Not long ago, I was in a conversation about blame-free post-mortems. I mentioned that this is exactly what agile retros are for, same practice, different name, and got a quick correction:

“That’s for development.”

That’s the whole myth in one sentence. Somewhere along the way, “agile” got quietly redefined as something that belongs to engineering, instead of what it actually is: a quality, adaptive, lightweight, responsive, that a whole pile of toolkits (Agile, Lean, Kanban, systems thinking, design thinking, innovation practices, whatever your team ends up calling its own version) are all reaching for from different directions.

I’ve been aware of agile for ops for years, and I’ve used agile ceremonies, stand-ups, retros, card walls, short-term repeated planning cycles, to work through real issues across the orgs I’ve run, in teams that had never touched a line of code. The ceremony doesn’t care what industry you’re in. Evan Leybourn, co-founder of the Business Agility Institute, put it plainly:

“Despite emerging in the technology domain, there is nothing exclusively tech about Agile.”

That gap, between what “agile” is supposed to mean and what one offhand comment assumed it meant, is the whole subject of this post: what agility actually is, what it actually requires, and why it doesn’t stop mattering just because an organization gets big.

What Lowercase agile Actually Means

Strip away the frameworks and “agile” is just a word, and a useful one: adaptive, lightweight, facile. Able to change direction without a committee. Able to respond to new information instead of defending the plan you made before you had it. It’s a property a person, a team, or a whole company can have, the same way you’d say someone is agile on their feet. It has nothing to do with sprints.

What Capital-A Agile Actually Is

Agile, the proper noun, is a specific historical thing, for anyone who’s heard the term at work and never gotten a straight definition. In February 2001, a small group of software people met at a ski lodge in Snowbird, Utah, looking for common ground across several rival methodologies. What came out of that weekend was the Agile Manifesto, a values statement, not a methodology:

“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Working software over comprehensive documentation. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Responding to change over following a plan.”

Scrum, SAFe, and a small industry of certifications and consultants grew out of those four lines. Worth saying plainly: the values themselves aren’t perfect either, seventeen people from one industry wrote a statement, not scripture.

That’s the trap. The values were the point. The frameworks were just one way, among many, of trying to live them out.

Agile Doesn’t Own Adaptability

Agile isn’t even the oldest toolkit making this argument. Kanban and Lean both trace back to Toyota’s factory floor in the 1940s, decades before Snowbird, built on the same instinct: build only what’s needed, let the people doing the work fix what’s broken. Systems thinking and design thinking got there from completely different directions too, out of research labs and design studios, long before anyone was running a sprint.

Agile, Lean, Kanban, systems thinking, design thinking, and the broader pile of innovation practices are separate answers to the same question, not one family tree with Agile at the root. Which means the honest takeaway was never “go be more Agile.” Use whatever toolkit, from that pile or from somewhere else entirely, actually produces agility wherever you’re standing.

Where It Goes Wrong

Somewhere between 2001 and now, a lot of organizations bought the frameworks and skipped the values. This has a name: cargo cult Agile, running every ceremony without any of the adaptability the ritual was supposed to produce. You end up with a company that has stand-ups, retros, and story points, and still can’t change a decision once it’s been made, still treats “the plan” as more sacred than the customer standing in front of it.

Consultant Allan Kelly frames the fix as a shift in what you’re actually optimizing for:

“It might seem like a small semantic change to go from ‘agile’ to ‘agility’ but it is a change from ‘doing agile’ to ‘having agility.’ It is a move from ‘means’ to the ‘end.'”

The frameworks are a means. Agility is the end. You can hit the first without ever getting the second, and a lot of organizations have.

The Ceremony Was Never Really About the Code

Back to that comment: “that’s for development.” Take the blame-free post-mortem it was aimed at: a team gathers after something went wrong, separates the event from the people involved, asks what the process or system allowed to happen, and changes something so it’s less likely next time. That’s a retro, run rigorously, no finger-pointing. The name changes depending on who’s in the room. The mechanism doesn’t.

