Neurodiversity Reveals Brittle Work Systems.

A lot of people think that neurodiversity means making accommodations for people who are autistic or have ADHD, but neurodiversity includes everyone. It is the natural variation in how human brains perceive, process, learn, communicate, remember, and solve problems. Neurodivergent people are part of that diversity, but so are you and everyone else.

Instead of focusing on how to accommodate neurodivergent employees, the question should be:

What can neurodiversity teach us about our work systems?

I think that neurodiversity is one of the best diagnostic tools for evaluating improvements to work system design. It is a useful tool because it exposes assumptions built into the work systems that many of us don’t even realize are there.

We make many of these common assumptions when we design work:

• People will remember.
• People will infer.
• People won’t be distracted.
• People will notice the warning.
• People will interpret the instruction the same way.

Many people will meet our assumptions, but that doesn’t mean the system is as good as it could be. It means that every single day, some people carry more of the system’s burden than others. It could be a neurodivergent person, it could be someone returning from medical leave, it could be someone who was up with their baby all night. There is going to be a day when the system’s burden will be too much for you even if you don’t think of yourself as neurodivergent.

Neurodiversity doesn’t create brittle work systems. It reveals them.

Imagine two bridges. One bridge safely carries every type of vehicle: motorcycles, compact cars, SUVs, semi-trucks. The other bridge collapses when a semi crosses it. Did the truck create the weakness? No, it revealed the weakness.

The bridge was already brittle, and a brittle system works until:

• conditions change.
• someone is tired.
• someone is new.
• someone is distracted.
• someone thinks differently.

A resilient system continues to work under variation. So, I think neurodiversity belongs in a work systems conversation rather than an accommodations conversation.

Stop designing work for the “average” employee.

If we’re serious about designing resilient work systems, we have to stop designing for the “average” employee and start designing for human variation. The best corrective actions don’t simply prevent one person from making the same mistake. They make it less likely that anyone will make the same mistake. I see a lot of people working hard on investigations that don’t cast a wide enough net when developing fixes.

One place to start is by taking a hard look at your work system. TapRooT® RCA has long provided organizations with practical tools to identify weaknesses in training, procedures, human engineering, communication, supervision, and management systems. Those same principles can help uncover assumptions that make work more difficult for a neurodiverse workforce.

And don’t forget to do the human variation test when you are working on corrective actions:

Would this corrective action still be effective for people with different experiences, abilities, cognitive styles, and life circumstances?

If the answer is “no,” the corrective action probably isn’t improving the work system; it is only addressing one person’s experience. The higher the consequence for a mistake, the more important this question is.

When we design work with neurodiversity in mind, we don’t create a better system for one group of people. We create a better system for everyone.