Challenging the Notion of ‘Normal’: Being neuroinclusive in the age of gen AI

Speaker 1 (00:12):

I have autism. I'm still a great employee. It just means I see the world a different way. My brain is programmed differently and to understand what my perspective is like hopefully you understand me more, I might need some more structured engagements and sometimes when the unexpected happens it's a bit difficult. When the world's a little too bright, it can feel overwhelming because my brain doesn't filter out information the way others' do. So people rushing makes me disorientated, as it's too much information. And breathe.

(01:00):

I have a lot of strengths though too. I'm great at being analytical and finding patterns and data, working out systems on causality. When I have a leader that really understands and connects with me, they can get the most out of me and work in a structured way, finding new ways for me to share my voice, even if I'm not articulating. Our leaders are really connected, and because of that, I can bring my whole self to work. I may have invisible disability, and it's hard to explain what it's like from the outside, but you can see the inclusivity I experience from my eyes.

Daniel (01:54):

This is a picture of me as a young Daniel growing up in the woods of Minnesota. And as a young Daniel, there's a lot of things I wanted out of life. I wanted every video game released for the Super Nintendo entertainment system. I wanted peppermint chocolate chip ice cream with every meal or instead of every meal. But most of all what I wanted more than anything was a friend. Mario had Luigi. I wanted someone too. So I hatched a plan. There was a boy who rode the bus home from elementary school with me and he got off on my same stop. So I decided, all right, the next time we get off the bus, I'm going to invite him to my house so we can play video games together. Because who can say no to video games, right?

(02:38):

So the next day dawns, I put my plan into action. He gets off the bus and starts walking towards his house and I start walking after him. But then something strange happens. He starts walking faster and I think, well, maybe he's just in a hurry to get home. Maybe he's got a really cool video game there. So I start walking faster so I can catch. And then something very strange happens. He starts to run and I don't know what's going on, but I do know I don't want to let my new friend get away so I start to run too so I can catch him. And finally I do catch him. And just as I'm about to invite him to my house so we can start our new friendship together, he punches me in the stomach and he says, "Get away from me." And he turns and he leaves and I'm left to walk home alone.

(03:31):

I wish I could tell you that this was an unusual experience for me as a young Daniel. I wish I could tell you that this kid was just a jerk or maybe he was a bully and the next time I reached out for friendship, I was met with open arms. But the fact is this was a pretty typical experience for me. I don't mean to say that every time I tried to make friends I was punched in the stomach, but sometimes I'd be kicked in the back because I would sit on the swing set next to somebody and they would want me off. Sometimes people would pretend to like me so they could convince me to eat potato chips that they had secretly spit on. Sometimes they would just stand up and walk away without a word.

(04:10):

And the worst part of all of this is that I thought I deserved it. See, I have autism. And so looking back on my life, I can understand why I struggled to connect socially. But, I wouldn't be diagnosed until high school. And so as a kid, I didn't realize that my brain was wired to connect differently than other people or that there was this whole universe of body language and tone that I wasn't picking up on. All I knew is that I couldn't get anybody to like me no matter how hard I tried. And when you're a kid, you understand the world the best way you can and the only way my kid brain could make sense of the rejection that I was suffering was to decide that it was my fault.

(04:55):

I remember coming home from school, running into my dad's arms and crying out, "I'm bad, I'm bad, I'm bad." And I believed it. I was nine years old and I believed that I was bad because it was the only way I could make sense of the rejection I was experiencing. And what I wish I had understood back then, what I wish somebody could have found a way to tell me is that my struggle to belong that made me feel so isolated was actually something that connected me with other people. And that my sense that I just wasn't normal, I just didn't belong, was actually something I had in common with just about everybody. And I want to show you what I mean with a little audience participation exercise. We're going to get vulnerable for a moment, if that's okay. You invite a clinical psychologist on stage, we're going to talk about feelings. It's going to happen. But we'll get through it together, I promise.

(05:54):

So what I'd like to do is just a few things that I experienced along my journey that when I experienced them I felt like I was the only one experiencing them. I felt so alone in these moments and I want to show that I wasn't alone, that actually this is something that unites us. And so I'm going to share just a few of these experiences and at the end of the list, I'd like you to raise your hand if anything on the list applied to you. Does that feel okay? Okay. So, here we go. Remember at the end of the list, you can raise your hand.