In my own ops experience, it’s never been just one ceremony:

• Stand-ups catch a breakdown between departments while it’s still small.
• Retros handle the moments that need the fuller blame-free treatment.
• Card walls give a shared view of what’s actually in flight, instead of what’s in someone’s inbox.
• Short-term, repeated planning cycles replace a single annual plan nobody revisits until it’s already wrong.

Different tools, same underlying case: any team that regularly surfaces problems out loud, makes work visible, and re-plans on a cadence short enough to respond to reality is doing agile for ops, whether or not anyone’s ever heard the word sprint.

This Isn’t a Software Problem, or a Small-Company Problem

None of this was ever supposed to stay inside engineering, and it doesn’t stop mattering once a company gets big. Stephen Denning’s The Age of Agile makes the same case for companies across sectors: small self-managing teams, coordination instead of a chain of approvals, leadership that facilitates instead of commands. I’ve made that leadership case myself, in my post on leadership agility: a leader who never builds adaptive capacity into their team just creates a brittle organization with one flexible person at the top.

McKinsey’s research backs it up at real scale: highly successful agile transformations saw roughly 30 percent gains in efficiency, engagement, and performance, and were three times more likely to land in the top quartile of their peers. Their playbook for HR, finance, and legal makes the same case one level down. None of it’s uniform, though: routine, low-uncertainty work benefits from being standardized, not made agile. Agility is a capability you build where the environment is genuinely uncertain, at whatever scale that shows up.

I’ve been on both sides of this trap myself, building processes, calling them agile, and watching them calcify into the exact heavyweight ritual the manifesto was written against.

What Agility Actually Requires

Strip away the frameworks entirely and what’s left is a practical test, four things I look for regardless of industry, team size, or whether anyone in the building has ever heard of a sprint:

1. People and results driven. The measure of whether something is working is the outcome and the humans producing it, not whether the process was followed correctly. Process is a means to a result, not a result in itself.
2. Purpose-aware. Every process, every ceremony, every sign-off should be able to answer a simple question: why does this exist. Knowing your why has to come before you build anything, because it’s the only thing that tells you when to stop building.
3. Minimum necessary process. More process is not more rigor. It’s drag. The right amount is the smallest amount that actually gets the result and protects what genuinely needs protecting. Minimum necessary isn’t a fixed number, either: a five-person team and a five-thousand-person company don’t need the same minimum, because real complexity multiplies real needs.
4. Avoiding theater. A step that exists for compliance, for a genuine sanity check, for making sure the right feedback actually gets gathered before a decision, is meaningful, and meaningful process is never waste, no matter how much of it there is. A step that exists so people feel like something official happened, with no compliance need behind it, no real check, no feedback it’s actually incorporating, is theater. If it’s not meaningful, it’s wasteful, no matter how small. The test was never big versus small. It’s real versus theater.

Points three and four together are the whole answer to “why does agility matter even at scale.” Scale doesn’t retire the test. It changes what passes it. At size, more people, more interdependency, more real money on the line, real compliance needs, real sanity checks, and real feedback loops genuinely multiply, which is point three. But every one of those steps still has to earn its place, which is point four, and that discipline doesn’t get to retire just because the org got big. What doesn’t change is the habit of asking, of every single step: is this real, and is it serving people, purpose, and results, or is it just weight the organization has gotten used to carrying. An organization that keeps asking that as it grows stays adaptive at scale. One that stops asking it just accumulates ceremony, and calls the accumulation maturity.

On Good and Bad Feedback

A supervisor once told me:

“You’re not leaderly.”

That was it. No example, no behavior to change, no coaching on what “leaderly” would even look like coming from me. Another time, a different supervisor told me:

“I don’t want you to do this because I tell you to, I want you to want to.”

Again: no room to bring my own experience, logic, or opinion into it. Just a demand that I arrive at her conclusion and feel good about it.

