Ludmila Praslova’s Canary Code: six steps for a neuroinclusive workplace

Transcript

Des Dearlove:

Hello, I’m Des Dearlove, co-founder of Thinkers50. Welcome to our weekly LinkedIn live session, celebrating some of the brightest new voices in the world of management thinking. In January, we announced the Thinkers50 Radar list for 2024. We believe that these are the up and coming management thinkers we should all be listening to and we’ll be hearing from one of them today. Sustainability and AI are key themes for 2024 just as you might expect, but so is making workplaces wholly inclusive and healthy for everyone. This year’s Radar is brought to you in partnership with Deloitte. Now, as you know, we like to make these sessions as interactive as possible, so please do let us know where you are joining us from and put your questions in the chat or Q&A box. Our guest today is Dr. Ludmila Praslova. Ludmila is a Professor of Graduate Industrial Organizational Psychology at Vanguard, University of Southern California, where she teaches how to design healthier work environments and helps organizations create cultures where people of all backgrounds understand each other and can thrive.

She’s also the author of the forthcoming book, The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work, which is published on the 23rd of April, 2024. In January this year she was named to the Thinkers50 Radar list of up and coming thinkers whose ideas can make a positive difference in the world. I should add that in 2020, Ludmila was formally diagnosed with autism. Ludmila, welcome. Congratulations on the forthcoming book and on the Thinkers50 Radar recognition.

Ludmila Praslova:

Thank you dear, it’s such a great honor to be recognized on this wonderful list and to be here and talking to you today.

Des Dearlove:

Well, it’s wonderful to have you here and it is wonderful to get an opportunity to talk about this important issue. So let’s start if we may with some definitions because the terminology may not be familiar to everyone. My understanding is that neurodiversity is a general term for all of us. I mean human beings are neurodiverse, but neurodivergent is how we describe people who are not neurotypical, is that right?

Ludmila Praslova:

Yes, and obviously this is a definition that evolved over time and we started talking about it specifically to make a distinction between the medical perspective on human differences such as autism, that was the first one, and then ADHD and dyslexia and other human differences like Tourette’s, and why do we necessarily have to think about them as pathology? Because an ability to deeply focus on something, it’s not a bad thing and human societies, human organizations, need that kind of person or ability to scan the environment and pick up on things before others. It’s also something that’s very valuable, but even though those characteristics are useful to society in general, neurodiversity like biodiversity for life is important, people become ostracized and pathologized because of those characteristics if they are manifested on maybe a higher level than the average, even though again, the society as a whole needs some people who are more intensely focused than others, or more likely to pick up on danger than others. Those things are useful to the group. So that’s why neurodivergent people are definitely an important part of society, but not always recognized as such.

Des Dearlove:

And research shows that people with autism for example, can be up to 140% more productive than the typical employee if they’re properly matched to jobs. So why is that?

Ludmila Praslova:

Yes, so JPMorgan’s study was definitely very interesting on their employees in their autism employment program. First they said 95% more productive, then it was 140%, and obviously one big part of it is job matching. So we don’t just put people to do anything, we connect people with jobs that align with their strength, and if you think about strengths, the average person is kind of like your B student, they’re kind of okay-ish at many things, but what happens with neurodivergent people, very often we have spiky profiles. So we’re A+ on some things and we can be C- or D- or something like that on other things. So when we’re matched with our spikes, with our strength and we’re properly treated and properly resourced, there is definitely productivity advantage because we’re doing something we’re very good at and that works for everyone, but because the highs and valleys are more pronounced within neurodivergent people, the difference is also more pronounced.

Des Dearlove:

Okay, well I mean let’s talk about the stereotypes as well because there’s a lot of stereotyping that goes on. I mean I think we’ve all, starting I guess with the film Rain Man, where some have a perception that sometimes people with autism are sort of maths geniuses, but that’s not necessarily the case.

