Why Rigid Organizations Fail and Neuro-Inclusive Ones Win with Robert Annis

In this episode of The Business Of Thinking, host Richard Reid sits down with Robert Annis, a business psychologist and founder of Neuro. They explore the transformative power of neurodiversity in the workplace, moving beyond "problem-solving" to embracing diversity of thought as a competitive advantage. Robert shares his personal journey of being diagnosed with autism and ADHD later in life and how that shift in perspective fueled his mission to help organizations build inclusive cultures where everyone can thrive.

Key Takeaways 

Neurodiversity is a natural variation of the human brain, affecting roughly 15-20% of the population.

Organizations that foster psychological safety and diversity of thought are more innovative and less prone to "groupthink".

Real cultural change must be driven by senior leadership who are willing to invest in long-term strategies rather than short-term wins.

Inclusive environments designed for neurodivergent individuals often benefit the entire workforce, similar to how curb cuts help everyone, not just those in wheelchairs.

Episode Highlights 

Robert discusses the "Great Man Theory" and why traditional leadership models often resist radical, inclusive thinking.

He introduces the "Neuro Standard," a three-level accreditation designed to guide organizations on a journey of continuous improvement.

The conversation also touches on the "hidden costs" of excluding diverse thinkers, including lost potential and the risk of unvoiced concerns.

Timestamps 

00:00 - Introduction to Robert Annis and business psychology 

02:43 - Robert’s personal diagnosis and shift in perspective 

05:03 - The science of neurodiversity and hereditary elements 

09:11 - Moving from groupthink to innovation 

13:15 - Overcoming objections to inclusive leadership 

17:22 - Identifying real risks in organizational culture 

25:20 - Explaining the Neuro Standard accreditation 

29:38 - The Neuro-Pathway from school to the workplace

🔗 Connect With Robert Annis 

• Website: neurocharity.org 
• LinkedIn: Robert Annis

⭐️ Connect and Subscribe

Thank you for joining us on The Business of Thinking podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe and leave a rating! It helps us bring more insightful content on the psychology of high performance. Find more about Richard Reid’s work at www.richard-reid.com.

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Production Credit: Edited and produced by @the32collective_ / https://www.the32collective.co/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Business of Thinking podcast. This is the place for high achievers who want to be more than motivated. They want to be motivated. Here we skip and go straight into the psychology of high performance.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Hi, and welcome to the business of thinking. My name is Richard Reid, and today I'm joined by Robert Annis, who is a business psychologist specializing in the field of neurodiversity. So welcome to you, Robert. Tell us a little bit more about how you got involved in the work that you do.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Thank you, Richard. Pleasure to be here. Yeah, so I work as a business psychologist, which probably sounds a bit strange to some people. The realm of psychology is well known for most people in the sense of lie down on the couch and tell me about your mother. It's not quite in that field. It's much more around the psychology of organizations and leadership and looking at how we can help leaders be more successful, organizations be more successful. In recent times, I've become more focused on neurodiversity and neurodivergence as it features in the population. About 15 to 20 percent of the population is neurodivergent based upon UK government figures. And so it's a significant amount of the population. And so it deserves more focus, but also it deserves a better understanding so that we can see how it plays in the workplace and how it can affect both the individuals themselves, of course, but also the organization surrounding them.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

And how did you get involved in specializing in that particular area?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

So the psychology side has been a fascination for years and years and years. I've always found uh human behavior, human thinking absolutely fascinating for me. Um, and then in more recent times, I found out partially why it's the case when I was clinically diagnosed autistic and ADHD, um, which then led me down the natural path and look at that and go, okay, well, what is this? What does it mean for me? What does it mean for others around me? Um, and I think for anybody in that situation, when you glean new information about yourself, it naturally makes you look at yourself in a different way and rethink about things around you. Um, I'm reminded of that sort of that old line around if there's 10 people in the room, there's 10 different versions of you, and only one of them is the one you're aware of, right? The other nine are people seeing you through their own lens, right, through their own filter. Um, and when I had that change when the time of myself, it changed the what I really knew. Um, but it made me also think, what are those other nine people thinking when they're interacting with me? So it led to a lot of questions, a lot of um uh analysis and self-discovery, I think, safe to say. I suspect it's probably a lot of the same for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Yeah, I'm just sort of thinking in terms of the work that I do, that so many people get their diagnosis later in life, and and that can be um quite uh a reassuring thing, but in some ways it can also raise lots of questions. But it often helps to make sense of challenges that people have had earlier in life, and I guess when those challenges aren't recognized and supported, it often makes people feel stigmatized, doesn't it? And inhibits their opportunities. Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