Both of those knocked me sideways at the time. It took years, and an awesome therapist (seriously, do not underestimate what a good one can do for you), before I understood what had actually happened in each of those rooms. The first supervisor had a narrow, specific picture of what a leader looks like, and I didn’t match it, so the problem became my personality rather than anything I’d actually done. The second wanted compliance dressed up as buy-in: not “here’s why I think this is the right call,” but “agree with me, and mean it.” Neither one was giving me feedback. They were giving me a mandate for who I should be, and calling it coaching.

Why This Is Harder If You’re Neurodivergent

If you’re neurodivergent, there’s a good chance some of this lands differently for you too, and it’s worth knowing the name for it: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or RSD. Psychiatrist Dr. William Dodson, who popularized the term, describes it as close to the only emotional pattern found specifically in ADHD: extreme emotional pain triggered by perceived rejection, criticism, or disappointing someone, real or imagined. In his words:

“The pain is so primitive and overwhelming that people struggle to find any words to describe it.”

Cleveland Clinic puts it more clinically: the ADHD brain may not regulate pain-like activity the way other brains do, which is part of why rejection can hit disproportionately hard, and adults living with it are more likely to experience anxiety, depression, and loneliness on top of it.

Worth saying plainly: RSD isn’t an officially recognized diagnosis, and the research base is still thin (see this Psychology Today piece on what the actual evidence does and doesn’t support). I’m also not going to pretend it’s a full explanation for everything on this topic. I think it’s a mistake to reach for a diagnosis every time something is simply hard. But whatever you call it, the pattern is real for a lot of ADHD brains: perceived criticism, even mild, even well-intentioned, can register less like “here’s some input” and more like a five-alarm fire. Your body reacts before your brain has a chance to sort the signal from the noise. If you want more on this, ADDitude and CHADD both have solid, plain-language explainers, and CHADD in particular is a longstanding nonprofit clearinghouse for ADHD research and resources.

But it is a real factor in why this specific skill, telling apart meaningful feedback from toxic or unvaluable commentary, is genuinely harder for a lot of us. When everything arrives feeling like an emergency, “is this true and useful” and “is this just going to hurt” get tangled together fast.

Turns Out, It’s Not Just Me

It may (or may not) surprise you to learn that women get a much heavier dose of personality-based and manner-based feedback than men do, and there’s real data behind that, not just my own two data points.

Linguist Kieran Snyder analyzed 248 tech performance reviews and found that critical feedback showed up in 87.9% of women’s reviews, compared to 58.9% of men’s. The bigger gap was in what kind of criticism showed up: personality-based critique appeared in 71 of the 94 critical reviews women received, and in just 2 of the 83 critical reviews men received. The word “abrasive” alone was used seventeen times to describe thirteen different women. It never appeared once in a man’s review.

That was 2014. It hasn’t gotten better. A 2024 Textio study, also led by Snyder, found that 88% of high-performing women received personality-based feedback in their reviews, compared to 12% of high-performing men. High-performing women were also 76% more likely to receive negative feedback overall than high-achieving men, who received it only 2% of the time. Ten years and a different data set later, Snyder’s read on why hadn’t moved either:

“Men are mostly receiving feedback about their work… when you look at women, the positive observations are not generally about the work. They’re about the woman’s demeanor, personality, or disposition.”

Harvard Business Review found something similar looking specifically at developmental feedback: women were 1.4 times more likely than men to get critical feedback that was subjective rather than tied to a concrete outcome, the kind of thing that reads less like “here’s what happened” and more like “here’s how I feel about you” (Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio, HBR). Separately, researchers Elena Doldor, Madeleine Wyatt, and Jo Silvester ran a computerized analysis of over a thousand pieces of workplace feedback and found feedback to women skewed toward how she communicates rather than what she’s building, treated her confidence (or lack of it) as a fixed trait rather than something coachable, and was, in the researchers’ own words, “less actionable and less effective” than what men in comparable roles received.

