Tim Goldstein was invited to speak to the Colorado Chapter of SIM (Society of Information Managers). SIM's members are primarily senior executives in the computer technology sectors. There were about 40 members present and I was given a TED talk length slot to introduce them to
There were about 40 members present. I was given a TED talk length slot to introduce them to Neurodiversity, Autism at Work efforts, and how a Neurodiversity Communication Specialist can help them. Not just with new efforts, but to support, engage, and retain those "A"SD Listers already in your companies. Lots to pack into a short time.
I think you will learn some solid ideas you can implement immediately.
SIM Talk Transcript
[00:00:01] I was sitting outside the parking lot of work and sitting in my car and I'm holding my phone and shaking and I don't know what the heck to do and I don't even know what really went on at that point. And I'm trying to think who should I call what should I do and I decide I should probably call my wife and I'm half hoping that she doesn't even answer the phone. But she answers and says Hi hon. And I go I've got bad news. I was just fired.
[00:01:34] I'm a tech worker. Like many of the tech workers that you probably work with every day. And especially those ones that when somebody asks you about them you go well you know that's how techies are. That's probably me.
[00:01:50] And I have Asperger's.
[00:01:55] We're going to define a couple of terms here because it gets real confusing fast. It will go fast. Autism and Asperger's were two separate diseases that have now been combined together into what they call. Autism Spectrum Disorder or ASD. Then you hear these terms of Asperger's and you might have heard this term of HFA which is high functioning autism. And what those really are is simply the less challenge the more gifted area in the autism spectrum. Now autism is thought to be caused by the ways that our brains are shaped and wired and that causes us to think certain ways which starts getting into this concept called neuro diversity. So neurodiversity is the idea that the brain is how it's wired and how it's shaped and put together should vary as much as the rest of our bodies vary. We tend not to think of it that way but in neurodiversity what they say is the way that it's wired the way it's hooked up actually causes you to think in a particular manner. And it also says that that variation in brains in the way that they're put together the way they think is normal. It's not something weird that's just like you know there's seven foot people or five foot people we consider them all normal. All the different brains are normal. Give you an idea how far apart some brains can be. I tend to get into a kick of what I eat and I got into this kick on this particular potato bread.
[00:03:26] So when going to the grocery store and each week I'd be looking up and down the aisle and my wife would immediately go right over there honey and I'd walk over and get bread. This went on a year and a half and I finally had to ask her how do you find that bread so fast like you know you beat me every time. And she said I just looked for the orange circle that's on the end of the label. I've been trying to read the words the entire time up and down the damn aisle reading words. She just looks for or circled. A. Lot better way to process in this case. I have a term that I refer to as a as "A"SD Listers. These are going to be people that I think you're gonna recognize. And to me what an "A"SD Lister is, is somebody who demonstrates many of the traits that are associated with a person on the autism spectrum but would not initially be clinically diagnosed. In other words if you were to take all the geeks and techies and all those kind of people who haven't thrown in a room with a bunch of people on the spectrum you probably couldn't tell them apart. Now the amazing thing about the "A"SD Listers is they're like having a Hollywood A-lister. If you want to have a blockbuster film you have to have an A-lister star in it or don't happen. If you want to have a super project that excels. Guess what you've got to have. You've got to have an "A"SD Lister or a couple of them on your team to get that innovation.
[00:04:53] So once I was diagnosed with being with Asperger's I started seeing these "A"SD Listers everywhere. I saw them in the department I was working at. I saw them when I thought back to companies I'd worked at previously. I saw them there. I even saw them in departments that weren't tech departments. Some of them even were managers believe it or not. And I'm not the only one that noticed him everywhere. These companies are just a small example who have actually gone and created programs specifically to recruit to train and to retain people that are on the A-S D-lister spectrum. And they do it under this autism at work moniker and it's really just a forum for sharing ideas of how they've implemented done these different things. It's not a turnkey approach that you can just drop in automatically. The great part about it is as they've proven through actually university research that it has positive our ally it increases innovation and it increases retention.