I mean, it I think a lot of it is down to a generational gap as well, right? When I was young, anyone who's viewed differently like that was seen as a bad kid, right? And I'd probably put in that the bad kid class, if you like. Um, there was now there's there's much greater understanding, support, acknowledgement. Um, and a lot of the people we work with are people of sort of my generation, but they don't find out um themselves about their neurodivergence, they find out about their children through the schooling system, and then when children are going through testing, going through diagnosis, then the parents are looking at themselves and going, hold on a minute. A lot of the behaviors talking about here with my son or my daughter, it's things I see myself. Um, and that's very, very common. Um, and and through the charity work we do, through Neuro, which is the charity we started, it's very much focused on that. It's helping individuals and organizations recognize neurodivergence, not as a purely something to support or something to um I don't know, allow for. In many ways, it's seen as sort of a a problem to to to be circumvented. Um, what we're thinking is actually we need diversity of thought in organizations, and so actually these people can be very, very beneficial to organizations, and uh, yeah, that's that's been a lot of our work in recent times.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Yeah, and you and you mentioned there about uh a lot of the time it's it's parents come to this realization about themselves through their children. Is is that um is there a hereditary element to some of this?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Oh, absolutely. Um, so neurodivergence is completely natural, there's nothing weird or strange, it's nothing to do with um, it's not like a disease, it's not something you you catch or you can get it through uh ingestion of anything like that. It's just natural variation in the human brain, in much the same way that um if someone's got really good eyesight, it's likely their children will have good eyesight, right? Um, so these things are definitely um seen as being passed down through generations, so you do tend to see a higher likelihood if a child has it that the parent will. But it is just a natural variation. So it's an amazing thing to think about. But our brains are something like 86 to 100 billion neurons, which is a staggering number, and five to ten trillion synapses connecting them, and those synapses are constantly changing, reconnecting, disconnecting in the process that we call learning, right? Um, and so this is the most complex thing we know of that we have between our ears. It's staggering, but because there's so many parts in there, so many amazing cells, it means you get a natural variation just based on statistics, right? Such a high number, you get a high variation. And so, what that means is that impacts our intelligence, our behaviors, how we see the world. And that natural variation is called neurodiversity. And within that, people who have slightly different brains are called neurodivergent. Um, so within neurodivergence, you see things like autism, ADHD, dysfaxia, dyslexia, etc. etc. Um, and so yeah, it's it's a completely normal and natural thing. The only question is how the individual and how society views it, and that can obviously impact things greatly.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

Yeah, yeah. And what are what are some of the typical challenges you're seeing for individuals and and organizations in the work that you do?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Um it's wide. Um, it'd be the first thing to say. It's very varied because um it's not like uh I don't know, diabetes, where you take insulin, you're good, right? It's it's there's not a there's no cure, there's no um take this set of drugs and you're you know fixed, not that anyone needs fixing, but yeah um and there's no uh definition anywhere that says exactly what these conditions are either. They're very, very broad things, and so when we try to look at populations, say that population is autistic or has ADHD, etc., within each of those subgroups, there's huge variation, and so there's no sort of one size fits all where you can say to an organization, if you do this, then everyone's going to fit in, right? Um, and so it's actually shifting the thinking away from um what do we need to do, to we need to talk to the people and see how we can help them. And what we're finding more and more is that the things that we do to help people who are different tends to help the wider population, right? Um, whether it be things like um on a road where you have the cut into a curb, so a a car or disabled person can mount the curb. Well, that's great if you try to drag a wheelie bin as well, right? It's all these sorts of things, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Yeah, great analogy, like it.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And what we're finding is if you build a more inclusive environment where people feel safer, they feel more comfortable, then you're gonna get pennants for for everybody, right? And actually it goes way further than that. We tend to think of organizations very much of a club, right? You go into work for a company, and it's what are the club rules, right? What are the rules here? How do I fit in? Right? What's the culture? What's the identity? What are our values? All those kinds of phrases that leaders use to describe their organization and what they're trying to build. The downside to that, of course, though, is actually what we're doing is we're trying to build that construction there, is we're creating a tunnel effect, and everyone becomes quite similar. And so we get sort of group think occurring a lot in organizations, which is we see a lot of organizations failing because they don't see when issues occur and they don't voice them. So people are afraid to speak out, for example. So we have the phrase whistleblowers, right? If we could help people feel more safe and actually encourage them to voice concerns or things they see, you actually get a more successful organization and you encourage that diversity of thought, and you end up with an organization that actually innovates and is therefore more competitive than it previously was. So it's less, I think, and this is a critical thing for us, it's less about how do we cope with neurodivergent people, rather, how do we see the potential benefit they could bring to how we run our organizations? Because if we can build for them and everyone else, then we'll build organizations that are simply more competitive and make more money. And that's kind of the big focus for us is that we want to help those individuals, but we can do it whilst also helping the organizations. And that's we we think, we hope, uh, very much a win-win.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

