𝗕𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 ‘𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀’ 𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆

Over the past few years I’ve had some very difficult interactions at work (and in my personal life). I came away from more than one of them thinking (singing)

“𝘏𝘦𝘺 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘮𝘦, 𝘐’𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘮𝘦”

• Too direct

• Too intense

• Too tangential

• Too much

But then, in other contexts, I’ve had almost the opposite experience. Same brain, same personality but this time the feedback was:

• “This is brilliant”

• “That’s exactly what we needed”

• I’d never have thought of that

• “Can you look at this?”

What changed? Not me - the environment.

I’m drawn to the ‘different operating systems’ analogy for neurodiversity (ADHD combined type in my case). It’s simple and easy to communicate but I think it’s incomplete so I pushed it in this visual (𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘴 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺 - welcome to my busy brain!).

Brains that process inputs differently leads to different outputs. What gets flagged as an ‘error’ depends on the barriers in between — physical, social, attitudinal, communicative. When we treat those outputs as defects in the individual, that’s the medical model at work.

The social model shifts the focus to removing the barriers.

Having people that run a different operating system (multiple in some cases) isn’t the problem, it’s designing a world for just one. People with less compatible systems will get error messages, have to work twice as hard and then probably crash.

Being different isn’t an error, sometimes it’s just a compatibility issue - and compatibility is a design choice.

Within the workplace, this post looks at what happens when those different operating systems aren’t treated as faults to fix, but as variations that teams and organisations can actually benefit from: