Why organizations should bet big on neuro-inclusion (with video)

Published on 14 March 2024 • Written by Dr Lisa Colledge

Hi there.

It's great that you're interested in the article that I wrote called Why Organizations Should Bet Big On Neuro-Inclusion. What I did in that article was to build on a report that was published by Boston Consulting Group and the references in the article about how diverse leadership teams stimulate their organizations to perform better.

So, for example, the organizations with the most diverse leadership teams have 19% higher innovation revenue and 9% higher operating revenues that organizations with the least diverse leadership teams. I talked about this report from the perspective of inclusion and especially neurodiversity inclusion. And in this film, I'm going to talk through the three main points that I made in my article.

So the first point was that I think it's time that we stop investing in fragmented diversity programs.

What I mean by a diversity program is one which targets a particular group. The most common ones for organizations to target seem to be women, or people of color, sometimes women of color, but some combination of  those two – and put a percentage target on those groups. So we want to have 30% women in leadership or 20% people of color in an organization, or whatever it is. 

I think these kinds of programs have been really great to make everybody think about the benefits of a diverse organization, and I think it’s also very admirable that people have stepped out of their comfort zones and tried to do something different. But I think those programs are inherently unfair and it's time to do something different.

So the reasons that I say that they are unfair:

Firstly, just bringing somebody into your organization from a group, a woman or a person of color, or a woman of color, and putting them in your organization is not enough to set that person up for success. Yes, you have a tick against your percentage targets. Yes, you've got closer to where you want to go, but that person is not necessarily enabled to perform just by virtue of being in your organization. So for that reason, it's not fair.

Another reason I say it's not fair is because these programs are just inherently uninclusive. If you don't happen to be a woman or of color, then you can't participate in these programs. And I think that that's not fair. We cannot improve the inclusivity and diversity of our organizations by replacing one kind of discrimination with another. That can't be right.

And the third reason that I think that these kinds of programs are not fair, is that they're not realistic. People are very often not only one thing. They don't only identify with one dimension. Somebody might be a woman and of color, so which of the dimensions would she identify with? Somebody might be a woman and disabled, so actually identify with a dimension which is not one of the dimensions that you are representing in your strategic initiatives. So picking and choosing these dimensions don't represent also how people are, how they want to bring themselves to your organization and how they want to contribute value.

So I think that at this stage with everything that we've learned from these very admirable diversity programs, it's no longer enough. We can do better. And if you want to get those benefits that I mentioned, like improvements in innovation, revenue and improvements in operating profit, then you need to do better.

That was the first point that I made in my article.

The second point was instead of looking at diversity programs, which have percentage targets, what we should be looking at nowadays are inclusion programs. Inclusion programs aren't about percentage targets of particular groups of people. Inclusion programs are about enabling everybody to contribute their value to your organization, regardless of what that value is.

What we see in the studies now is that, especially the younger people who are starting to work in organizations nowadays want more than just a paycheck - of course, of course, money is important, but beyond money, once they earn enough, what they want is a feeling that they belong to your organization, a feeling of camaraderie with their teammates, a feeling that your organization is contributing something of value to the world and that they can contribute to that value.

In short, they want to be engaged. They're desperate to contribute what they can do to your mission. And that's exactly what you want, right? You want all of your employees, of course, to contribute as well as they possibly can to your ongoing success. So that's, that's an inclusion program, and that's quite different from a diversity program.

The Boston Consultancy Group also looked at the characteristics of the kind of programs that those companies who do much better in diverse leadership teams, and have all of the better ratings for innovation and operating revenue and so on. They do talk about mechanisms of operating those programs like, like psychological safety and that sort of thing. But really the common theme is that their programs are inclusive. It's for everybody in the organization, including white men - that kind of group that's so neglected and maligned by typical diversity programs.

Now, so what we need to do for our inclusion program is to make sure that everybody can contribute their value in a way that makes them feel seen and positive. And that doesn't really contradict that their way of being, that’s not at odds with the way that they want to work because that would be very unhealthy for them.