(06:30):

I have felt like I don't belong. I have felt like deep down, I'm just not like other people. I have felt that I need to hide part of who I am in order to fit in. I have felt like I'm just not normal. I have felt lonely. If you resonate with anything on that list, can you raise your hand now? Wow, that's a lot of hands up. Thank you all so much. You can put your hands down. I appreciate the vulnerability. I think what that proves to us is that these struggles, this is just part of the human experience, that there's just something about what it means to be a human being that means that we need this place of belonging and we suffer when we don't receive it. And the moment that I realized that, the moment that I realized that my struggle was a human struggle and not an autistic one, everything changed because I started to see the way forward.

(07:29):

It started on my first day of freshman year of high school. And to set the stage for this a little bit, you need to understand that my family moved from Minnesota to California just before I was about to start high school. So I was going to be the new kid, didn't know anybody. What's worse. This same summer that we moved was the summer that I was finally diagnosed. And so not only was I going in as the new kid, I was going in as the neurologically different kid. I was terrified. My mom tells me that when she came to wake me up for the first day of school, she found that I had been covered in a cold sweat because I had spent all night just shivering in fear at the morning to come.

(08:09):

But once again, I had a plan. Except this time, my plan wasn't about making friends. This time, my plan was about survival. I was going to become the invisible man. I had it all figured out. I was going to be like a special forces guy from one of my video games sneaking around behind enemy lines, totally undetected. And at first it worked great. I made it through my first two classes, sitting in the back, didn't raise my hand, didn't talk to anybody. I made it all the way to lunchtime without being acknowledged by another human soul. But at lunchtime, there was a challenge because at lunchtime you eat at the lunch tables, right? And at the lunch tables were other people, and that's what I needed to avoid. But that's okay. Remember, I was like a special forces guy, adapt, improvise, don't talk to anybody. Yeah.

(08:57):

So, I adapted. I decided that I would take my lunch to my next class and just eat it at my desk waiting for the class to start. But then disaster struck again. The door to the classroom was locked, the teacher, out to lunch. So adapt, improvise, overcome. I sat on the floor. My first day of freshman year of high school and I ate my lunch alone on the floor with my back to the wall. But as I was eating my lunch, I noticed something strange. I noticed that just down the hallway was another boy also sitting on the floor, also eating his lunch alone, also trying very hard not to be noticed. And at that moment I had a decision to make. See, the invisible man strategy was working. Nobody had punched me in the stomach yet, that was a win. And if I talked to that other boy, I might be throwing all of that away. He might decide that I was awkward, I was bad. I just wasn't normal. He might reject me.

(09:58):

But the thing that I couldn't get out of my mind as I looked at that other boy was this, all throughout my day as the invisible man, even though I had tried so hard to be hidden, what I'd actually wanted more than anything was to be seen. What I'd craved so desperately was for somebody to come alongside me and say, "Hey Daniel, it's hard to be new and I don't care that you're a little different. I'll be your friend and we'll get through it together." And I realized that that other boy might not be autistic like me, but he was probably lonely, just like I was, he was probably anxious just like I was, and he was probably hoping for a friend just like I was. And I had the opportunity to be that friend.

(10:39):

So I stood up and I walked over to him and I said, "My name's Daniel." And he looked me over and he said, "My name's Bobby." There was a long moment where we kind of sized each other up. And then he said, "Do you like video games?" And I knew at that moment that I just made my first friend of high school, and not just my first friend, but my best friend. This is a picture of me and Bobby together. We were inseparable. And my friendship... Yeah, I know. I'm going to have to tell Bobby that everybody clapped for him. We were inseparable. And what Bobby's friendship taught me is that other people could be a source of joy, not a source of pain.

(11:26):

And let me tell you, joy is a far greater motivator than pain. Just as Angela Duckworth was teaching us. When we have purpose, that drives our desire to grow. And so I grew, I started going to more social things. I started teaching myself social skills. I started opening myself up to all of the amazing things that can come from social connection and I flourished because of it. But the thing about love is that it's kind of like food. You can work off of reserves for a while, but you're going to need a steady supply or you'll run into trouble. And that's exactly what happened to me.

