Why Different Minds Win

Those of you who’ve read Business. Better., or any of the blogs I’ve written on occasion, may have noticed that I drop musical easter eggs here and there. I like music and I like fun, and I was talking with my son Huxley how to keep this going now videos are also being recorded. We agreed that each episode should include a small treasure hunt for the musically minded that enjoy a challenge. So from now on there will be 3/4 links/references in each article, at least one song title and one lyric or reference, each leading to a different song. 

To mark the launch of this game, this week there are four, two titles and two lyrics. See if you can spot them. I’ll disclose what they were at the end and do let me know if you spot any I missed! 

Here is episode 3 from my Different Minds. Better Systems trilogy. 

I’ve been dissecting our views on Dyslexia, ADHD and Autism, prompted by my being told by a stranger that I was disabled. Being neurodivergent can certainly be both a blessing and a curse. And there’s no doubt we can represent both of these to those around us. 

Last week I asked - Is this a Superpower? 

Today we’ll look at… 

Where different minds win… 

In the context of Business. Better., allowing the positive attributes of neurodivergence to shine possibly matters most in teams. Neurodivergent individuals can be contradictory in their nature. All at once they are often:

• Exceptionally valuable 

• Frequently difficult 

• Very misunderstood 

Used well, these team members are force multipliers. Used badly, they become frustrated, disengaged and at times incredibly disruptive and destructive. 

The responsibility, of course, sits with leadership. 

A few principles I’ve seen work: 

• Clarity over ambiguity in execution 

• Outcome focus, not process obsession

• Leverage strengths deliberately

• Remove unnecessary friction

• Protect energy

Get this right and those with neurodivergent tendencies will often be among the most valuable people in the business. Get it wrong, and you don’t just lose performance. Tension will spread across the entire system. 

Another trick that can be incredibly valuable is allowing space for creativity. For example, you might allow the neuro-spicy one day each week to explore. This will keep us happy and the outcomes and ideas we conjure up during ‘play time’ will at times be priceless. 

Those of us whose minds wish to wander, need guardrails in order to achieve results that make an intentionally positive difference alongside the freedom to maintain happiness. Without these we can easily find ourselves becoming lost souls swimming in a fish bowl. 

And it is often surprising, for the less creative, just how much benefit ‘playtime’ can bring. Did you know that Post-it Notes, a multi-billion dollar product, came from playing around with something already deemed useless? Google had a 20% rule early on. This made it rather stand out as a company, very attractive to work for. It also spawned Gmail and Google Maps. 

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” – Pablo Picasso. 

Providing guardrails for outcome driven work is a must. And happy neuro-spicy people will often do twice the work of others in the same time as they can focus ‘on steroids’. 

For founders too, guardrails help and freedom helps. Balance is the key to success.

Often, the real leverage in a business sits not in hiring more people but in understanding the ones you already have. At times my deeper advisory work steps into helping founders redesign how their teams operate. Who does what, where people thrive, where they don’t and how the system supports them properly. Get that right, and performance takes off without adding headcount. More importantly, the founder often gets their time, their headspace and their life back.  

It’s one thing to say different minds think differently but it’s quite another to actually use that in a business. Let’s get practical, shall we? 

The core idea

For the purposes of this piece, I’m going to focus on creativity because it’s the most visible way this shows up in business. But I acknowledge it’s not the whole story. What changes sits underneath: how their attention, processing and execution actually work.

Creativity, at its simplest, is the ability to form novel connections. Neurodivergence often involves different patterns of thinking, attention and perception. So the overlap isn’t mystical. It’s structural.

Different wiring → different associations → potential for originality 

But potential is not output. Output depends on environment. 

Three common patterns 

(Before I delve into the three ‘diagnosed conditions’ of neurodivergence, I need to caveat, this does not deal with extreme cases and every case of each type of neurodivergence is different. Both my wife and I are dyslexic yet our experiences are different. Two drifters in very different worlds. This is - a broad-brush summary. That said…) 

 In a business context, these three patterns show up again and again.

1. ADHD — idea generation and movement

People with ADHD tend to:

• Generate lots of ideas 

• Move quickly between concepts 

• Make unexpected connections 

This is classic divergent thinking. There are plenty of sparks but the trade-off is consistency. Without structure, all of the activity becomes noise. With structure however, it can be harnessed to become forceful momentum.

2. Autism — depth and precision

Autistic thinkers often show: 

• Intense focus 

• Strong pattern recognition 

• Preference for systems and detail 

And this produces a different kind of creativity. They can be: 

• Highly original

• Technically precise 

• Structurally sound 

While ADHD is jazz improvisation, Autism is more like Bach. And the challenge here is not capability but flexibility. 

3. Dyslexia — big picture and narrative

Dyslexia appears to be particularly relevant in business. 

It’s often associated with:

• Big picture thinking

• Spatial reasoning

• Storytelling

Many dyslexic founders don’t win on process alone. They win because they hold a different perspective. 

Linear thinking is often harder for dyslexics and their brains have discovered and adopted a different route to reason and understanding. 

The part most miss

None of these are inherently valuable on their own. And each certainly comes with trade-offs.

The same traits that drive creativity, especially in the neurodivergent, can also:

• Disrupt execution 

• Increase overwhelm 

• Create inconsistency 

Creativity without structure is a brilliant kitchen with no system. Inspirational amuse bouche everywhere but few meals, and service a mess.

The question is not:

“Is neurodivergence linked to creativity?”

So much as:

“What conditions allow different types of minds to produce value?”

Execution is power. 

A founder’s lens

We see this constantly across business.

The most interesting founders:

• Think differently

• See angles others miss

• Break models that “should” work

But those who succeed long term manage to achieve something else.

They:

• Build structure around their thinking

• Surround themselves with complementary people

• Create systems that catch their own blind spots

The magic is not the individual. It’s the interaction and the implementation. 

I saw this very clearly when operating property development businesses. Working with architects, the instinct is to give them freedom. To let them create. But what I learnt, reflecting upon both myself and conversations I’d had with architects and other creatives over the years, was the opposite. The very best work came when they were constrained, pushed into a corner and forced to solve tighter problems. 

Give them a box… and they’ll find a way out of it. Without constraint, you get ideas. With constraint, you get outcomes.

My work 

This is a large part of what I do. Founders don’t usually lack ideas.

We often lack structure around those ideas.

We:

• chase too many directions

• build complexity too early

• operate without clear constraints

My role helping others is to bring that energy back into alignment.

To:

• simplify

• structure

• focus

We need the way the founder naturally thinks to become an advantage. So often it acts as a liability. 

Being clear, neurodivergence isn’t creativity. It doesn’t guarantee creativity. What it does is to increase the probability of unconventional thinking. In the right environment, that becomes value. In the wrong one, it becomes noise. The difference is not the person. It’s the system around them.

Musical Eggs 

“Clarity” - Clarity by Jacob Collier 

“lost souls swimming in a fish bowl” - Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd “think differently” - Think Differently by Wu-Tang Clan “Two drifters in very different worlds” - Moon River by Audrey Hepburn 

#StrongerTogether

P.S.

Do you provide yourself and your team the environment to get the best out of you all?