How do we build a culture of cognitive inclusion?
We adapt your culture to be cognitively inclusive by taking inspiration from the cognitive extreme: neurodiversity.
The brains of neurodivergent people are structured and connected differently. They are specialized in skills you need for your success, such as predicting outcomes, pattern recognition, and resistance to group think.
If we design your culture to attract and enable the 30% neurodivergent talent, then it automatically improves employee engagement and enables everyone to perform their best. Your culture of cognitive inclusion will enable the collective genius.
See more about how we build for cognitive inclusion in this 4 minute film.
Hi, I’m Lisa.
My mission is to make sure your organization enjoys success and resilience from cognitive diversity – mixing up different thinking styles.
You need:
Firstly, to attract and retain cognitive diversity.
And secondly the culture to make it work.
I talked about this in another film that you can find on the Mission tab of my website.
But in this film, I’m going to talk about how we achieve this.
I’ll start with a short detour into science.
The extreme of cognitive diversity is called neurodivergence.
Neurodivergent people have brains that are structured and connected differently. You can see this from brain imaging.
These different – neurodivergent - brains are specialized in different things.
For example:
People with ADHD find it easier to take risks. Try new things.
Dyslexics are great at seeing the big picture, and at predicting outcomes.
Autists excel at pattern recognition, and are highly rational in making decisions
These specializations are the way that evolution has found to make humans so successful at thriving in whatever environment they are in.
Evolution didn’t make one brain able to do everything. It’s not a possible solution. It doesn’t all fit.
Instead, it created specialized sub-groups. And made humans social.
We can do everything because somewhere in our social group are the skills we need.
But we only succeed together.
So back to your organization, and how we achieve cognitive diversity with a curious, supportive culture.
We take inspiration from neurodivergence inclusion.
Neurodivergence is the extreme specialization.
Not everyone is neurodivergent. About 30% are.
But 100% have cognitive preferences. Things they excel at.
So if we take inspiration from the extreme, we make your culture attractive for the 30% who are neurodivergent and the 70% neurotypical can thrive and be more successful as well.
And that’s how you become more innovative, attractive to talent, and successful.
I’ll highlight 3 things that are different about the approach I’ve developed.
First, I work top-down. The change is driven by leadership. Top-down makes sure your culture is ready, it’s welcoming, for cognitive divergence. It’s the only way to scale and sustain the cultural change we will design for your organization.
Second: top-down means that everyone has some accountability to contribute to the new culture. Everyone adapts their behavior a bit. Including neurodivergent employees. Everyone participates. It’s inherently fair. And the impact is amplified over all employees regardless of their gender, ethnicity, age, education, and so on.
And third: I work by lifting people up, not by criticizing. My approach is to find what’s already working in your culture – what psychology calls ‘positive deviants’. I’ll create a bespoke strategy to amplify, clone and scale your positive deviants. That’s the quickest and most direct way to get you to your destination, and make it sustainable when I step away.
Congratulations on having taken your first step towards cognitive diversity and towards making your organization more successful.
Keep going.
Connect with me for a chat.
I’d love to meet you.
I help organizations to be more innovative, attractive to talent, and successful at responding to change by using the principles of cognitive inclusion to build culture of curiosity and support.
I offer two services.
Foundational sessions: we’ll start to educate your organization about cognitive inclusion so they can experience early benefits. We’ll use the format best suited to your situation: webinars, training courses, a pilot, or something else. This is a low-risk way to build your confidence that cognitive inclusion is right for you.
Cultural change program: we’ll start off with a discovery phase to uncover the opportunities in your organization that can be cloned, enhanced and scaled. We’ll implement the resulting bespoke strategy in a multi-phase change management program that exemplifies the cognitively inclusive culture we are building.
Learn more by downloading the overview describing these four stages.