I don’t share this to excuse every time I’ve bristled at a critique. Plenty of the feedback I’ve gotten over the years was fair and I needed to hear it, personality-shaped or not. But it does mean I no longer treat “this stings and I can’t point to what I’d do differently” as proof that I did something wrong. Sometimes it’s proof that someone ran out of an actual thing to say and reached for a version of me instead. “Not leaderly” wasn’t a fluke. It was a pattern with a name and a body of research behind it, and I was just one more data point in it.

The Problem With Just Filtering It All Out

Here’s the trick, though: the answer can’t be to stop listening. If we want to be learning humans, we have to ingest feedback in order to improve. Some of it is going to be uncomfortable and still be correct. Some of it is going to point at a real gap, a real blind spot, a real thing we could do better, and our job is to hear that even when it stings. Shutting the whole channel down because some of what comes through it is garbage means shutting out the parts that would actually help you grow.

So the actual skill isn’t “let feedback in” or “keep feedback out.” It’s sorting.

What Good Feedback Actually Looks Like

Looking back at both of those supervisors, I can now name what was missing, because I’ve since had feedback that did have it:

• It’s about a behavior or a decision, not a personality.
• It’s specific enough that I could picture doing something differently.
• It leaves room for my own experience, logic, and judgment to be part of the conversation, not obstacles to overcome.
• It would still make sense to me even after the sting wore off.

What Bad Feedback Actually Looks Like

And the version that isn’t feedback at all, no matter how it’s dressed up:

• It targets who you are rather than what you did.
• It can’t be turned into an action, because there isn’t one. “Not leaderly” isn’t a to-do list.
• It asks you to override your own reasoning and just fall in line.
• It’s really about the other person’s comfort, preference, or narrow definition of “right,” not about your growth.

Who It Has to Come From

Content isn’t the only filter, though. Source matters just as much, maybe more. So before I even get to whether a piece of feedback is specific or actionable, I check it against four things:

1. It comes from someone I respect. Not someone I’m supposed to respect because of a title, tenure, or position. I’ve written before about the difference between the respect society tells you to hand out by default and the respect people actually earn through integrity, authenticity, and skill or knowledge applied and shared. Feedback inherits whatever kind of respect its source has. A title doesn’t buy credibility with me. Character does.
2. It comes from someone with a valid point of reference or experience. That doesn’t mean they have to agree with me, or have lived my exact experience. It means they have real standing to speak on the topic, even when what they say is hard to hear. Someone reasoning from inside relevant experience is worth listening to even when I don’t like the conclusion. Someone with no real basis for the opinion isn’t.
3. It comes from someone who supports me, or is at least neutral. I strictly limit how much weight I give feedback from people who have shown, over time, that they’re trying to damage me personally or professionally. Those people exist. It’s fine to see them clearly for what they are. Sometimes you can’t remove them from your environment, but you’re not obligated to treat what they say as truth once experience has already taught you otherwise.
4. It comes from someone who demonstrates wisdom, insight, or qualities I actually want to develop. If I wouldn’t want to become more like this person in some specific, nameable way, their opinion of who I should be carries a lot less weight.

Run a piece of feedback through those four before you even ask whether it’s specific or actionable, and most of it sorts itself fast.

And once something sorts into bad, disingenuous, or damaging and unconstructive: reject it. Don’t keep turning it over hoping to find value that isn’t there. Give it one brief, honest scan for a glaring truth buried inside. If you find one, keep it. If you don’t, jettison the rest. No lingering debate required.

Good Feedback Still Isn’t a Command

Here’s the flip side, though: passing the filter above doesn’t mean you owe someone the exact behavior they were picturing when they gave you the feedback. Good feedback has to be examined and considered. That part isn’t optional. But worthy of consideration and worthy of producing the specific result or behavior the other person wants, or demonstrated themselves, are two different things. You still have to do the work of figuring out where it fits for you: in your own style, at your own scale, in your own words. Taking feedback seriously means engaging honestly with what’s true in it. It doesn’t mean becoming a copy of whoever gave it to you. That’s the same trap as “not leaderly,” just wearing a nicer outfit.