Ludmila Praslova:

That’s not necessarily the case and there’s a full range of intelligence, just like within general population, there’s the full range of abilities within autistic people, and some could be highly talented in some areas and other people struggle more than average with some areas, and most people, just like most other people are somewhere around the average ability, but again, there could be some specific areas, not necessarily to the point of savant, that’s pretty rare, but there are people who might just have this particular interest and they have both some level of ability and also intense drive to learn something, and that could help people develop a high level of skill, which could be anything. So people also very often pigeonhole neurodivergent people and the autistic people can do math and stats, and ADHD is correlated with entrepreneurial personality, which again, all stereotypes have some great examples.

We can think of people that feed those stereotypes but they don’t fit everyone, or dyslexia gives you special creativity, but it doesn’t have to be any particular type of ability linked to any kind of neurodivergent difference because within autistic people, there are writers and there are painters and there are actors. So it’s definitely not just tech and then there’s the same within any other kind of difference. You don’t want to just say, “Okay, there’s this one career path for you that would be occupational pigeonholing.” That stereotyping we don’t want.

Des Dearlove:

I have seen research going back a few years, which shows that there’s a higher percentage of CEOs who are dyslexic than you would expect. I mean it’s just an interesting observation. It doesn’t mean that obviously that everybody who’s dyslexic is cut out to be a CEO, but then Richard Branson of course has spoken about this and said that it made him a better communicator in other ways and he’s surrounded himself with people who are smarter than himself or better at certain things, which kind of talks to your spiky profile point, but can I just explore the drive issue, you said that often people who are neurodivergent might be driven to learn something, that’s to do with sort of their intrinsic motivation I guess, is that right?

Ludmila Praslova:

Yes, sometimes this is not a scientific term, but a lot of people within autistic ADHD communities use the term interest-based brain. If there is something that interests you, there’s just no stopping. If I want to learn something, you have to shoot me to prevent me from learning it and it’s again, everyone has interest. The difference is intensity and neurodivergent people do tend to have very intense areas of interest and also what’s called hyper-focus, which is you become so consumed by the task, by the interest, you literally forget to go to the bathroom, forget to eat, forget to do anything because you’re just so focused on something and the time flies and then you accomplish more than other people. It’s again, something that can happen with any person, but much more likely to be a characteristic of neurodivergent people.

Des Dearlove:

Okay. Now, as I said at the top, you were late being diagnosed with autism. If you are happy to sort of share a little bit of that experience, I mean how did that come about and how common is that, for people to be diagnosed late?

Ludmila Praslova:

Very common and there are several demographic factors that drive those differences. In general, if you look at people who are not even particularly older generations or GenX, but even until younger millennials, the diagnosis was not very good and obviously if you talk about boomers, and basically everyone who is not from relatively younger generations, there’s a very high likelihood that nobody actually knew what those conditions were or what those differences were, and only very extreme and stereotypical cases would be picked on. So for example, this typical male presentation, a four-year-old boy who wants to know everything about trains, and that was a stereotype. So maybe some of the more significant differences were picked up on. So there’s age difference, and even in younger generations, people are still missed, but we have more diagnosis, not because there is more autism and more ADHD, but because in the last few years, identification became more elaborate and people just understand the differences better.

Another factor is gender. So the typical male presentation with autism, men with ADHD as well, kind of led to many women and girls being missed because they would not have the same kind of interest in trains, or balancing of the wall’s patterns, but girls could be daydreaming or girls could be interested in the literature, and even though it’s a very intense interest, it’s not trained so you won’t get picked up. So girls would usually be identified with much more significant manifestations than the boys.

So there’s gender difference, there’s class difference, and access to diagnosis is also very different based on your socioeconomic background. So I’m blue collar, I was diagnosed with bad-at-manual-labor type of problems. So that’s another bigger one, and obviously in the US and many Western countries, there is also racial differences in that Black and Brown children are more likely to be diagnosed with something else like positional defiant disorder instead of autism or ADHD, and with girls with gender, you would be more likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety, and many women would’ve been diagnosed with depression or anxiety for decades before they started thinking it doesn’t fit and the treatment doesn’t work, and so it’s definitely not something that I would be the only person who experienced that. And very often, you run into a problem where your coping ability and your ability to blend in is challenged, and then you just start asking questions. Okay, so is it me? Is it something else about the world? What is going on?