(12:01):

Some years ago, I decided to move to Oregon so I could pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology and become the psychologist that I am today. And that meant that I had to move away from Bobby and all of my friends and family, all the people that had been filling my life with a steady supply of love. And in that new environment by myself, I found that my old doubts and fears started creeping back in. After a few failed attempts at making friends I started to think maybe I just don't belong here, maybe I'm not supposed to be here, maybe I really was bad all along. And this of course became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I stopped reaching out. I stopped going to social events. My first birthday in Oregon, I ate a pizza alone in my room because I thought that if I threw a birthday party, nobody would come. I had once again become the invisible man.

(12:55):

But this time someone saw me. One of my classmates, a man named Kyler, noticed that I was going through class, never reaching out, never connecting and he decided to take a chance. He sat down next to me one day and he said, "Daniel, let's get lunch." And lunch turned into, "Daniel, let's play video games" because everything with me is video games. And little by little we became best friends. This is a picture of the two of us, and you can see we've got a good energy together.

(13:24):

I'll tell Kyler that everybody laughed at him. It's safe to say that Kyler's friendship rescued me. On my own I wasn't able to shake the voice saying, "Daniel, you're just too different. Daniel, you're bad. Daniel, just give up." But then I had Kyler's voice saying, "Daniel, you're my friend, and I don't care that you're different. I love you, man." I'm reminded of an old Jewish parable called the parable of the long spoons. And in it, heaven and hell are the exact same place. Everybody's seated around a giant pot of delicious soup, and everybody's got a really long spoon. And in hell, everybody is starving because I don't know if you've ever tried to feed yourself with a six-foot-long spoon. Doesn't work very well. But in heaven, everybody is fed because they've realized their spoons aren't for nourishing themselves. They're for nourishing somebody else and letting them feed you in turn.

(14:19):

None of us have a self-sufficient spoon. All of us need other people to reach out to offer friendship, mentorship, to be a guardian angel, just like Kyler was to me. And all of us have a spoon that we can use to offer friendship, acceptance, to port to somebody else, just like I reached out to Bobby. And that's no small thing. It's through the simple decision to be a friend you can change the course of somebody's life. But what if we dreamed even bigger? What if we didn't just ask the question of what could we create ourselves by reaching out, but we asked the question, what could we create in our organizations by leading them to a new culture of inclusivity? What could our organizations create in our industries by leading towards a new standard for what it means to treat your people well?

(15:13):

That's the idea of neuro-diversity. That for folks with things like autism and ADHD, instead of viewing those as problems or hassles that we have to deal with, recognize that it's a different way of being that just requires a different approach, maybe some different supports. And that's why I'm so excited for the conversation that we're about to have because creating a neuro-inclusive organization, it's not uncharted territory. There's still a lot to learn, a lot to innovate, but there's proven steps that you can take home to your organization and create a better place to work for folks like me. Folks who are different in some way, but who still have a tremendous amount to offer. And so, let's get to it.

Michael (16:14):

So Daniel, you talked about we always need to get our love cup replenished, refueled. So what I'd like everybody to do is stand up. Please stand up. What we're going to do is look at Daniel, clap our hands and fill up his love cup.

(17:17):

We can shut the thing down now. You understand what we're trying to do here, people? Wow. So what a transition to from that, which was like heaven, okay, to like this. Okay.

(17:35):

So Dr. Wendler just wanted everybody know. He's also a clinical psychologist, a best-selling author with a newly released audiobook, Neurodiversity and the Myth of Normal. We also have Ellyn Shook, my friend, mentor, teacher, fellow change agent, chief leadership and human resources officer at Accenture who was passionate about helping each of Accenture's 742,000 people be their best professionally and personally. Nobody knows more about this person from the age we're about to enter, that's Paul Daugherty, chief technology and innovation officer at Accenture, one of the world's leading thinkers when it comes to using the best of technology and GenAI to elevate human beings. These are the diverse perspectives that we need for this next couple of decades that are ahead.

(18:28):

So Ellyn, I'll just start with you. What's your reaction to what you just heard from Daniel?