This stuff is hard. It isn’t easy. Sorting through what to keep, what to reject, and what to keep but reshape into your own version, all at once, while your own brain may be actively lying to you about how much danger you’re in, is real work. It doesn’t get easier because you’ve named the categories. It just gets slightly more possible.

What Sorting Actually Looks Like

Here’s the most recent test of all this. In my last role, I got feedback that I had interacted in a way that “may not have been appropriate.” That was close to the whole sentence. I had to press, more than once, to get an actual example, a specific situation, and something resembling coaching.

Once I had it, I did the actual work: I grounded myself in my own values and reviewed my own behavior as honestly as I could. I came out the other side with three separate conclusions, and they weren’t all the same kind of conclusion.

1. There was one instance where I genuinely could have communicated better. I was running on brain chemical depletion (ADHD, overwork, and working while sick will do that to you), and something that should have gotten a beat of pause and an explanation came out sounding flip instead. That one was fair. That one was mine to own.
2. Some people don’t like direct communication. I can be aware of that and adjust my language depending on who I’m talking to. But I’m not going to stop communicating directly, and I don’t really want to. It’s one of the things that makes me effective.
3. Some people don’t like being held accountable, or being told plainly that something they did wasn’t correct. I can temper how I deliver that. I’m not going to stop saying it clearly, because if I do, I can’t fulfill my role.

Only the first one was actually feedback. The other two were preference, dressed up as feedback.

Praised for It, Then Punished for It

I’ve hit a version of this at several points in my career: I get praised for accomplishing things other people can’t, and then criticized for the exact qualities that made it possible. This isn’t just an Amy thing. It’s well documented, especially for high-performing women, and especially for those of us who are also neurodivergent.

Researchers Frank Flynn and Cameron Anderson ran a study, later popularized as the “Heidi and Howard” case, in which they gave people an identical account of a successful entrepreneur and changed only the name. Howard was rated likeable, someone people wanted to work for. Heidi, same résumé, same accomplishments, was rated selfish and someone people were less interested in hiring or working with. The competence didn’t move. The likeability did, purely on gender.

Leadership consultant Jennifer McCollum tells a version of this from her own career: after she won major results for a client through assertive, competitive tactics, a colleague described her as:

“A cupcake with a razor blade inside.”

Effective and unsettling, in the same breath, for the same behavior a man would likely have just been called effective for.

And for those of us who are also neurodivergent, there’s an additional layer. Researcher Dr. Damian Milton named this the double empathy problem: when autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people communicate directly and literally, the friction isn’t a deficit on our end, it’s a mismatch of styles that neurotypical listeners often read as rude or inappropriate simply because it’s unfamiliar to them. Direct isn’t the same as wrong. It just isn’t always what the room expects.

Put together: the qualities that get you praised for being effective are frequently the same ones that get you quietly punished for being difficult. That’s not a contradiction you’re supposed to resolve by shrinking. Eventually I concluded that my personal style and that particular environment weren’t well aligned, and I chose to go find a role where they were.

I’ve Gotten This Wrong Too, in Both Directions

In fairness, I haven’t always sorted this correctly, and I’ve failed in both directions, not just one.

There have been plenty of times I worked hard to extract value from feedback I should have just thrown away: sat with it, tried to find the fair kernel in it, gave it more of my energy and self-doubt than it had earned. And especially earlier in my career, there were times that went the other way: I was too attached to my own ego, or my own way of doing something, to actually let good feedback in and change based on it. Neither failure mode is the “safe” one. Over-ingesting bad feedback and refusing to ingest good feedback both cost me, just differently.

If You Can’t See the Difference Yet

Everything above assumes you can tell good from bad once you actually look for it. Some days, especially early on, you won’t be able to. If that’s you: talk to a coach, a therapist, or a mentor who can help you see what good feedback actually looks like, from the outside, when you can’t quite trust your own read on it yet. I mentioned it earlier and I meant it: an awesome therapist changed how I do this. There’s no shame in needing a second set of eyes for something this hard to sort out alone.

