A Systematic Problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQ3a4APeT0

There is a growing conversation around neurodivergence. 

Dyslexia. ADHD. Autism. These are the big 3 different ways of thinking that don’t always fit neatly into the systems we’ve built in our society. For some, these labels explain a lifetime of friction. For others, they describe the very traits that drive how they operate, lead and/or create.

At TableNetwork, we talk a lot about people. Our logo, a mix of various coloured dots around a Table, represents different experiences, different perspectives, different mindsets and different ways of seeing the world. Businesses are rarely built by or for one type of mind. They are built by many. 

And so, I write a trilogy to explore the idea from a practical angle: 

Different Minds, Better Systems

Episode 1 looks at how modern systems have come to define “ability” in a way that we might wish to question. 

In episode 2 I shall reframe difference and look at why it drives disproportionate impact. 

Episode 3 will focus on application. How best to structure teams and businesses so different minds actually perform. 

If you’ve ever felt out of step with how things are “supposed” to work…or you’re responsible for building a team that performs at a high level…

This may help make sense of both. 

How did a text-driven world come to define ability? 

In modern society it appears that we have become increasingly keen to label difference as deficiency. 

Dyslexia is officially a disability in the US, recognised under law.  

ADHD is a disorder. 

Autism is a condition to be managed. 

This was brought into sharp focus for me last week when someone in my LinkedIn DMs told me I was disabled. 

He wasn’t trying to insult me. He just said it as a matter of fact. In the US, where he is from, dyslexia is classified a disability. But whatever the classification where you are from, I am far from disabled. And… well let’s say I was not best pleased. 

If what I have in me is a disability… then we’ve misunderstood something quite fundamental about what ability is. 

The experience

I am dyslexic. Likely with a touch of ADHD thrown in for good measure.

At school, that didn’t feel like an advantage. I was scared of pens. Writing felt really heavy. Slow, effortful, and frankly, slightly humiliating. By age 16, I could count the number of books I had read on one hand. Even in music, where I had an edge, the system caught me out. My mother was a concert pianist. I understood theory well enough. But put a stave in front of me and ask me to write, and I’d be held back after class. You don’t need a formal diagnosis to feel like you’re “suffering” when you’re in that environment.

So I compensated. I avoided writing wherever possible. And whenever I couldn’t avoid it, I overcorrected. No shorthand. Perfect grammar. No mistakes. Even for text messages. I didn’t want to be seen as less capable.

Much of life has its ironies. I now write a weekly newsletter that people tell me is too long.

Diagnosis… or lack of it

It’s worth saying that many people like me were never diagnosed.

Go back 20 years, and especially before the 1980s, and neurodivergence simply wasn’t understood in the way it is today. You were slow. Distracted. Difficult. Bright but underperforming. My school report repetitively said either ‘could make more of his potential’ or ‘disruptive in class’. 

I was never formally diagnosed but my younger son Huxley was. A similar underlying wiring but in a different era with a different label. He was supported. He achieved good grades and is off to a top university to study aeronautical engineering. 

The shift

As I got older, something became obvious. There were things I’d always been told I was good at and they weren’t a random selection. They were all connected. 

• Big picture thinking

• Pattern recognition

• Comfort with ambiguity

• Spatial and visual reasoning

• Resilience and adaptability

My younger son, also dyslexic, has a level of verbal reasoning and persuasion that borders on Jedi level. 

This list of ‘superpowers’ that affect dyslexics are not side effects. They are part of the system that runs their minds. I’m citing dyslexia here because it’s personal but what I’m really describing sits within a broader category now referred to as neurodivergence. 

And these same traits sit at the core of my work. When founders come to me, they often lack clarity. They are overwhelmed by too many moving parts, too many ideas and not enough structure. My innate skill is top sight, to see the whole system quickly and bring it into focus. What matters, what doesn’t, and what needs to happen next. It’s not a learned trick. It’s how my mind naturally works. 

The historical glitch

Let’s give this a little historical context. 

Homo sapiens have been around for roughly 300,000 years. For almost all of that time, we did not read or write. Even 500 years ago, fewer than 10% of people in most societies were literate. Mass literacy, where more than half the population could read and write, is barely 150 years old. 

That’s 0.05% of human history.

Which means for 99.95% of our existence, many of the traits we now label as “neurodivergent” were either not relevant, or were perhaps advantages. We built, traded, navigated, led, fought, created and survived without written language being central to daily life. Only recently did we build a world that runs on text, process and standardisation and decide that fluency in that system equals capability in life. 

The business angle 

This realisation was in part why, in business, I’ve never been particularly interested in surface-level optimisation. Most businesses don’t need more activity. If anything they need less. They need better structure. They need awareness. The ability to actually sit and look, to see problems. The work I do with founders is exactly that. It is about watching, then removing noise, tightening systems and aligning the business around what actually drives results. Once that clarity is in place, scale is less chaotic… and far more intentional. 

This isn’t really about dyslexia. Or ADHD. Or autism. It’s about the system. 

We’ve built a world that rewards a narrow set of cognitive strengths, many of which are not necessarily attributes. 

• We reward politicians for winning arguments. Does that mean they’ll be good at serving the people? 

• We reward businesses for buying cheap and selling expensive. Does that lead to a better world to live in? 

• We reward business leaders for drive, even when it’s at the expense of those around them. Does this lead to equality or happiness? 

• We reward post grad job applicants who can write an impressive CV. Does that mean they’ll fit in with the team or do the job well? 

Anything that sits outside of our narrow range of ‘positives’, we label as a problem. 

For most of human history, those differences weren’t problems at all. At worst they were simply part of the mix. At best they made us great hunters, builders, leaders. 

From here on in, with spellcheck, audible, video content, LLMs and AI, we may be entering an era that demands a new definition for ability.  

So I ask the questions: 

Was the last 150 years a small glitch? 

and

Do we misunderstand people…or do we like to build systems that are too narrow to accommodate them? 

Come back next week when I look at people who’ve used divergent traits to achieve remarkable things and what these superpowers actually give us.