And sometimes people just start studying more and learning more and I started reading specifically about female pattern, and then that just makes sense. Why don’t we learn more about this? So very often people who are late identified are first self-identified, and there’s another thing, it’s very hard to get a diagnosis as an adult and it’s very expensive and sometimes inaccessible, and in a way, so I identified myself in 2019, and then in 2020. During the pandemic, it’s just mental health services got beefed up and there were things that you probably could do at that period of time that may not have been even accessible at other times. So I was one of those people who were able to actually get the official confirmation, but there are many people who don’t have that access or they’re asked to pay exorbitant sums of money for that kind of assessment. So it’s a very significant issue with adult identification and very often we just say that self-diagnosis is valid because we are experts on ourselves, and sometimes to get that piece of paper is cost prohibitive and the logistics prohibitive.

Des Dearlove:

If I may ask, did you always have a feeling that this was a possibility that you were possibly neurodivergent or did something change in your life or in your environment that kind of made you more aware of it?

Ludmila Praslova:

I always knew I was a little bit different and the typical things that would be told to many neurodivergent people: you are too sensitive; why are you so intense about something? Just let it go, or you’re too smart for your own good. Those are pretty typical things that we hear. Like many women, I was misdiagnosed with depression for a long time, except antidepressants don’t work on me, which is very typical, and then I kind of had a very interesting situation where it was work related to a very significant extent and one of my early times in my career, I was told point blank that the professional development is for men and you’ve gone as far as you were ever going to go. I was about 25 and then I was a director of intercultural relations global diversity, and so it was interesting. So I decided A, well whatever, I’m just going to do my own professional development, and then I just passed the test and got into a doctoral program because I was just like, “Okay, well I’m not going to beg you and ask you to change your mind.”

And I decided that I want to figure out how to make organizations inclusive of all characteristics because they were very globally inclusive of the global level cultures. We were a very international organization and we were wonderful and culture ed when it came to large national level culture differences, but gender was a no-go, and so I kind of got on this path of trying to figure out how to make organizations fully inclusive of all differences, and then it was about 20 years later, my organization decided to do a gender initiative and it was, specifically, a Women’s Advancement Initiative, and they did very typical thing that kind of makes people, makes women compete with each other for promotions because they’re like, “We’re going to promote women for the next year.” And the very typical thing and the elbows come out because everybody is thinking, “Okay, this is now or never situation.”

And that made me think, “You know what? I’m still excluded because I’m not the kind of woman this program that’s designed for because I’m much more sensitive.” I always try to think about how to do things with justice and not hurt anybody and that was just not something that this program called for. So I started thinking quite deeply about what is it? And for the longest time I was blaming my social economic origin because there are some very similar characteristics in that when you come from a working class background.

Des Dearlove:

You did grow up quite poor. I mean you were living in an apartment with four other people or four people, and it really wasn’t a particularly comfortable environment, but particularly for somebody who doesn’t necessarily want to hear everything the neighbors are doing.

Ludmila Praslova:

Yes, it was quite a nightmare, an autistic child living in a small apartment where you can hear everything, that was not fun. So it’s very hard to actually disentangle all the different aspects of what makes you who you are. So some of the things when you talk about class migrants and how you function within work environments can actually overlap with neurodivergent trauma, and so it took me some thinking until I figured out cultural things. I’ve been able to override culture before on multiple times. It’s not easy, but when something is cultural learning, it’s hard to override, but when you understand cultures and you understand how it influences you deeply on the emotional level, you can still kind of figure out where it comes from.