Crux

Not everything that hurts is wrong, and not everything that hurts is true. The work is telling those apart, and the test isn’t how much it stung going down. It’s whether, once the sting fades, there’s something specific and actionable left standing, something you could actually do something with. If there isn’t, that’s not feedback you failed to accept. That’s someone else’s discomfort, handed to you and mislabeled. And sometimes, once you’ve actually sorted it, the honest conclusion isn’t a personal action item at all. It’s that you and the room you’re in don’t fit, and it’s time to go find one that does.

“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.” – Anthony Robbins

Communication is hard. It’s hard enough when its with a person or small group, harder still when some members of the conversation aren’t invested or see things a different way. The larger the group, the larger the groups of disengaged individuals and the greater the number of viewpoints.

All of that being said, time and time again I encounter the same gaps to making communications the best they can be.

As a note, most of my experience is in technology – everything from outages to initiatives. But in my observation, this phenomena is not limited to my area, and may be more thoroughly considered in IT than in many other disciplines.

“Communication works for those who work at it.” – John Powell

Good communication takes time. It takes effort. It takes investment.

Sure, when you someone well you can shortcut some things, but the important things still require clarity and care.

When you are communicating broadly, you have even more work to do – first you need the recipient of your communication to know why they should care, and once that is sufficiently established to understand and engage with the message.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw

It is natural when a person is communicating to start with their own perspective or what they find important. When the goal is to reach a large population, you need to flip this on its head — what is important to them? Why should they care? What is the benefit? How do they perceive the topic? What is the impact?

If you communicate from your perspective, chances are that you have spoken (or written, etc.), but you may not have communicated. If you did reach members of your audience, their takeaway might not be what you expected it to be.

“There is no communication that is so simple that it cannot be misunderstood.”― Luigina Sgarro

I cannot count the times a communication has come from me, my department, or another entity that had been looked at from multiple perspective, seemed clear, seemed well written….and then it went out and the deluge of calls and questions started. All of the reviewers have typically already been familiar with the message contents and did not see the lack of specificity, confusing language or jargon, or overlap between this and a similarly named thing in another part of the larger organization. You have assuredly seen this in your home life as well as your professional – your doctors and insurance, your utilities, your cell phone carrier, places you buy from, your municipality, and a hundred other entities communicate with you. Periodically it will absolutely go wrong. And you develop habits of mentally filtering out information from so-called “unreliable” sources that give you unhelpful or unclear information.

How can you be clearer and more directed for your audience? Almost immediately you encounter the next challenge: your audience is not a monolith. In fact, it isn’t really one audience at all.

 “Use different messaging for different groups to ensure your communications are relevant.” – Andrea Plos

In one recent project, we were preparing for the planned departure of one chief executive, and the arrival of another. We knew that both prior to the change and afterward there would be large personnel changes throughout the organization. Initially the team had a plan that had 2-3 communication messages and channels. I felt there were gaps so I asked that we do an exercise defining audiences. We used a little bit of journey mapping and some other techniques to walk through the skeleton timeline and tease out all the places where different people would need different messaging. We ended up with over 20 distinct audiences and a complex communication calendar ensuring that each group got the most relevant communication at the right time.

Most initiatives don’t need this level of differentiation. The initiative I’m referencing was multiple months and hundreds of person-hours of work produced.

Right now I am looking at a project where we are dealing with the public website, intranet, and individual intra-department recordkeeping and communications. After a look at the information architecture and current publications I found myself with my age-old question: who are these sites for? And why does the content not match the assumed answers?

“The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say — because they were too obvious.” ― André Gide

I spent a little bit of time with my markerboard and defined 3 audiences and the types of information each requires, and noted examples for each – what I came up with seemed logical and obvious to me. And. In looking at the existing sites, the categories of information are not delineated in a way that seems to me to suit the audiences of the published sites.

