The ADD/HD Employee
As I continue the process of digital decluttering, I found an old article from the Art of Running a Small Business – You’re the Boss column in the NY Times. The article was published in 2010, but fortunately it is still available for archive viewing. It is called A.D.H.D. and the Business Owner: Is it a Gift? by Jay Goltz. First, I must say that I applauded the fact the author recognized that many successful people have ADD/HD, especially 15 years ago when the discourse was less accepting of anything other labelling ADD/HD as a disability. He also highlighted the fact that it is a double-edged sword which can cause great pain, shame, and embarrassment to the individual, which is equally important to recognize- it is a subject with nuance, and no simple solution or black and white answers.
Since ADD/HD is a gift, the real question is, does that gift always get utilized in the business world to its maximum potential or does it become more trouble than it is worth?
Many things can be a blessing to one business and a curse to another. The ADD/HD employee needs to have just the right amount of freedom and structure. On the one hand they are able to create, recreate, and co-create hitherto ideas, solutions, and sometimes even problems yet to be conceived of by their peers. They can reconfigure mind boggling systems and ways of doing things. On the other hand, they can lack the awareness of social niceties (sometimes with the grace and aptitude of a precocious and gregarious twelve-year-old), have the common sense of the original absent-minded professor, and consistently flunk the art of subtly. The original absent-minded professor was probably an ADD/HD child at one point.
Yet these oversized kids come up with billion dollar inventions, ideas, and solutions…when you can get them out of their own way.
The article went on to talk about some questions that an ADD/HD coach in New York asked about being easily distracted, managing workload, and procrastination, among other issues. Although I’m not saying that those might not be indicators of being an ADD/HD individual, I would say that in this day and age that many, if not all the questions could be answered “yes”, at least in part, by most people who are trying to stay on top of what has become a world which has largely been created by the ADD/HD brain. Don’t forget that they the architects of the 20th century and are showing no signs of slowing down in the 21st.
I have been asked on numerous occasions if the world we are living in is making people ADD/HD. I would say both yes and no, the reason being is that so much of the technology and ways of being cutting edge in today’s world came out of the ADD/HD imagination. We have created an expanding part of our world that in of itself is ADD/HD.
Now that is not to say that this ADD/HD world is creating ADD/HD people, but it is pushing any ADD/HD tendencies one might have to come out more to the forefront. This is creating a greater struggle within the business world between the haves and the haves not. The old order changeth, but not fast enough for the kind of merciful extinction of the ancient dinosaurs. Today’s dinosaurs are holding on for dear life, using influence, power, and capital to help forestall their extinction.
Often, this is at the expense of innovation and certainly at the expense of the children and young adults who are treated as lepers because they feel, experience, and interact with the world in a different way. And that way does not support institutional dinosaurs such as the education system, the government, the good old boy system, and health care, to continue on their merry way. Quite the opposite, they pose a threat to them. And so these institutional dinosaurs strike back by labeling, medicating, and ostracizing these individuals into harmlessness or at least temporary harmlessness.
But back to the question, can ADD/HD be a gift to the employer? Absolutely, but it can also be a nightmare. Silo systems of management, corporate game playing, and overly structured and archaic rules, belief systems, and ways of doing things will drive the ADD/HD gifted employee out the door, with all the good they have to offer going right along with them.
So, if you have an employee who is struggling and you think ADD/HD might be the reason ask yourself this- is the issue an ADD/HD employee trying to survive in a non-ADD/HD friendly world, who needs different structures and supports in place in order to fly? Or is it a non-ADD/HD employee trying to survive in an ADD/HD created environment and you simply have the wrong person in the wrong place?
If it is an ADD/HD person then help create the environment where their cutting-edge ways of being and viewing the world parlay into your business becoming just as visionary and cutting edge, making everyone happy and successful.
Scott Adams, in The Wall Street Journal, had this to say- “The primary purpose of management is to kill any hope that staying in your current job will work out for you. Bad management is how imagination gets wings. The economy needs workers who are fed up, desperate, and willing to quit their jobs for something better. You can’t do something great until first you quit something that isn’t. The last thing this world needs is a bunch of dopey sociopaths in management to drive down the opportunity cost of entrepreneurship. Luckily, we’re blessed with an ample supply.”
So, if you have innovative, supportive, inclusive management with good people and problem-solving skills, go hire some ADD/HD workers and give their imagination wings. But if you have a management team whose number one priority is stroking their bosses ego and kissing up to the ones in charge then don’t bother, unless of course you are looking some diversions in your day.
