Playing to Autism's Strengths

Marcus Buckingham has long been an advocate for focusing development activities on building strengths rather than fixing weaknesses. The Wall Street Journal article How Autism Can Help You Land a Job highlights how companies like SAP and Freddie Mac are taking Buckingham's philosophy to the next level.

SAP aims to have up to 1% of its workforce—about 650 people—be employees with autism by 2020, according to Jose Velasco, head of the autism initiative at SAP in the U.S.

People with autism spectrum disorder—characterized by social deficits and repetitive behavior—tend to pay great attention to detail, which may make them well suited as software testers or debuggers, according to Mr. Velasco, who has two children with the condition.

I love the reverse engineering approach that company leaders have taken by saying what strengths do candidates with autism bring and where would those be a benefit to us.

"They have a very structured nature" and like nonambiguous, precise outcomes, Mr. Velasco said. "We're looking at those strengths and looking at where those traits would be of value to the organization."

Autistic employees at SAP take on roles such as identifying software problems, and assigning customer-service queries to members of the team for troubleshooting.

As someone who generally deals with ambiguity fairly well, I sometimes get frustrated by colleagues who ask exacting detail questions to more clearly define project parameters and expectations. I've found it helpful in these exchanges to assume (right or wrong) that the person on the other end of the conversation falls on the mild side of the autism spectrum. That framework helps me deal with those situations more productively, by realizing their internal structure is different than mine.

I admire the way these two companies approach orientation with mentoring and employee-adaption training. The corporate environment is one giant hairball of bureaucracy and ambiguity. Recognizing how uncomfortable that can be for people who prefer order over disorder and helping bridge that gap will be critical to the success of these initiatives. I couldn't agree more with Freddie Mac's policy: "Harnessing the unique skills of people on the autism spectrum has the potential to strengthen our business and make us more competitive."

Trees Don't Grow to the Heavens

David Farrell, the autocrat, first-class CEO of May Department Stores from 1979-98, was fond of saying "Trees don't grow to the heavens." I love studying life cycles of businesses and products, so I took notice when the read that the retail axiom is proven once again with the decline of Moore's Law. The Economist created a compelling graphic and post about how the golden rule of microchips appears to be coming to an end.

In what has become scripture for the computer age, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, predicted that the cost of microchip transistors would continue to fall because the number that could be etched into a given surface area of silicon would double every two years or so. Derived from his 1965 paper, “Cramming more components onto integrated circuits”, and subsequent writings, Moore’s law, as his forecast came to be called, turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Treating it as a target, chipmakers have, every couple of years, produced a generation of smaller transistors and, therefore, cheaper computing power. However, it looks as though Moore’s law will not survive 2014.

SLOWEST OF THE FASTEST | Keeping Growth in Front of You

With over 11,000 runners, the Trolley Run in Kansas City is one of my favorites. It’s a 4-mile, point-to-point run that is mostly downhill making it one of my faster runs of the year. It’s in the spring and well organized with several clearly defined waves.

I’ve always run in the green wave, but last year, I ran at a 8:29 pace and finished in 33:55, so I planned to step up to the blue wave. Through a clerical error, everyone on the team I was running with was registered as part of the red wave which requires a 7:30 pace or better. A week prior to the Trolley Run, I finished a 5K at a 7:19 pace. The combination of a lucky registration mistake, recent confidence from a fast finish, and a traditionally strong performance on this downhill course gave me the extra boost to skip the blue and go straight to the red wave.

Good news, I finished under 30 minutes (29: 38) and qualified to be part of the red wave again next year. There is certainly plenty of overlap in the various waves - people in the blue wave finish in red wave times and beat red wave runners who finish in blue wave times. As an avid stu­dent of vari­a­tion, I believe many things can be bet­ter under­stood with bell curves and two-by-two grids.

Whenever you fall in the overlap area, you have a choice - put yourself in the red wave and be considered one of the slowest in your group, or put yourself in the blue wave and be considered one of the fastest in your group. I believe I ran faster in the red wave than I would have in the blue wave. I’ll never know for sure, but I felt motivated to chase my faster peers, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to let any blues pass me. You have to be realistic when choosing your comparison group, but stretching yourself to be in a more competitive framework provides greater development opportunities.

For me, it’s better to be the slowest member in the first wave, than the fastest member of the second wave, because the more bell curve you have in front of you, the more growth you have in front of you. Plus the red wave gets to board the shuttle buses first.