According to my assessment, we need 3 or possibly 4 distinct datastores/sites depending on the capability of the tools, rather than the existing 2, and we need to fill some gaps where information is not published. Then we need to make this information discoverable, particularly for more occasional visitors.

This exercise reminded me of the work I had done with previous teams and why I had been so insistent on audience definitions. This circles back to the earlier point of differentiating communications.

This allows you to get the right information with the right context to the right individuals at the right time. All four of these are needed for the effective communication that leads to effective change management and to successful adoptions, and also allows clear crisis communications. Add with empathy and you have a recipe for success.

It’s also work. This kind of effort can seem huge. But I have leaned to ask “what is the cost of skimping on communications?” The answer is never good. It’s risk.

Now, here in the real world we are don’t have endless resources and we are not in a risk vacuum; some risk has to be accepted. You may choose to combine some audiences and call them “close enough” and we are all going to do our best. But trust me when I say one message will not fit all, and a wall of text full of if/thens is is not the differentiation you need. Invest time and effort up front, share templates when messages overlap, and keep the work well organized to allow for the contextual changes and nuances that tell your audience groups you mean them. You will minimize drama, get more engagement, and generally have smoother changes.

I will assuredly come back to the topic of communication and also audiences as they are part of my professional lifeblood. For now though, this is what I have.

Part of me was hesitant to write this as there are as many versions of an Agile leadership model (both capital and small a) as there are ways to implement Agile development or operations. These also vary in quality and meaningfulness, and some seem to be a new cover to old theory.

However, recently I saw the following infographic on LinkedIn and it got me thinking:

When I think about how I am and how I want to be as a leader and as a professional, many of my core behaviors and philosophies align closely with this model. I would say to overlook the quotes as some of them I find a bit problematic, but let’s look for a minute at the content.

• Quick Thinking Mastery
• Diverse-Decision-Making
• Continuous Learning
• Collaborative Action
• Strategic Problem-Solving
• Emotional Intelligence
• Reflective Leadership

I see these as critical for my leadership, and also for any leadership for whom I am to work. They are remarkably descriptive of my own long term approach. However I also see these as as qualities to develop within your teams at all levels. As I think about my most recent positions, I can see points where I, my partners, and my managers used some if not all of these as unspoken core values and worked to teach and value practices that allowed, encouraged, and empowered these.

I want to explore each of these items in future posts, but my first thought is that leadership needs to model these adaptive traits, but then also imbue these into your teams as values, skills, behaviors. If we as leaders are folowing a leadership agility model, but we are not also valuing it in our team than several things are going on: 1) diverse decision making will be less effective because people with important perspectives will not know how to engage, 2) you run the risk of building a non-adaptive org where only the leader can drive agility, which wastes talent. 3) we’re not adopting the spirit of agility and facile, adaptive organizations, we’re only valuing, centering, and developing ourselves. And this will lead to failure.

Your team – your partners, the org under you, your peers – are your success and you are a big piece of theirs. If you have read more here or on social media, you have heard this before – it’s our responsibility to create an environment where there are strong, growing professionals. These concepts let us do that while also creating maximum ability to deliver and succeed in our own orgs. People who can model the behaviors listed above will be better partners to business, better technologists, and better at successful execution — all in a place where they know they are trusted to succeed — and to make learning mistakes while being supported.

As professionals, we are often shown one model of what it is to be “professional” or “executive.” While many of us truly value diversity, the traditional model is built to look and behave within one particular frame – historically straight, cis, white, male, well dressed and coiffed, highly educated, neurotypical, and exhibiting the behavior patterns that are consistent with this. Even when we see diversity, what we often see is people fitting a large percentage of these demographics and mimicking others. Of course, there are exceptions, but despite a wave of pushback, this is still the common perception among those at top leadership levels.

There is also the idea, present in many cultures, that the individual that stands out will be cut down (“tall poppy” syndrome or “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down”) – depending on the cultural context one is raised in, this can be a very strong formative concept especially among women, the neurodivergent, and the highly intelligent.