Yeah, it certainly sounds that way. Um, and here when you describe that, it sounds like it's um, you know, it's interesting to talk about talking with individuals to understand more about what they need. Lots of organizations are really bad at that, aren't they? They they just come out with quite prescriptive ways of dealing with people on a on a large scale. And it and it sounds like it's what you're advocating is a human-centric approach to business, but also something that's quite dynamic as well, something that is not set in stone based on a single conversation, but something that evolves over time.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Yeah, absolutely. We we tend to look at, and you know, this is why I've studied a lot of is sort of leadership theories and organizational theories, very much based around competition or these are the right way to do things and drive, drive, push, push, and and have your strategy, know your goals, right? Um, and all that sort of we've accepted as making sense, but a lot of it, when you sort of pull it apart, doesn't actually work very well. If you think about the analogy of um an Olympic sprint race, so a hundred-meter sprint race, right? Now they are very much like companies, each of those competitors. They all want to win, they all want to be at the front, right? They want to get the gold medal. Yeah, right? Now, for most companies, they turn around and say, we're just gonna drive, we're gonna achieve, and we're gonna get first place. The Olympic example shows us that's not true. It's not just about I'm gonna run as hard as I can, right? Indeed, it may be. You've got to pace yourself to make sure you you run it correctly and don't tie yourself too quickly. But also you sit down, you work with the best nutritional coaches, the best fitness coaches. You make sure you eat and drink certain amounts, you make sure you get all the right sleep, you make sure you have the right kit, the right shoes, right? There's millions of things that they need to do. And all of those are really about how do you approach it. Not exactly the strategy of how you run the race, but more what kind of person you're trying to build to run the race. And that's what we should be doing with companies. It should be less about what's the strategy and what's the goal, because those are always going to change anyway, right? As company leaders learn. It's more about how do we build the organization and what advice do we bring in? How how broadly do we go with our diversity of thought and our diversity of working? And um, I think that is the future of organizational psychology, is is recognizing that we need to be a bit more complex in our thought and our approach to how we build companies.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

It makes absolutely perfect sense. I'm assuming not everybody buys into it immediately. What are the kind of objections that you sometimes get to radically?