[00:06:02] So just think if you could do it your I.T. people to stay an extra two months. What would that be worth in the long run with your department. These are just some of the different methods that different companies have applied in the different areas to go from recruitment all the way through retention. Not all companies need that. Maybe you don't want to recruit but you certainly know that you've got some people that maybe if you supported him better they'd stay around and work a little harder. So what are some common signs common signs with as D-listers is often they'll You won't have eye contact when they're speaking with you. They might be looking down they might be looking to the side they're not paying attention to anything else. They're just not looking at you while they're fully engaged in that conversation. Another very common thing is the infamous no filter. Ok so how many here have had somebody that reports underneath you that ends up in H.R. because they said something up.
[00:07:07] I'm guilty of that one.
[00:07:10] And that you often miss voice and body cues.
[00:07:15] And one that you're probably really familiar with is you're talking to one of your tech people and it's been a little bit and you need to get going. You got things to do and you're turning and you're doing towards the door and you're doing everything you can to get the idea across that you got to go. And what do they do they keep going on and on and on and on. You cannot stop them if you run into these three things together. You probably deal with it as D-lister. There's other things too. And by no means is this clinical at all but it will definitely give you an idea that maybe you should think of how you're going to deal with them how you're going to approach them because they're probably thinking through a different mindset than you likely are. So what are the three tricks to engage the listeners as your stem talent. No it's not those things. You know if you want to start a frat house that's a great things to get if you want to run an I.T. department. Guess what some of us give a crap about that stuff. I'm going explain to you three different approaches that I think you'll find will help you as you deal with some of the people in your technical staff that fall into my A-S D-listers.
[00:08:26] And the first one quickly is this concept of three degrees of interest with three degrees and interest says is that at any time and any place on any subject any particular person is going to have a different level that they're interested in. And I start out with the lowest levels being like a user story where it's like the social What do you do for work. And then we move up in complexity which is like doing requirements we've got to get a little more detailed we've got to dig into a little bit more technology but we're not building anything yet except requirements.
[00:08:56] And then we get the deepest level of interest would be that code that implementation level and that is where your technical people are living that's where their heads are that's where they're thinking that's where they live. What this is showing us is how do you address people that are at the different levels of interest.
[00:09:19] Well if you're talking to somebody who is at the user level of interest, guess what you would use. You'd use a story just like we call it user story for some reason and you would convey the information more in a story format. I mean if you think about socially you would convey it more of a story. On the other hand, when you get down to the implementation in the code level at that point you better be talking technology and attack and not telling funny stories anymore. So the big takeaway here is recognize there's. Three distinct levels. Clarify that before you have the discussion if you're talking with a business person to say hey we're going to talk at a business level. End of story. Go out of business. I'll cut you off. And it tells you how to address whatever area your site is appropriate. Another thing is do not ask to multitask. OK, we keep doing it over and over again. Studies have been done time after time. We suck at it. There's almost no human that performs better multitasking than single tasking but we keep trying but guess what. US yes D-listers we really are bad at it. So never give things out in parallel.
[00:10:30] And if for some reason God forbid you actually have to give out multiple things at the same time make the priorities crystal clear make sure that they know if this one can't be completed for some reason do this instead. And guess what. You get the work done that you actually want done and you've got people that are happy because they know how to please you now. This is the killer too many choices. OK have any of you ever asked your technical people to say what do you think and what happens. Well you get a one word answer right or you get an answer that never ends. We all know though in any organization or in any situation in any type of project we're doing there are already some things that have limitations on it. Maybe we have a license with Oracle maybe we don't have a license with Oracle. Well, we don't we're probably not going to go from a Microsoft shop to an Oracle shop over one project. So why even let it be on the table. Why not just lay it out this way and say we could do this because we have licenses we could do this because we have some skill sets in that area. And this one is a potential Bigos. It's an area we want to move to. Guess what once you get a lot better decision and input from your people than if you just say what do you think we should do and they come up with language of leadership trust it should be this it should be that.
[00:11:53] Limit them. And by doing that you'll ask the right question and you'll get the right answer. We didn't have the question asking experts sitting here it's going to tell us about more of that stuff. Oh why was I fired.
[00:12:07] I was fired because I had a meltdown and I was working in a situation that was highly parallel that had no priorities whatsoever and a meltdown was simply I was being pulled in so many directions at the same time that cognitively I could not process the emotions. And when you're on the spectrum when that happens your brain basically shuts down.
