Hello, I’m Dr Lisa Colledge.

In my film on the Mission page I talked about how building the capability of cognitive inclusion in your workplace will make you naturally innovative and resilient, with the bonus that this is a really fun and engaging way to work, so you’ll have a healthier workforce, and you’ll be better at attracting and retaining talent.

In this film, I want to focus on my approach to partnering with your organization to achieve this.

I described two success factors:

• The first is the enabler—cognitive diversity, which refers to different thinking styles.

• The second success factor is the activator—a cognitively inclusive culture. This is about building the skills to connect people who might otherwise clash. Ideators and planners, for example, are not natural collaborators!

My approach is to focus on building a cognitively inclusive culture, rather than starting by hiring more cognitive diversity, for three reasons:

• First, you inevitably have cognitive diversity in your organization already. It might be hiding, and it might not be as much as we’d ideally want, but it’s there.

• Second, it’s irresponsible to attract more cognitive diversity when you don’t yet have the culture to enable those people to work healthily and to offer them the same chance to succeed as everyone else.

• And third, once you build your cognitive inclusion capability, the cognitive diversity you already have will naturally emerge and blossom, and you will automatically attract more.

You may be thinking now – another DEI initiative – but wait, please. This is different.

Most current diversity initiatives are inherently unfair: recruiting a woman or person of colour to get closer to your representation target might count as success for your diversity program, but it doesn’t set that person up to succeed.

And it’s also not fair to people who don’t fall into that dimension of diversity, who can’t participate in the program; these programs are well-intentioned, but they just replace one kind of discrimination with another.

My approach to building cognitive inclusion is fair. Everyone shares accountability for creating and maintain the culture, and all benefit. Not just one group – everyone.

Let me explain with a trip into neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.

The cognitive framework of our brains is composed of several scales or spectra. A scale is a continuum from a little of a particular trait to a lot of it.

We have a cognitive scale for structure. We have a scale for being impulsive. We have a scale for executive functions. And a couple of others.

Some people will be at the very extreme of a scale. We refer to these people as neurodivergent – being extremely structured is associated with the neurodivergence of autism, and being highly impulsive is a trait associated with ADHD.

These extremes are actually specializations.

For example, autistic people tend to be comfortable with data, great at pattern recognition, logical thinkers, rational decision makers, they like detailed and repetitive tasks, and are very fair minded.

The concentration of autistic people in Silicon Valley is no accident.

You see this kind of framework of scales – separate traits that can all vary independently – you see it repeatedly in psychology whenever there is a good reason to maximize variability.

In this case, we’re maximizing variability in our cognitive styles.

Why is it there?

The reason is because it made humanity successful in whatever environment they found themselves in. Swamp. Desert. Jungle. Plains. You name it.

Cognitive diversity is locked into our DNA by evolution because it made us brilliant at adapting. At innovating. At being resilient.

Evolution’s solution wasn’t to create a single brain that could do everything, as it simply doesn’t all fit.

Instead, it created specialized brains, and made humans social so we could share our skills.

A group of humans can thrive in the face of any change because all the skills we need are in our social group. That’s why humanity is cognitively diverse.

But we only succeed together. If we behave in a cognitively inclusive way.

Very interesting. But what does this tell us about how to build cognitive inclusion in your organization?

It gives us the method.

The method is to take guidance from the needs of neurodivergent people.

We can improve our communication, our leadership behaviors and team norms, our processes, our approach to hiring and onboarding and the rest of the employee lifecycle, and our policies, in line with the needs of the most specialized cognitive styles of humanity.

By taking inspiration from neurodivergence inclusion.

That is the secret of building a cognitively inclusive culture.

And we know that this will improve our organizations for everyone because we all share the same cognitive traits to some extent: cognitive inclusion is the universal design of DEI.

That’s why people say, “We’re all a bit autistic.” We wouldn’t all qualify for a diagnosis, but we all recognize and possess those characteristics to some extent.

In building a cognitively inclusive culture, you’ll be an innovative, resilient pioneer in this universal approach to DEI, and you get two bonus benefits.

First is the highly desirable skills that are associated with neurodivergence.

I’ve already mentioned pattern recognition, logical thinking and so on as associated with autism.

People with ADHD tend to be better at venturing into the unknown.

People with dyslexia are great at seeing the big picture, and original thinking.

And the second bonus benefit is access to the 30% of the talent pool that is neurodivergent. You’ll be able to select from a larger group of people.

This advantage will only become bigger: a recent report shared that 53% of Gen Z identifies as neurodivergent – whether diagnosed or self-diagnosed, it doesn’t matter, they feel neurodivergent, and they will accept offers from workplaces that provide the working environment where they can be healthiest and most successful.

So you’ll attract that huge, growing chunk of talent that identifies as neurodivergent.

You’ll make everyone – not 30%, not 53%, but 100% of people able to contribute their best in a healthier way.

Congratulations on having taken your first step towards cognitive inclusion and towards making your organization more successful.

If you want to learn more, you can explore my blog – Inside View – and my podcast – Culture by Neurodesign.

If you want to take some initial action, sign up for my newsletter, Cogitate > Activate, or for my signature program, Neuro-Inspired: 12 steps to a Future-Proof Workplace Culture.

Or get in touch with me.

All of these options for your next step are free. There’s absolutely no reason to stop now.

Thanks for your attention.