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Yeah, I mean, obviously you're absolutely right. Um the main objection is simple, it flies against traditional thinking, right? Um, since the very beginning of the 20th century, uh most leaders have been taught, although not by name, but it's some variation of the great man theory. Uh, the great man theory is a psychological concept which by today's metrics we mostly call nonsense, but it used to be accepted a psychological fact. Um, and that was that the leaders are born. And so we look at certain people and go, the reason they became great leaders is because they're that that type of person. And yeah, unsurprisingly, they are all white males who were born into privilege, right? Um, so all it did was keep that stereotype going, was kind of the thinking behind it. Indeed, today we look at somebody who um is not a white male and they are caught doing a very small crime, like I don't know, drug possession or something, and they go away for seven, ten, fifteen years. There is the old white male who commits billions of pounds or dollars of fraud gets away scot-free, right? Um, so we still have some of this kind of acceptance of great man theory. Um, but it's really driven the thinking for lots of organizations, right? Find one person, put them at the top, and follow them no matter what, as opposed to analysing what we should be as an organization, how do we build this? And so there's a lot of pushback purely because it feels strange, it feels wishy-washy. Um, but the reality is if you're trying to build an organization of thousands of people, and you're not really thinking about your organizational psychology and what you're trying to build and how you build it, that seems a little bit crazy, right? And and so I think there is resistance, but people are slowly getting there. And it's it's a massive shift, right? It's a really big shift in the organizational culture that is being taught in universities and that is being utilized out there in the workplace. And so, of course, there's gonna be a lot of resistance, but at the end of the day, how many times can we look at very large companies? Banks are a very good example, right, in recent times, that fail at the very things they're meant to be doing, right? Um, and they have humongous impacts that cause global tremors, right? These aren't small things, so there is resistance. Um, and I think honestly, Richard, it's a case of showing with evidence why and how this works. So it's very much a case of looking at sort of the the risk against the cost and saying, right now you're lacking in diversity of thought, so you're not as competitive as you could be, right? You've got people who aren't telling you when something's going wrong because they're scared they might get in trouble if they voice something, right? Yeah, you've got an unbelievable loss of potential because your people don't feel safe, they're not pushing themselves, they're not growing to their real potential. The cost to get rid of that risk is some investment to create that right environment. But if you look at that versus the risk of what could be going wrong, then the cost-benefit ratio should very clearly say this is something that organizations should be thinking about.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Yeah, yeah. And it takes a little bit of sort of um application, doesn't it? Because I guess a lot of a lot of those costs are uh hidden costs, aren't they? It's not that they're not significant costs, but they're not immediately the obvious unless you you dig a little bit deeper.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, absolutely. And uh that's like a a million years ago, I used to be a project manager. Um, we always had to do uh a risk register for every project, so there'd be a list of risks. And I was always joked, why isn't there I don't know, meteors heading towards Earth? Why aren't there the next ice age? Or and it was always a joke, but the thing is, all the risks they put on there were always a bit odd, right? I very rarely ever saw one saying things like, um, how is this project going to impact our organizational culture? Do um we have the right people in place to do this? How will we know if something's going wrong during the project? Will people say anything? Right? Um, are people able to say no to the boss if it's the wrong thing to do? You know, actual real risks that do cause impacts, we tend to try not to see them because individuals are more focused on themselves and making sure they get their paycheck. And leaders are more focused on short-term wins uh because they can't, despite what they say, see five years into the future. Um, it's not possible for them. And so most culture is based around a company writing on a poster, it's five values, and that's what we think it is, right? Um, as opposed to thinking the leaders are responsible not for delivery of work. That's what managers and teams are responsible for. Leaders are responsible for delivery of culture, and and that's something that I think is is sorely lacking.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

Yeah, and and and I fully agree, and I think in my experience, often when culture is being actively driven, it's being driven at a lower run within the organization, which then doesn't get the buy-in and and and the support, which uh you know often means that those things flounder. Uh, is that is that your experience? Um, yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah, I I think at the end of the day, most actually, you know, I can give you a really good example of it. If I give you a really good example, um, I've delivered hundreds of thousands of training classes during my life. And every time I've gone in to a company and said, Okay, we're doing training, what are you guys looking for? If it's for the lower teams, it's going to be a two-day or a three-day or a five-day. If it's for senior leadership, it's going to be half a day. And you just look at that and think, that's the wrong way round.

unknown 19:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

It's about face, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's what's good for the goose is not good for the gander. It's it's it's it's just one of those things where you look at it and go, senior leadership have been told so often that they're so good that they don't need to improve, that they don't need that. And actually, no, if you were to put the investment in, surely, from a pure Falcons point of view, you're gonna have more impact if you hit a CEO than you do, yeah, I don't know, someone much, much lower who just doesn't have as much width across the organization, they're not as visible, they don't have as much impact, right? Um, so yeah, we got that side of it completely upside down, but it is indicative of the overall problem. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