But neurodivergence is even deeper. It’s a whole person difference. It’s physical. Your brain is literally wired differently. You can only push yourself so far to be something you’re not before you start breaking and you start feeling what sometimes is described as autistic burnout. When you’re trying to do something you are really not designed to do. So it took quite a lot of thinking to disentangle because obviously we have so many intersectionalities and we need to figure out which is which, but then the more I started thinking about female autism presentation, it was just very clear that I’ve always hit those differences. It’s just I worked myself into an environment where for the most part that was a good fit and that’s why I didn’t have that many problems.

Des Dearlove:

I mean the thing is, as we try to develop ourselves, I mean I think we all hear the mantra of you have to step outside of your comfort zone, and it’s very easy to hand out. I mean if someone’s an introvert, it’s very easy to say, “Well, you need to step out of that. Your career’s going to be impacted if you can’t do public speaking. You need to brace yourself and get on with it.” But by the sounds of it and people being thrown in the deep end as well and have to learn to swim, but that may be exactly the wrong thing to be trying to ask neurodivergent people to do because literally they may not develop. They may, as you say, have ended up with neurodivergent trauma as a result of being pushed in the wrong direction. I think it’s important for people to understand some of these differences.

Ludmila Praslova:

Yes, and there are things you can learn, I have no problem with public speaking, I’ll just need a long nap afterwards.

Des Dearlove:

Me too.

Ludmila Praslova:

There are things we can learn to do, but they take way more energy and at some point, it’s just not worth it and then there are some things that are just super hard. So some people just say, “I just can’t lie.” Or I can, but I really can’t. I can’t bring myself to do it even if I know how. So there are some things that you can learn, but they’re draining and sometimes there are things that you just can’t bring yourself to do.

Des Dearlove:

Okay, so we’ve talked a little bit about what it’s like to be neurodivergent, I am beginning to understand it. Now, I’m going to come to the book in a second, but you wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review. The title was ‘Autism Doesn’t Hold People Back at Work, Discrimination Does’. It’s a great title. I think it was possibly the first time the topic had been tackled in the Harvard Business Review. What was the reaction and how did people respond?

Ludmila Praslova:

It was the first time it was written from an autistic perspective. There were articles on neurodivergence, but it was a first person account. I’m pretty sure that was the first one and even before my LinkedIn mailbox has been pretty impacted, that pretty exploded. A lot of people were just, “Oh my gosh.” I feel seen and I feel heard because there are many other people who do experience this and they’re told, “You are bad, you’re broken. Something is wrong with you, try harder.” And this perspective that no organizational systems are not designed for us and we are like a star-shaped pegs or square pegs, but I like star-shaped pegs who are driven into round holes, and instead of doing what we could be exceptionally well-designed for, we’re just forced to be average and it doesn’t work and it hurts, and it really prevents us from being the best of us of the best we can be, and it robs organizations of very unique talent.

So it’s not necessarily, we don’t want to hire autistic people or people with ADHD even. So there is that kind of explicit bias as well, but it’s the whole design. It’s the one size fits all approach to the workplace that really puts the star-shaped peg into a very painful situation.

Des Dearlove:

We’ve got some good questions coming in and I should say too, we’ve got people from Sweden, from France, from Germany, from Canada, from Brazil, Chicago, that’s not actually a country that’s obviously just a city, but from North America and from Switzerland people joining. So it is quite a global audience. So hopefully there’s good, but there are some good questions coming in, but I do want to talk about The Canary Code. Before we do that, I want to talk about the book. It’s not out yet, but it’s out very soon, 23rd of April I believe, is that right?

Ludmila Praslova:

Yes.

Des Dearlove:

And that’s with Berrett-Koehler as the publisher.

Ludmila Praslova:

Yeah, they’ve been wonderful.

Des Dearlove:

Fantastic. Well, high time I think as I said before we came on air that it’s a really important book I think. I mean it’s a great title. Tell us where The Canary Code came from, explain the genesis and why you wrote the book and why are you writing it now?