[00:12:30] You are not there present in a cognitive basis and it gets kind of nasty at times. The worst part about it is virtually no company knows how to deal with it or handle it. And it's a common symptom. And even worse autism is covered under ADHD. You should be accommodating. So to wrap up quickly. First off I think we recognize that there's different ways to think and that this diversity of processing gives us better the better process processes sometimes the better process that old times a different method. So remember there a wide range trying to get the right person has the right thought process. As D-lister as are often your best performers. I think we all know that sometimes it's our most probable some people are that are our most brilliant. Also. Major companies are proactively out trying to recruit from this segment. And I think I gave you three gold nuggets there. If you take those three things back tomorrow and actually start using it with your people and your team. I think you're going to see little difference in communication just from those three little tips. And I will back up when you're at it and it is. There we go. OK. Fast on the straight here. What's the challenges. The challenges are like implementing anything. Is your company set up to implement change. And again we've got to change expert with us though. Great group and you need C-suite support.
[00:14:17] If you don't get buy in from the top they go buy it down here period and you need to find a specialist who actually knows Asperger's not Lake went to school and studied about people that have it but has lived combined with knowing business and knowing technology because if you don't know both sides and know what the experience is how do you bring it all together. Well here's my chance for my little plug that I get to slip in what I can do is I actually help companies do that and bring together the different sides and teach tech to communicate with contact each non-tech to me with tech help set up programs completely through if you want to do full recruitment help train managers a variety of different things including I have online courses. And as a little gift here if you want a job that down or write it down there's an online course that's for free and it's about communicating with the technical the people you're dealing with every day.
[00:15:25] And yes unfortunately Bitly I think is on Linux and those do have to be capital in the end or they don't work. So. That's the. Are any questions real quick or.
[00:15:48] Cool.
[00:15:55] I can tell you some really interesting stories that probably would be better not in the whole group but I am actually working very closely with a gentleman from the Department of Labor actually vocational rehab who is safe and let's just say that there has been some changes in the scenery and people are moving back to Europe. Let's just put it that way. This is where it starts taking getting a little creative. And when I say getting a little creative It takes first off you've got to find somebody in the state who wants to work with you. OK. You know we've all dealt with bureaucrats at times you got to find somebody cares. They're there. And then secondly you've got to be willing to be a little bit flexible and recognize that states don't move as fast as companies tend to move. It can take two or three months to get there but there are essentially two different sides to what they're willing to help put funding behind. One side is what they call the incumbent worker program and that's where essentially you say if these people had this skill I could give them an advance man or they could move up or whatever. If you can prove it would give them a job opportunity they can probably figure out some way to put some money around it particularly if it has a hard skill aspect. They don't like to finance soft skills because that's the way we work was for some reason. Unfortunately, that's where we need the most help.
[00:17:28] But but that is available the other side is more of a longer term of helping build out almost apprenticeship type programs to be able to bring in and help people learn. The software industry using the old techniques used to learn all different types of industries. It's really funny when you think about it. How did most of your best programmers probably learn to do what they do?
[00:17:58] Yeah it wasn't the college they went to they knew before they even got there. They stayed up late at night and they learned it. And it's so.
[00:18:06] It's getting those people into some kind of career path because maybe they're not college people but they're brilliant and they can program or they know electronics for IOT stuff. So it would be good to get a hold of me and I can help get you connected and kind of get the conversation started and from there you take a word of. Well that's a good question and. Agile is probably about the worst thing you could do to somebody on the autism spectrum. Flat out period. What is the number one you know and I don't think any of you are autism experts. I know some of you are a little bit but most of your autism experts though but from your standpoint what do you think is the most prevalent issue people have that are on the spectrum. Social interaction. So what are we doing agile every day. Stand up first thing in the morning, pissed them off and then sent them back to their desk in the hope we're going to get good work. Wow that made a lot of sense. How about an e-mail to the scrum master that they read for him instead. I think that would work. So real simple things could be done agile by itself. I personally like agile so I'm I'm not anti-agile. I'm just saying there are lots of things that are built into agile that are demanding resources out of these people that are not resources that they own.