And and and and it often, I think, also sends out clear messages to people further down the ladder about how important that that particular drive is considered. Yeah. Um so it doesn't get that endorsement as much as it doesn't get the sort of practical support.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Yeah, it it and I've I've had that experience many times where I've delivered training to people and you can see them thinking, why are we even doing this? Because this won't change. I've I've my boss isn't gonna be any different. The CEO's still doing the same stuff. I'm just here because I have to be. And you know, they're they're in the training class with their laptop out, you know, banging out emails because they know it's yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Yeah, it tells you everything you need to do.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Yeah, um, and it's it's very disheartening because you get a lot of workers who really throw their heart and soul into it, right? Um, I remember one chap I was talking to, and this was uh when I lived in the USA, um, and obviously they've got a slightly different work ethic to other parts of the world. Um, but even so, I was talking to this guy, and he was saying about um how hard he was working and how much commitment he had for the company, and he was trying to get it across to me, I think, in a hope that I would tell his bosses or something, you know, what a hard and dedicated guy he was. But he rise he was telling he'd taken zero what they call PTO, what we would call holiday, in the last two years because he was so dedicated to his job, and this guy had a wife and kids, and you just sort of think, well, it's not quite working the way the system is at the moment, where someone feels like that's the kind of relationship they need to have with their employer, right? That's not somebody to stand up and go, excuse me, this project's going off the rails, and it's gonna cost millions if we don't do something. That's somebody who's gonna keep quiet because they want to fit in and and not you know anger or annoy managers, yeah. Um and that's that's the Wrong approach to have, right? Um if we can't build organizations that are honest with themselves, then they're going to keep failing. And it's way more common than we like to pretend. The culture of failing companies is quite common. It's hard to open a newspaper, I guess I'm showing my age now, um, over a newspaper and not read about a company that's that's messed up or is failing, right? That's very, very common. I don't mean that as an overly negative statement, just that it happens a lot, and we tend to think it doesn't. Like it's quite rare. That's not the case at all. It's very, very common.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

And so I think there's a agreed, and a lot of companies succeeding spite of themselves as well, don't they? Well, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

I mean, if you're the CEO and you can get a golden parachute in two or three years, there is an argument to say, is it worth focusing on the long term? Right? Traditionally, the Japanese culture has been very uh focused on saying when you're CEO of this company, you're in for life or at least decades, right? So they're very much more long-term thinking and not looking at a short-term risk. Um, whereas in the West, we do very much the opposite. We tend to have people in power for just a very short amount of time. And so it makes much more sense for them to sort of destroy the company from inside if it can make them profit in the short term, right? And that look, that's how the system is set up, Currently. If you if you people expect they're gonna be there a short amount of time, then that does make sense. So there's also something to be said there about um leadership culture should be more longstanding, um, so that people are more focused on um building companies up rather than sort of tearing them down from the inside to make the short-term profit.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Yeah, yeah. And I guess when it's longer longer term, then then you you are gonna reap the rewards or the punishments of not having looked after people and created the good culture.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Um, but that's that's a lot, right? That that's a significant change in in the culture we have at the moment, and and that's unfortunately extremely hard to do down to uh the stock exchange and particularly things like private equity, yeah, right. Um private equity is that their business model is very much we go in, we take over, we strip mine it, and we we sell the pieces, right? Um, and that's widely regarded as being a really good business model. Um, so yeah, it's not really up to me to be the moral judge of that, but that is certainly the business model that they commonly use.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

Yeah, yeah. So given there are all these sort of challenges, how how do you sort of typically go about trying to address those things with the organizations that you work with?