Ellyn (18:33):

Well, as you know, Michael, this wasn't the first time I heard Daniel tell his story. The first time I heard it I was sitting alone in my family room at home on a pretty big screen TV watching his story. And when he did the audience participation part, I was alone, but my hand went up. And that feeling of connection to Daniel was immediate. And I knew it was someone I really wanted and needed, both in my head and my heart needed to get to know. So that was my first reaction.

(19:05):

And then today I was thinking about this concept of friendship. And we're a Gallup Q12 company, so we measure engagement using the Gallup Q12. And one of the 12 questions is, do you have a best friend at work? And people that say they have a best friend at work are seven times more engaged. And we all know the studies around engagement and business results, so there's a business reason there. But the sad thing is only 2 in 10 people actually say yes, they have a best friend at work. And when I was listening... God, I think I might cry. I don't know. When I was listening to Daniel today, I was thinking for us at Accenture, my people are there sitting right in the front row for me. Thank you. That is one of our top-rated questions on our Gallup Q12, and that just made me really happy thinking about how we can be more inclusive for all.

Michael (20:13):

What about you, Paul?

Paul (20:15):

Like Ellyn, I had watched Daniel's TED Talk and was really moved by it. And the first thing, my first reaction is just how much I have to learn because it's a journey and I think it awakened a lot of what I needed to know more about which I've subsequently been exploring. And then today, maybe like Ellyn said, it was the belonging is what really struck me today, the belonging message really hit home and the importance of that. Ellyn just talked very eloquently about that.

(20:44):

The other thing that strikes me is, I would guess if we asked people of the audience to raise your hands, we would talk about how building innovative companies, innovative cultures is so important to us. And Ellyn and I did research a number of years ago that showed the importance of inclusivity and innovation, they're really the same thing. Innovation equals equality was the tagline of the report. And I think there's so much more we can do. And I love the word you used at the end, Daniel, neuro-inclusive, how do we create neuro-inclusive cultures and organizations? And I think that the potential there with what we have in front of as organizations and with the technology that's coming, I think is really profound.

Michael (21:24):

Well, Daniel left us with a challenge in terms of what we could do for people who we know or identify as being neurodivergent, leaders who are leading others who identify as being neurodivergent and us taking ownership. And I really love that on another part of For All.

(21:49):

So Ellyn, to start us off, what do you think we need to do in terms of helping our leaders create the conditions where people who are neurodivergent can be successful?

Ellyn (21:59):

Okay, well, let me just give a minute of context. So we use a very simple question at Accenture to shape our employee experience. The question is, do we leave our people net better off working at Accenture? And there's four things that define that. First, do people feel healthy and well, physically, emotionally, and financially? Do they wake up every day and have a sense of purpose in their work? And I loved Angela Duckworth, she was speaking my language the whole time. So not like are you connected to delivering on the promise of technology and human ingenuity? But do you wake up every day and feel a sense of purpose? Mine is lift as I rise, so I do feel that purpose. Every single day, it gets me out of bed. The third is, do you feel a sense of belonging and trust? And the fourth is, do you have market-relevant skills?

(22:58):

And if we could fire on all four of those at the same time, we can unlock two-thirds of someone's potential at work. And I think it was very connected to Daniel's story too. And these four things are what our people told us, not something we just dreamt up. So that's kind of our context. And then the other thing I'll say contextually is we are early in this journey. Our journey started out with a group of parents who had children who are neurodivergent. They created an ERG to support each other, to share resources, to learn from each other. And from that, people who are neurodivergent at Accenture came forward and said, we would like to have an ERG. And that ERG was born almost two years ago to the day. Melanie, who's sitting there in the front row, was one of the founders. We now have about 1800 people around the globe and 10 countries have groups. And that's the beginning of our story, and it's young, and I say that because we still have a lot to learn and people like Daniel are helping us learn to be better.

(24:12):

But there are four things I think every one of us can get out of here and go back to our workplaces, our great workplaces tomorrow and do. First is education. Educate ourselves, really start to understand neurodivergent profiles, autism, ADHD, and many others. But really just start to understand the basics and don't rely on what you might've heard when you were in school or when you had friends that were neurodivergent growing up because the science has gotten better and has changed. So educate yourself, build the understanding.