There are certain people who are extremely polarized in their skills and how they work. There are some people who are really original, have loads of fantastic ideas, but are really rubbish at putting a plan together and really don't want to learn how to put a plan together because they just hate it. It's boring. It's not how their brain works. On the other hand, there are people who love putting plans together, and sticking to plans and who are quite literal in interpreting plans, but they're probably not the people who are having the big ideas and, and putting concepts together in novel ways.

Just one more example: you'll have a group of people who are very inspiring in how they talk about things and can get other people to want to follow them, to want to come along with them and contribute to this brilliant opportunity that they're talking about. But they might not be very good at, digging into the data and looking for patterns and insights that the data can tell you.

So in these very, very polarized, very extreme ways of working, you can clearly see that, people have particular values, which they can contribute and you want them for your organization.

This is the basis of the improvements in the innovation revenue and so on. But you can also see that if you try to force these people to be good at everything or to work in a way that's really, really far away from how they want to work, it's going to be really unhealthy for them mentally. And they're going to start to have mental health issues and burnout. And that's also what the literature shows us.

So what we want in an inclusive organization is one in which everybody can work close to their preferred style, doing what they are really, really good at. And you need to make sure that people understand how to work together in teams. So it's the, the contribution of the team, which becomes more important than the contribution of the individual, because no one individual can do all of it.

These polarized people that I'm talking about are people who are neurodivergent. The people who are extremely creative, they tend to be people with dyslexia, people who are ADHD; the people are quite literal, and the people who are good at looking for patterns in data, they are characteristics that tend to go with autism.

Of course, not everybody is neurodivergent. There are some fantastic skills which are not naturally associated with neurodivergence, like perhaps like being very inspirational in how you communicate. That would go with a neurotypical person, but still with a style of working of their own.

What it means is that we can take inspiration from making sure that neurodivergent people can contribute to the workplace. And if we make sure that neurodivergent people can contribute, then we can be confident that everybody can contribute.

And that's why I focus on what we can learn from neurodivergent people and inclusion in order to transform our workplaces so that everybody can engage in an inclusive way and you can get those fantastic percentages jumping up in your business metrics.

So that was the second point. 

The third point is a short one.

The third point is about when you can start to expect to see changes. So of course if you think about a cultural change program such as I'm talking about, inspired by neurodivergence inclusion, which will make everybody more able to contribute their brilliance, you can see we're talking about a program of a few years.

You start by looking at behavior, and then you'd move on to a phase where you were reinforcing that behavior by recognizing it in your annual evaluations and decisions about who to hire, and in any of the other business processes that you have. And finally, you’d move on to a phase where you'd really lock it in so it was sustainable by making sure it was present in your policies and, and so on.

So that's, that's a few years, but you don't have to wait for a few years until you start to see benefits. It's one of the really nice statistics in that Boston Consultancy Group report - small changes make big differences. Changing only 2% of managers, bringing in 2% managers from a different industry, people with a different mindset, a different skillset, a different way of working - a great example, if we think about a neurodivergent inclusive organization that you would have a culture that can include people who have a different way of thinking - just bringing in 2% people from a different industry is enough to give you a 1% increase in your innovation revenue.

Small change, big gain.

I'd say it is time to - even if not get going - at least explore what this could mean for your organization.

If you would like to explore, then feel free to set up some time with me. You can book time with me in my calendar on my website.  

And if you just want to have a listen and see what's going on, then you can also join my community, which is called Cogitate > Activate. You can sign up there for free. And that's a community of people who are sharing very practical tips and trying them out and sharing how they got on with them, um, so that we can all get started in our own way. Hope to see you there.

Thanks for listening.

What are the benefits of investing in designing and implementing a neuro-inclusive culture? This article anticipates Neurodiversity Celebration Week, which runs from 18–24 March, by highlighting the financial and people benefits to an organization of prioritizing a single inclusion program: one inspired by neuro-inclusion.