SPEAKER_01 24:44

Yeah, no, and this is where it gets really fun. Um, so something that I've learned over the years, and I use that phrase a lot more than I thought I did. I sound very arrogant. I apologize, I don't think that um is that most organizations want to achieve certain things, and when they achieve that, they tend to stop that momentum, particularly in the world of change or training, right? So we want to get these qualifications or this standard, once we've got it, we'll stop it. So we intentionally built the neuros standard, which is our set of qualifications, um, sorry, accreditations, I guess, um, around organizations going on a journey rather than just achieving one thing, right? And so there's three levels to that standard. And what we want to see is organizations building themselves to be more accepting of neurodivergence and building more inclusive companies because that's going to make them more competitive, more successful. And if we just have it as a standard get their stop, then the responsibility lies with us for setting the standard. If we make it more about this is a standard you need to meet, and you need to show your own investment, you need to show your own evidence of how you're achieving this, then we're giving ownership of that change to them. So that's why you've built that intentionally to drive culture change. Because if we want to see real impact organizations to actually help them change, they've got to own it themselves, right? We can't handhold them forever. Um, so we had to build something that is a structure and an engine for them to go on that journey, but they then hold the keys to they've got to drive it forwards. Um, and that took a lot of work to build it that way, but having delivered lots of training, I've seen where um it's just achieved the bare minimum, and um, you know, that's not what we're trying to do. So the way the neurostandard works now is very much a case of here's a set of five areas for each of them. Um, so sort of leadership, um, commitment to change, the policy changes, all these sorts of things. And within those, they've got to supply information that proves that investment. And so it really is about them taking that and then looking in turn and going, okay, what do we want to change about our service to meet this standard? So they've got to have structures and bodies within that organization focused on that and willing to do that, and so that shows that um drive towards long-term change. Um, and they get to become more competitive, more successful, and signal to the world that they're doing that through a recognised standard. So we're hoping it's um it's a benefit to everybody, really. That's very much the intention.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

That makes a lot of sense. And is it a one-off assessment or is it uh a repeat assessment? Because I guess the the temptations for organizations to say, well, we've we've done it. Yes, now we're gonna move on to something else that's shiny.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

But yeah, or you just get new leadership in and they roll things back, right? Absolutely possible. Yeah, so yes, every three years they have to re-credit. Um, but we obviously hope that they would not just re-credit, they actually move up the three levels um and show further commitment. That would be the ideal. Um, and we we've worked really hard to try and make it um successful. We um have had it validated by two universities um by getting students to run to it as part of their work, and that's been really fun as well, um, and to really show it off and to test out in that way. Um, we're talking to uh organizations in Australia, uh in the US, as well as in Europe. Um and so yeah, it's it's it's early days for us. We're only about six months in, I think. Um so it's been a heck of a lot of work. Um, but yeah, it's um an intentional wish uh based upon what we've seen to try and make a real change for those individuals and organizations um to make organizations, whether it be a university, a charity, or a business, to be more effective, but more competitive as well.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

And if there are people listening who want to find out more about this initiative, where can they find that out?

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Yeah, absolutely. Um we have uh a website, obviously, um neurocharity.org. Um so yeah, please do reach out. Um, we are having a lot of fun working with clients at the moment, but we're always looking for more. And certainly for most organizations, it's a really powerful attractive. Um, something like 20 to 25 percent of Oxford graduates in neurodivergent. So when they come out of university, they're going to be looking for work, right? And if you can turn around and say, well, our organization is neuro accredited, well, then you can attract the best and brightest to your organization, right? Um, and that's how we built it. The neuropathway is very much a path from school to university to the workplace, which really does pull organizations, individuals through in that way. Um, so I definitely suggest reaching out to us, looking at neurocharity.org and seeing how we can work with you and how we can help you. Um, because this is what we really want to achieve is to make some meaningful social change.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Yeah, so important. And if there are individuals listening to this call and they don't feel as though they've got the ability to influence an entire organization or to get people like you to come in, are there ways that they can create a rip and fit within their organization?