(24:56):

Interestingly, one of the amazing things about our ERG is that they brought to us, they brought to our team a training platform. And the training platform is called, Uptimize, U-P. But not optimize, but Uptimize. And it's a training platform that now sits on Accenture's learning platform that uses neurodivergent people to tell stories and it helps build understanding and really create the ability to actually take action. So far, since the group has brought that training platform forward, 16,000 Accenture people have taken that training and I think that's awesome. So, education.

(25:46):

Second is talk to your people. None of us in this room lack an understanding of we're living in a war for talent, there's a shortage of all kinds of talent. And from many, many, many studies that I've read and have been shared with me, 20% of people are neurodivergent. And so if you do not understand that and you do not have a way to connect with people in your organization, you are excluding an entirely enormous talent base from your company. And I'm again lucky, I feel, because we used Gallup's strengths and that has created a vocabulary for all of us that allows people to share their strength. So we move away from correcting for any deficits that someone has in our mindset to really focusing on people's strengths. And those conversations have to be trusting conversations that an individual can have with their colleague or with their leader or do something like Elizabeth did with her training to really get to an understanding of what people need.

(27:08):

Third, which is the second to last, and then I'll go back to Michael, is accept differences. Again, I'll just share that we had a neurodiversity celebration a month ago where many activities happen. One of the things that I heard from Melanie and from Brian, our co-leaders, was that we have had a celebration and that managing directors in Accenture came and shared their stories so that we can start to accept differences as differences in all of us that make all of us special. All 742,000 of us are different, and that is great. Because we believe it is our diversity that enables us to bring innovative solutions to our clients.

(27:58):

And finally, provide flexibility. Quickly, I think flexibility comes in two forms in this context. One is environment. You heard Elizabeth talk about how her work environment affects her. I will say that my new friend Jonathan told me, when you've met one autistic person, you have met one autistic person. So what was important to Elizabeth, may not be important to everybody. But also people might need flexibility in how they do their work, and sometimes it's better to just focus on outcomes that people need to drive. Sometimes it's tools that people need. I heard from the team that we have Microsoft Copilot now in our flow of work. So it's available to most of us at Accenture, and it is probably the single best tool to provide as a work aid to neurodivergent people. So those four things, Michael, we can do every one of us tomorrow when we go back.

Michael (29:03):

Thank you, Ellyn. Daniel, anything you'd like to add? You don't have to, it's up to you, just based on what you've heard.

Daniel (29:10):

Yeah. I think the thing that I would add to kind of take what you're saying and run it, the challenge even further is to introduce this idea of universal design, which says that when we design our spaces for everybody it makes it better for everybody. Which if you've been at this conference, that shouldn't be a new idea for you.

(29:29):

So for instance, when we put ramps on the sidewalk for people with wheelchairs, it also makes it better for parents with strollers. And so if you take the challenge of saying, I want to design an organization that is inclusive, that creates belonging, where everybody has a best friend at work and make that true of everybody, then that's going to help your neurodivergent people, but it's going to help everybody else also. Because everybody has their own differences, everybody has their own needs. And if you set the challenge as I want everybody to be able to get what they need, then that unlocks some really cool potential for your organization.

Michael (30:07):

Thank you. So, Paul, what does all of this mean in a GenAI world? What role does technology and AI play in supporting neurodiversity in the workplace?

Paul (30:17):

Yeah, I think you have to step back in this discussion, and Ali gave a good introduction on AI earlier and just understand where we are with technology and why this is an important time. And I'd start by saying we just live in exceptional times with respect to technology. It's easy to lose sight of that because this technology comes so fast. But what we do, the way we do work, the way everyone in our businesses will change more in the next five years than it has in the last 20, and that's creates a lot of opportunity for us.

(30:45):

The two things that are most promising about this exceptional technology is generative AI, which brings us new human-like capability to AI, which I'll talk about more in a minute. And it's also the new technology, internet of things and sensors and such that you hear about that's allowing us to learn more about ourselves and get more data about ourselves. Those two things lead to something we call human-by-design, the ability to create human systems and use technology, why that's more human-by-design may be getting to the universal design kind of concept for technology and systems that Daniel just talked about.