Ludmila Praslova:

The canary idea, if you hear the canary in the coal mine expression, which is someone who feels the danger before others or feels toxicity before others, there is a true story to it and before 1980s, every coal mine in the UK had to employ two canaries and they were taken down and they served as carbon monoxide detectors – now we just have electronic detectors – and they actually had little resuscitation devices, so they actually took really good care of the canaries and they would evacuate the miners and they would also put the canary into this little cage with oxygen.

Des Dearlove:

Oh, I’m pleased to hear. I didn’t realize they took such good care of the canaries, I’m pleased to hear that.

Ludmila Praslova:

Yeah, I believe it’s in Manchester, in the museum, there is one of those artifacts that you can still see. It’s a little glass cage with an oxygen tank on top of it.

Des Dearlove:

Brilliant.

Ludmila Praslova:

And so that’s a true story. There were actual canaries because their breathing is more intense, so they’re affected by pollutants before others and in autistic culture, in chronic illness community, it was kind of a very popular metaphor, and Autistic Doctors International uses that as their symbol because they’re also more sensitive to all the extra stressors that happen in the medical profession. So the imagery has been there. It’s also something that I’m very personally attached to because my father actually used to fix elevators in mines. So he was a mechanic, but it was kind of like a world-level mechanic that he would go and fix elevators nobody else could fix in deep mines. So then I had all kinds of minerals and things from the mine that I played with because that’s what I had. So this kind of idea about danger and saving people and making workplaces safer just kind of worked in my mind.

Des Dearlove:

My father worked down the coal mines as well, so I have a baby lamp. Yeah, I always have it there to remind me. Yeah, so no, it’s interesting how these things feed into the creative process as well when you’re thinking of titles. So why now with the book?

Ludmila Praslova:

Well, again, figuring out neurodivergence in the workplace was the last piece. I told you, I started with global diversity and gender, and then I started looking at all the other intersectionalities, and in really trying to figure out how to make workplaces most inclusive for everybody going to the level of neurodivergence, which is again cognitive, emotional and physical difference, really gave me an idea that when we address inclusion on all those levels, not just on high levels and visible differences, but when we address invisible differences in the workplace, such as again, the need for different type of communication or schedule flexibility, that is when we are going to fully create organizations that are intersectionally inclusive.

So that was the last piece I needed for this full intersectionally inclusive organizations, and that actually almost died in 2019 because my insurance company wouldn’t give me an antibiotic for pneumonia. So I kind of had a now or never moment. Insurance companies, they have their thing. So I kind of had a now or never moment and it was all kind of happening within a few months, several things came together and so I started doing research right before the pandemic and thinking about it, and of course things happened, but that’s when in all seriousness, I started doing the research for this book.

Des Dearlove:

And then in the book you have the canary principles. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the canary principles?

Ludmila Praslova:

Yes, and that is how you make sure that we don’t break square pegs or other different pegs and just allow them to do what they do best. So participation, bringing people into decision making for how they work best, both productivity for everyone and especially for people who are a little bit different shape, so we bring people into trying to figure out how to create the best environment and the best support for you to do your work. That’s an important factor again, for everybody, just especially for people who are not average and who don’t do well with one size fits all. Outcome focus, that is huge because very often people say, “Well, we can’t give you flexibility. We can’t give you anything because we need to monitor you and we need to know what you’re doing.” Well, if you think about outcomes and you stop thinking about whether someone is sitting in their chair from 9:00 to 5:00 or is visible, but if you just look at outcomes, it really takes care of many stressors that right now are an issue between managers and employees.

Because literally, if someone has trouble working in the morning and they’re a night owl, but they’re doing their work, who cares when they’re doing it? And too many people have been stuck in artificial constraints because we’re looking at all those proxies for performance such as whether managers can see your face, but if we focus on outcomes, managers theoretically are happy and employers are happy because we know who does what, and we can do it asynchronously in many ways with technology, knowing who did what. It doesn’t matter what time necessarily depending on what you do, obviously, but a lot of work could be much more flexible. So when we look at outcomes, then we can say depending on your personal work style, you can work in 25 minute segments or four hour segments. You can take your breaks whenever you need and you can have a life as long as you bring in your outcomes.