SPEAKER_01 30:21

Absolutely, that's a really good question, Michelle. And there's several different other ways you can work with us. Um, we are looking for volunteers, so that's absolutely a way. Um, we do do lunch and learns and training and mentoring and coaching, all those kinds of things as well. So there's lots of different options. If it's just that you want to get in touch and see how we can work together, then by all means reach out, right? Um, we've the smallest organization we work with was a one-person organization. Um, so it's it's not about the size of the organization or anything like that. It's more about um willingness and and you know, intrigue in the concept. At the end of the day, you definitely know people when you're a divergent. If you know more than five people, you must do, right? By the statistics. Um, and then in addition to that, we've also got the uh CDP program, which is our commercial delivery partner program, which is where we license our training and our accreditation out to other individuals and organizations so they can go out and do exactly what we're doing in that sort of consultancy model. Um, and obviously some of those people we hope will be neurodivergent themselves, right? Um, I've always been self-employed because employment's not really been possible for me. Um, and there's a lot of other neurodivergent people who've had that same life experience. So I'm hoping we'll be able to help and support people in that way, but it's not exclusive. Um, just that would be you know, hopefully part of it as well. So we're trying to build something out that is hopefully applicable to a lot of people and is really relevant. I mean, we've um met people from 10 Downing Street, we've met with people from Oxford Uni, from the University of Melbourne, um legal firms, um, I came over some F1 teams recently, which is very exciting. Um and some rugby teams as well. So yeah, it's there's nobody it doesn't really touch. Um, you know, in the world of F1, Lewis Hamilton has ADHD. In the world of rugby, the rugby player of the year, Ellie Kildun has ADHD. Um, so yeah, it's it's it's one of those things, the more you go out, the more you look, the more you recognize that this is something that we shouldn't be shying away from. Because if we can build truly inclusionary organizations and societies, we build better organizations and societies because they'll be more successful for everybody, not just the neurodivergent.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

So true.

SPEAKER_01 32:46

And um, that's a good thing for all of us.

SPEAKER_02 32:49

Yeah, fully, fully agree with that. And I and I guess it's part of this um bigger grandswell of trying to promote more psychological safety as much as anything, isn't it? So that whoever you are, you can speak up, you can offer ideas and unique spins on things, or even when there's difficulties to be able to speak up about those. So definitely really important work that you that you're doing there. Um, what does the next 12 months hold? Obviously, you're it sounds like you're fairly early into this process. I'm assuming more of the same. Anything else that you're gonna be working on in the next 12 months?

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Um, well, we were really happy at the end of last year to um win a charity of the year award from Nume Chamber of Commerce, which was completely unexpected. I know everyone always says that, but it was genuinely unexpected, really shocking. Um, but we'd like to do more things like that because it brings awareness, it gets people to learn more about it. So we want to build that awareness up and up and up, right? Keep driving that. Um, we want to build out the higher education network that we've started uh with, and it's five or six universities currently, but we're we're we're reaching out to more. I've got a college I'm meeting with in two weeks, and then three universities over the next three weeks. Um build into more organizations, get more businesses involved, um, and really just keep growing it and building the network out, right? Um, we I'd like to get more CDPs, those commercial delivery partners, uh, because that's yeah, that's our way to really grow. There's only so much we can do ourselves, right? That's where we need partners out there who can get leverage. On um, and that's kind of kind of the growth plan, really. Um, it's uh it's it's thrilling. We we even have the college autism network reach out, which is most of the universities in the US, which I really didn't expect. Wow, in the political climate. Um, but yeah, so yeah, who knows? Who knows? Let's let's hope and dream that it just keeps on growing and um we can help more and more people and more and more organizations.

SPEAKER_02 34:53

Yeah, it certainly sounds from what you just said. There's a lot of opportunities in in the pipeline, and I imagine lots more to come. And you know, I wish you all the best with with that. It'd be great to have you back on the show at some point to hear how that's developing, and I'm sure there'll be a lot more exciting things happening on top of what you've already described. But for now, Rob, it's been fantastic having you on the show. Any final thoughts that you want to leave people with before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_01 35:15

Um, well, I mean, certainly, Richard, thank you. I've I always enjoy getting to these kinds of things. It's a lot of fun to get to talk about what we do. Um, final thoughts, I guess. Um, just try and recognize that the amazing variation of the human brain means we are all slightly different to each other. And that is actually our biggest benefit. It's the most amazing thing that we have as individuals and as a species. If we can harness that, not focus on our similarities, but actually enjoy those differences, then we're going to build much better societies, much better organization, culture. Um, and this really is key, I think. We are the first species to be conscious of who we are, and so we're very, very, very young in that journey. And we're not great at it, right? We're still we're all still learning. Um, but that means as we grow from trying to all be alike, we have way more potential than we actually think we do. There's so much more that this species is capable of, and so I'd say let's embrace it, let's be excited about it, see where it takes us.

SPEAKER_02 36:28

Robert Anis, thank you so much for your time today. It's been an absolute delight. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

My pleasure. Thank you, Richard.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

This is the business of thinking. Mastery doesn't end here. See you in the next episode.