(31:20):

And if you think about that, I think where it comes together with neurodiversity is neurodiversity is about people processing information differently. And I think we can use technology in powerful ways for that. I'll just give you a few examples. One of which is what you already saw with Elizabeth and the way she's using, what I'll say, tech for understanding. How do we use technology, virtual reality in this case to understand differences, understand things in more profound and deeper ways.

(31:45):

A second would be tech for transformation. What you're seeing on the screen here is Todd Lukesh, an Accenture employee who's listening today. Todd is a digital twin architect for Accenture. He builds artificial intelligence-enabled digital twins of buildings and equipment and things like that. Todd also has suffered throughout his life from paralyzing seizures, grand mal seizures that were dramatically impacting his life and his ability to work.

Michael (32:14):

What does digital twin mean?

Paul (32:16):

Digital twin means creating a digital simulation of the real world. So digital twin of this room would be the digital manifestation of representation. In Todd's case, he worked with UCLA and created a digital twin of his brain and his neurological functioning and his mind. Through a lot of testing and such, they determined that what would help his condition would be an implant called NeuroPace inserted in his brain that would allow him to learn more and extend his digital twin of his mind to understand what was causing the seizures. Combine that with information from other pages to learn the patterns, get all artificial intelligence enabled, and also help control situations. Millivolt signals sent to the brain to head off conditions that were coming. Amazing transformation of his life by extending the digital twins that he built for work to a digital twin of himself, which transformed his life and his ability to work. And he's now looking at how does he connect that back within the work that he does.

(33:12):

And then one, another example I'll end on here is Mendi. I have one of these in my pocket here. You can put it on your head. It's got sensors in it and it monitors your prefrontal cortex, which is where focus comes from. It's where some of the emotional processing and understanding comes from. It does it through blood flow and it understands neurological activation. And you can use this to train yourself. We've developed an application called Brain Gym that you can use to train new neural pathways. So if you have trouble focusing, how can you improve your ability to focus? So it's tech for empowering us to do things in different ways, getting to more universal application of technology.

(33:52):

And I think all this then leads to inclusivity. How do we use technology like Microsoft Teams or Otter? There's lots of technologies that we can use in the workplace to allow neurodivergent individuals to participate more. Tools like GitMind. You may have heard of GitHub. There's a GitMind, which allows you to organize information and your mental processes more effectively. And how do we design systems that really aren't designed for just the average person, but are designed for the differences that we have and get to [inaudible 00:34:22] kind of neuro-universal nature of using system. I think that's what we should all be asking as we look at this next generation of technology that we're just starting to deploy.

Michael (34:30):

Ellyn, anything you'd like to add?

Ellyn (34:34):

No, other than making these types of technology accessible to more people, I think, is essential. And I'll just give a little shout-out to Elizabeth who was on the video. She wanted her story to be accessible, so we created these cardboards for her. So you can watch that video on your phone. And the more accessible that innovation comes to people, the more we will be able to be inclusive. And I think that's the name of the game.

Michael (35:12):

Daniel, we'll give you the final word.

Daniel (35:15):

I think what I would say is the potential of this technology, of the things that might come in the future is so exciting, but I think it's also exciting to realize that there's so many things that you can do today. There's so many things that you can do with a budget of zero just by offering sort of that a little bit of time to listen, a little bit of time to offer some empathy. You can make a real difference for the people in your organization or the people that your organization serve. And so I would encourage everybody to be excited for the future, but to also find one thing that they can do today to build greater inclusivity.

Michael (35:51):

Ellyn?

Ellyn (35:53):

I just want to say one more thing because I know it's important. And Daniel, please help me if I need help here. One of the things that prevents neurodivergent people from unlocking their full potential at work is masking. And we didn't really have time to explore that today, but it is the concept of what exactly it sounds like people mask characteristics about theirself or behaviors that they have to try to appear normal at work, and it's exhausting. And I would hope that when we go home tomorrow and we start our education, because it's the first thing that any of us can do, we start to learn more about this because I think it's going to help us beginning to open the doorway to bring more people in and be a great place to work for all.

Daniel (36:53):

Well said. Yep.

Michael (37:01):

So we will leave all masks in New Orleans. Please give a warm thank you to this outstanding panel.