Three key take-aways

1. The most diverse leadership teams generate 19% more revenue from innovation, and 9% higher operating profit, than the least diverse. The more dimensions, the better: the effect is cumulative. Small changes made a big difference: for example, bringing in 2% managers from a different industry would enable 1% increase in innovation revenue, and an even bigger increase in digital technology organizations.

2. The standard approach to inclusion programs seems to be to select a couple of diversity dimensions to focus on. A fragmented group of employee resource groups fill in the gaps, led by passionate people who compete for finite attention and resource, often becoming disillusioned and disengaged. This tells us that the headline programs don’t meet all employees’ needs and are, sadly and ironically, not inclusive.

3. The key components of organizations that benefit most from diverse leadership, such as open communications and fair employment practices, apply to everyone. The most effective inclusion program would target common ground between diversity dimensions. Implementing a skills- and outcome-based culture enables everyone to contribute more value to business success, regardless of their diversity interests and activity. This neuro-inclusion-inspired approach offers the best ‘bang for your buck’.

— — — — — — —

Organizations that are active in inclusion tend to set up multiple, separate initiatives, each focusing on a different inclusion dimension. I have noticed this repeatedly and confirmed my observation informally with other inclusion subject-matter experts. Organizations typically start with a gender-inclusion program and an ethnicity-inclusion program; the best explanation that we can find for this is that the results are readily visible, and that progress is relatively easy to measure by standard demographic HR data. There is nothing wrong with these programs per se. The gender and ethnicity dimensions benefit a lot of employees, and organizations that invest resource in developing and running them should be applauded. However, this approach has some consequences which I don’t think are so positive: these inclusion programs are not inclusive, they don’t reflect reality, and they miss a trick in terms of building revenue.

Let’s start with the missed revenue-generating opportunity. This report from Boston Consulting Group [BCG] looked at correlations between business performance and leadership-diversity (definitions of what they measured are at the end of this article). They found that companies with above average leadership-diversity generated 45% revenue from innovation, compared to just 26% for those with below average leadership-diversity. Above-average diversity also correlated with 9% higher operating profit. Looking more closely at the impact of building diversity:

• These increases of 19% in innovation revenue and 9% operating profit correlated with all dimensions of diversity measured: age, career path, educational level, gender, industry background, and nationality.

• The beneficial effect of combining diversity dimensions is cumulative.

• Small changes make big differences. 1% extra innovation revenue can be achieved with small changes in manager composition: 1.5% of a different nationality; 2.0% from a different industry; 2.5% female; and 3.0% who have followed a different career path.

• In digital technology, the impact of these small changes on innovation revenue is even stronger.

A second undesired consequence of the two-program ethnicity- and gender-inclusion approach is that it is inherently not inclusive. I have observed that these organizations tend to have many other active employee resource groups or networks, which aim to raise awareness about other dimensions of diversity, such as age, disability, and sexuality; again, this checks out with other subject-matter experts. Large dimensions like disability are often fragmented into more focused groups such as mental health, neuro-divergence, physical conditions, and sensory conditions, and in international organizations an additional geographical aspect may emerge with the same dimension having distinct groups in different countries or regions. Experienced volunteers in these groups inevitably report that they have higher impact when they collaborate with each other, and want to collaborate structurally, but the differing maturities, personalities, and sensitivities of each group make it impossible for people doing this alongside their day job to retrospectively unite them.

A final undesired consequence of multiple separate diversity groups is a lack of relevance to many employee’s situations. Diversity is inter-sectional, and people typically identify with more than one dimension. Speaking for myself: I am a woman (gender); my son is autistic (neurodiversity); I was disabled for two years when my pelvis’ architecture decided to get creative during my second pregnancy, and my slow recovery is ongoing (disability); my children’s guardians are gay (sexuality); and I am British but living in The Netherlands (ethnicity). That’s five dimensions for a reasonably healthy white woman, and I haven’t even started on how I identify when I consider friends and extended family. People can feel that they need to choose between dimensions in a fragmented set up, and it doesn’t support them in managing the impacts on their work of their actual lived situation.

