How to Miss the Point of Neurodiversity Celebration Week

Can you remember the party from your 1st birthday? How about your second, or even your third? No, me neither. That’s normal, because, if we are being honest, birthday parties for very young children are not for the benefit of the child at all. They will receive some gifts, and two- or three-year-olds may even be up for a chaotic game of pass the parcel, but that is not the reason for the party. Birthday…

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Why Neurodivergent Pattern Recognition Can be a True Game Changer at Work

I love reading spy novels and thrillers, but very few works of fiction are as gripping as the true story of the breaking of the enigma code. During World War 2, a team of code breakers led by the great Alan Turing carried out extraordinary work to crack the supposedly unbreakable cipher that the Nazis were using. While they did build one of the first computers as part of this work, the vast majority of…

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Why Are We Still Obsessed With Pretending That Everything is Brilliant at Work?

With major elections imminent in both the US and the UK, a message that we will soon start hearing a lot is that if you do not vote, you cannot complain about the outcome. There is truth in this, though there likely could be a lot more done to improve the way democracy works and make people feel more involved too. But I find it interesting that this argument is applied so regularly to voting,…

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How Many Organisations Are Deliberately Designing Out Excellence and Innovation

In a few short months, the Paris 2024 Olympics will be upon us. I love almost everything about the Olympics, from the way that it clearly means so much to the participants, to seeing less followed sports like archery and handball getting a bit of time in the spotlight. One of my favourite events to watch are the athletics relays. They are so fast and so exciting, with the ever-present jeopardy that it does not…

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Why Interviews Should No Longer Make the Shortlist for Recruitment Methods

The recruitment process went like this. Shortlisted candidates were required to attend over 2 days including an overnight stay and should be accompanied by their wives (because all of the shortlisted candidates were married men, obviously). During 2 days of interviews, the candidates would be asked how their wives were at entertaining executives from other businesses, as although they were not employed or compensated by the company in any way, the wife of the successful…

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My Autism Does Not Have an Off Switch (And I Am Not Sorry About It)

If there is one thing that we all know about modern technology, it is that a huge number of problems can be fixed by turning something off and back on again. A film I watched recently involved avoiding disaster by turning an entire building off and on again, and I have lost count of the number of times that I have seen the concept of rebooting people in science fiction. It can be easy to…

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Why Treat People Properly When You Can Just Give Them Meaningless Corporate Awards?

Many years ago, when the ninja turtles were a big deal the first time around, I visited a fairground. One of the first booths I saw advertised a free ninja turtle if you lost. My money was out of my pocket in seconds, and the darts were in my hand. Seconds later, I had “won”, and the trick became clear. Almost everyone would “win” and receive only a very small prize for doing so. The…

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What are the Best Jobs for Neurodivergent People?

It can be too cold to snow, water is wet, and all neurodivergent people are good at maths and should work in tech. Three truths you can bank on while the rest of this crazy world falls apart around us, right? Well, no, actually. Scientifically, water is not wet, and it can and does snow at very low temperatures, so neither of the first two statements are true. As for all neurodivergent people working in…

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Why Work Environments Matter, and What is Going Wrong

In a world where the truth seems to be an entirely optional extra, contradictions and paradoxes are all around us. I will never forget reading a sign that set out the daily closing times for a business that claimed to be open 24 hours a day. We constantly see world leaders and celebrities travel around the globe in jets to discuss the climate crisis. Managers claim to listen when their actions show that they are…

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