What I have couched as a “community-level dynamic” can, in fact, be discussed in more rigorous evolutionary terms.
Many of the neurodivergent cognitive typologies we discuss in this book are believed to have a hereditary basis in genetics. Given that, there's plenty of room to build a theoretical foundation for explaining the universality, persistence, and pervasiveness of neurodivergence displayed in human populations across both geography and time in terms of community-level fitness.
One theoretical framework that has been developed toward precisely this objective is the theory of “complementary cognition,” which asserts that successful adaptation in humans arises from collaboration between individual members who are specialized in different but complementary neurocognitive search strategies.2
Essentially, the theory proposes that human cognition evolved to be in-group complementary in order to promote cooperation and improve group performance.
Complementary cognition proposes that humans evolved to specialize in different, but complementary, cognitive strategies, or “ways of thinking.” This specialization is thought to have arisen as a way of coping with the challenges of living in a complex and ever-changing environment.
There is evidence to support the theory of complementary cognition from a number of different sources. For example, studies have shown that humans have different cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Some people are better at spatial reasoning, while others are better at verbal reasoning. Some people are better at thinking outside the box, while others are better at following rules.
These different cognitive strengths and weaknesses are thought to be the result of natural selection. Over time, individuals who were better at thinking in certain ways that were complementary with the distribution of cognitive strengths across the community were more likely to survive and reproduce. This led to the evolution of a population of humans with a wide range of cognitive abilities.
Complimentary cognition holds important implications for our understanding of the factors involved in organizational success. For example, it suggests that we should not expect everyone to think the same way and that this diversity in cognitive strategies presents advantages capable of supporting the success of the wider community. We should also be aware that our own cognitive strengths and weaknesses may lead us to have different perspectives on the world.
Once again, this view returns us to the pitfalls we face when considering our appraisal of individual-level cognitive strengths and weaknesses and how that appraisal may be in conflict with the reality of team dynamics and what drives the performance of any given group of humans when viewed at a community level.
Complimentary cognition is still a relatively new idea, but it has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of human behavior. This theory was developed to help explain cognitive differences associated with developmental dyslexia by providing the theoretical understanding of why “search specialization” is likely to have evolved as well as its significance for understanding human adaptation and cultural evolution.
But such a framework could just as easily be applied to autism or ADHD, which present potential complementarity implications for the performance of human groups at a community level.
The big takeaway from a complementary cognition interpretation of neurodiversity is the idea that, in our environment of evolutionary adaptation (roughly, sub-Saharan Africa, tens of thousands of years ago), not everyone could find a meaningful route to social—and thus, reproductive—success by being a perfect neurotypical subject: great at toeing the line, acting within the boundaries of social scripts, and quickly picking up commonly needed skills.
There would have been a small but not insignificant route to social and reproductive success for people built to buck the main road and march to the beat of their own drums, exploring different ideas and different ways of living, perhaps being impulsive or constantly finding new and different ways of solving problems.
Some percentage of these neurodivergent members of the community would strike gold in some way, providing some outsized value to the community and gaining status and social capital as a result. Not only would this dynamic maintain the genotypic and phenotypic pervasiveness of neurodivergent traits within a given community, but it would also confer an advantage to communities that accepted and included such individuals over communities that shunned and excluded them. Over time, extrapolation of this evolutionary game-theoretic landscape results in the world we see around us today in terms of population genetics and community-level distributions of cognitive strategies.
Sadly, the same cannot be said of the corporate landscape, where we see a heavy skew toward neurotypicals when compared to the broad population.
At its core, complementary cognition strongly suggests that human cognition evolved to be complementary in order to promote cooperation and improve group performance. The theory points to the potential that, by recognizing and leveraging complementary cognitive abilities, groups can enhance their problem-solving and decision-making capabilities, leading to better outcomes. After all, communities with a stable abundance of neurodiversity are more effective over time than communities that exclude neurodivergent individuals.
There is even a line of reasoning that suggests this complementarity extends to communities that will likely soon come to include artificial intelligence. As large language models such as Google's Bard or OpenAI's ChatGPT have demonstrated, an incredible amount of extrapolation, analysis, and linguistic modeling can be automated. But the gap in their conceptual coverage map is likely to be found in the territory of nonlinear thinking—in what we might call “intuitive leaps of insight”—that might otherwise go unexplored.