I am full of admiration for the people who run employee resource groups and networks, and am proud to have led one myself, and yet I suggest that organizations look beyond this worthy activity to these uncomfortable underlying messages:

• The diversity dimensions addressed by your strategic priorities are not enough. They don’t meet the needs of all employees. They are not inclusive of all team members.

• Fragmented diversity groups cannibalize each other in competing for the finite amount of attention and resource available in an organization. Employees active in these groups increasingly become frustrated, disillusioned, and disengaged from your business success.

• Your employees feel strongly enough about this to devote their own time, energy, and courage to improving their working environment. Perhaps their efforts can be deployed more effectively.

Let’s regroup.

How can your organization benefit from the opportunities of diversity while being kinder to every employee, which must surely be the vision of any organization-wide inclusion program? BCG reports that the companies with the highest innovation revenue have these enablers in place:

• Inclusion program is a strategic priority.

• Leadership visibly and consistently participates in the inclusion programs.

• Inclusion is actively empowered; recruiting diverse employees and expecting them to flourish without further support doesn’t work.

• Communication is open.

• The environment is psychologically safe.

• There are fair employment practices.

None of these enablers is exclusive to any one dimension of inclusion. They are universally beneficial. If an organization could identify one inclusion priority, that encompassed all of these elements, it would significantly improve the working environment for all employees while boosting innovation revenue and operating profit (and many other metrics too). Can we find this one inclusion program? Yes, I believe we can, by identifying and targeting common ground across all diversity dimensions.

Everyone that I have talked to, and especially those who feel disconnected from their organization’s culture and success, really just want to be engaged. Engaged employees feel seen as they are and appreciated for the value they contribute to the collective success. That’s it. That’s the common ground. We can achieve this by designing an organizational culture which judges everyone purely by their skills, and the outcomes that their skills bring to bear. In this organizational culture, an employee’s age, cognitive style, disability, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality don’t have any influence on how they are evaluated and appreciated. This approach helps all employees, whether or not they are a member of any diversity groups. There would be some additional specific actions needed in individual diversity dimensions, such as accommodations for physical and sensory disabilities, but properly implementing and sustaining a skills- and outcome-focused culture will get an organization most of the way to equality, the ultimate goal of any diversity and inclusion initiative.

I am describing a program that is inspired by being inclusive towards the 30% people who are neurodivergent, such as autistics and dyslexics, as well as those who are neurotypical. This is a neuro-inclusive culture: a true mix, that places equal value on diverse contributions, and actively seeks after and celebrating differences. Neuro-inclusive teams are consciously inclusive and actively find ways to allow each other to shine and contribute their best; they inevitably find unconventional solutions to problems, generate more and better ideas, are more successful in scanning and avoiding future roadblocks, and execute plans with greater success. I have written previously on how neuro-inclusion offers a short-cut to greater inclusion across all dimensions of diversity so that, as the BCG report demonstrated, organizations with teams like this outperform their peers by a mile.

If your organization wants to invest in one inclusion initiative as a strategic priority and is nervous of being either spread too thin across multiple programs focusing on all dimensions of diversity, or of having to choose one or two areas, then consider opting instead for a program inspired by neuro-inclusion. Neuro-inclusion targets common ground between all diversity dimensions, and results in an organizational culture in which every single employee can contribute more value.

The Boston Consulting Group report that I have referenced analyzed more than 1700 companies, of various sizes and in multiple industries, in Austria, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Switzerland, and the US. They measured:

• Diversity by a combination of age, career path, educational level, gender, industry background, and nationality. They focused on diversity in the organization’s leadership team.

• Innovation as a percentage of revenue from new products and services in last 3 years.

• Operating profit, or earnings before interest & tax (EBIT).

I'm Lisa, and I help leaders create inclusive cultures that embrace all neurostyles. By empowering every team member to contribute at their best, while fostering mental well-being, you will boost innovation, retention, and talent acquisition—leading to enhanced business performance.

Click here to learn more about how my services can transform your team.