So focus on outcomes allows for flexibility, and then justice – specifically removing various biases that have been embedded in our organizations for centuries because a lot of our organizations are still following Roman military principles of organization, and there’s all kinds of things that are there just because people have done it in prior generations and trying to make sure that we keep things that make sense and get rid of things that don’t make sense and discriminate is something that we can do to really make organizations better for everyone and treat people right, treat people with dignity. One of those things that supports justice is transparency because it’s much easier to get away with injustice if you don’t have transparency. So slimy things grow when you don’t have the light.

But transparency helps everyone, but specifically for autistic people, it can also be an essential component because when we have to pick up on all those hidden handshakes and hidden processes, we end up being a disadvantage, and valid measurement because we know that selection is very often not aligned with what the person actually does in their job. Promotion criteria are not necessarily aligned with what the person does. So making sure we measure what we actually intend to measure and not some kind of proxy that ends up basically being personal bias is another component that some of the exemplary organizations that I’ve studied have implemented with much success, and research shows that all of those things work to improve productivity and wellbeing of all employees is just canaries might be able to work, period, and other people will do better if those principles are implemented.

Des Dearlove:

Okay, I want to take a couple of questions. I think it was really important to talk about the canary principles. I know we’ve got some overlap with some of the questions and you’re going to possibly be going back over and pulling out one of the principles or maybe more of the principles, but I do want to get these questions in. Okay, here’s one. In what ways can we harness the unique perspectives and strengths of neurodivergent individuals to drive creative solutions and advancements in the workplace whilst ensuring an inclusive environment that values and respects their contributions?

Ludmila Praslova:

So there are several parts in this and if you don’t have an inclusive environment, if people cannot make a contribution because they’re always getting shut down for their style, for their differences, they’re obviously not going to be comfortable bringing up their perspectives and they need to be heard. So other people need to learn how to communicate across those differences. So they would actually hear and not discount what neurodivergent individuals are contributing. So if we create organizations where we allow people to communicate in different ways, and for some it’s writing, for some it’s speaking, some it’s video, and we don’t privilege one form of communication and one form of outward expression.

For example, we allow people to not just brainstorm in person, but brain write. That is something that became popular during the pandemic and also helps some neurodivergent people express their creativity – and just allowing multiple ways of participating in organizational life. It both supports the sense of belonging and it supports the ability for all this talent to really contribute to the best of their ability, and then of course, you also need to bring those people into your organization to begin with because very often the barriers to selection can be such that many people that you actually want are not a part of your organization because your selections are right.

Des Dearlove:

And that starts with job interviews, and that starts with, we talk about proxies. What is the job interview except it rewards people who can talk well about their abilities and that they can do the job, they talk a good job.

Ludmila Praslova:

Yes, skill demonstration instead of talking could help many neurodivergent people to be selected, and other people who experience bias.

Des Dearlove:

I’ve got another question. Again, they’re related and there’s some overlap here, but how can organizations adapt their workplace, cultures, and policies to better support and celebrate neurodiversity and neurodivergence fostering on the environment of inclusion and innovation? I think the canary principles are great, but what could somebody who wanted to make their organization more inclusive go away and do tomorrow? I mean it might be a small thing, it might just be sending a signal that there’s an intent there, what would that look like?

Ludmila Praslova:

You can’t just look at any area of your organizational life and make sure that maybe it’s not as one size fits all as traditionally has been, and you could start with just asking your employees. Every organization is different. So try to do an assessment of what is preventing some of the participation in organizational life. For some it could be hurdles and communication because it’s just in-person meetings and nothing else. For other organizations, it’s schedules. So whatever your employees will identify as a part of your culture or your processes that could serve to exclude neurodivergent people, you could address this particular thing. So ask them about the participation principle and then do something about it, just don’t ignore the feedback.

Des Dearlove:

I mean the interesting thing too is again, where this is a little bit more complex is that obviously we’re talking about transparency, and I loved your phrase, slimy things grow if you don’t have the light. I think that’s fantastic and so true, but you might think that by going to an open plan office, you are creating a more transparent culture, but that actually might not be good for neurodivergent people because they’re suddenly in an environment where there’s a lot of sound and a lot of motion and movement going on around that which may not suit them. So some of these things need to be thought through.

Ludmila Praslova:

Absolutely and actually, many neurodivergent people ended up being diagnosed after being moved into open offices and finding themselves unable to function. I actually have some stories like that in my book and open offices also don’t live up to expectations of collaboration and large scale studies show that people are actually less likely to collaborate and they just clamp down because nobody likes the constant overwhelm. So again, the canary is going to suffer first, but the majority of people also don’t function their best in open offices, and those collaboration benefits actually don’t materialize.

Des Dearlove:

I’ve got another question here and I mean this is one of the great questions in so many ways, but Anna asks why so much of the literature on autism focused on men and boys, autistic women and girls are often missed. I mean you made the point earlier, but is that just the old kind of those in power control not only the environments that we all have to work in, but also who gets studied and who gets noticed?

Ludmila Praslova:

Absolutely. Traditionally, historically, that’s who was studied, that’s who was noticed that who was driving the studies to refine diagnostic criteria. It is changing. You see a lot more women and books specifically focused on women and the conversation involving different kinds of people and different intersectionalities of neurodivergence. Again, it’s not just gender. There are very strong, let’s say Black neurodivergent voices. So another variable that was kind of forgotten because it wasn’t just a boy, it was a fluent White boy. So it’s changing, but it’s changing slowly just like culture and society doesn’t change overnight, but we are seeing more and more conversation about female presentation. It hasn’t quite made it to the diagnostic criteria, but there are both academic articles and really delightful books that people have written from their first perspective.

Des Dearlove:

I’m just looking down at some of the comments and things. It is great. There’s obviously a lot of interest here. Caroline says, “This is excellent. I hope I can share this with my clients.” We are going to run out of time. We have run out of time, but you know what? I think people, if there’s enough interest in this, I think it would be great to have Ludmila come back and talk about some of these issues. Again, we barely scratched the surface. It feels like we’ve got a lot to talk about. Final question, I’m going to push my luck and just overrun a little bit, but we’ve got a question, Rashmi asked from India, he says, “About 18 million people in India are diagnosed with autism. Please share your thoughts on autism in Asia.” It’s a big question I know, but I’ll put that one to you.

Ludmila Praslova:

It is a big question and I know that Asia is obviously very big, and India has its own dynamics. The cultural dynamics with how autism is diagnosed, Korea and Japan, different parts of Asia are very different, but one thing that I can say about India is that India actually gives us one of the best examples of a company that created accessible work environments, including for people who are autistic, but also they’re very well known for their work with people with Downs Syndrome. So look at the Lemon Tree hotel chain in India. One of the most incredible examples of creating inclusive environments and being creative. So obviously India is a huge country, many people and structural differences that need to be solved, but also amazing examples like Lemon Tree.

Des Dearlove:

Fantastic, what a great place. It’s good to end on a high. So we have run out of time. Thank you Ludmila, that was fantastic. The Canary Code is out on the 23rd of April. It’s published by Berrett-Koehler and available from wherever you buy your books. Please do join us next week at the slightly earlier time of noon, London time when our guests will be Heather Hansen, author of Unmuted, How to Show Up, Speak Up, and Inspire Action, which is published by Bloomsbury. Thank you again for the great questions and thank you to Ludmila and please join us next time.

Ludmila Praslova:

Thank you everyone and I love Heather, so don’t miss her.