None of this is new news, so what’s my point?

I have been on a search for a new role. I have listened to advice and received assistance from many quarters and it was not until today that I realized that the advice I was following was threatening my ability to be authentic.

A resume (C.V., whichever your profession requires) needs to be accurate. It needs to bring forward the important accomplishments, list qualifications, facts, figures, and for lack of a better term evidence. Ethical professionals do this as accurately and and honestly as possible. But in doing so it is possible to lose what makes a person exceptional and also what makes them authentic.

I am an empathetic leader. I care deeply. I am female. I am neurodivergent in ways that both challenge me and make me exceptional. I create teams and culture where people want to work and perform and that matters. Yes, I’m good at tech, I understand business needs analysis, I am capable of forecasting (pretty darn well), I creatively work with budgets and contracts and remove blockers. But what I really do is figure out what *people* need to be successful in the context of the environment, and what we together need to do to meet organizational goals. At all levels. And the way that I go about that makes me – and my teams and partners – able to course correct even the most challenging environments, create function out of dysfunction, and weather every storm and crisis, coming out better than we started.

I had allowed my documents to lose my personality and my values. I had allowed my core gifts as a professional to be genericized to fit the expected frame.

And then I received the important question: “I see your EQ in conversation – where is it here?” And it changed my thinking. I will not forget who I am. It makes me special, exceptional. And no, it does not always fit the frame, but that does not detract from me, instead it has enabled my success and enabled me to support the success of others. I will not give this up. And I will reflect it in my documents and everywhere I represent myself.

Professionals are best when they are allowed to be whole people. The best of us is in who we are as humans in the world. Our authenticity is core to who we are, and I cannot lead without it so why would I not reflect it?

References

• https://www.fastcompany.com/90732810/we-need-to-talk-about-why-we-still-see-ceos-as-white-men-and-how-to-challenge-that
• https://theglasshammer.com/2013/02/is-executive-presence-sexist/
• https://hbr.org/2024/01/the-new-rules-of-executive-presence
• https://www.cfar.com/evolving-what-it-means-to-exhibit-executive-presence/
• https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/2023/09/19/mastering-executive-presence-through-a-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-lens/
• https://www.ideatovalue.com/inno/nickskillicorn/2021/01/tall-poppy-syndrome-vs-tall-weed-syndrome/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/kathymillerperkins/2024/03/25/authenticity-at-work-how-to-balance-transparency-with-professionalism/
• https://hbr.org/2013/10/be-yourself-but-carefully
• https://daniellesax.com/blog/post/the-importance-of-authenticity-in-your-professional-life
• https://careerstonegroup.com/blog/81/Get-Real-and-Get-Ahead-Five-Steps-to-Professional-Authenticity
• https://medium.com/coaching-notes/what-does-being-professional-mean-anyway-notes-on-authenticity-39ad8b39a76b
• https://resources.businesstalentgroup.com/btg-blog/leadership-development-essentials-authenticity-professionalism

This topic is a little bit about management and leadership, and also recruitment, retention, performance, just simply being a good citizen in the larger industry and community, and being good to your people. For me, it’s a keystone to a healthy org and industry community and to who I am as a manager and leader (which are distinct, but that’s a different post).

Those of us who choose to be in the disciplines of management and leadership have chosen to take on a role for their staff and their organization. It’s our job to hire and maintain a staff of qualified individuals to perform a certain set of work.

Some organizations and “leaders” appear to think very transactionally about this. There is a concept that when you hire a person to do a job, the paycheck is enough, that you only care if they can do *that* job, that you don’t need to invest and grow in them. Also, hiring is expensive, so getting someone up to speed who has the exact skill set you need now and keeping them there as long as possible is what’s best for the org.

This is – in my opinion (and it’s my blog) – absolutely and unequivocally the wrong way to think about it. It’s tremendously shortsighted and limits not only the person but the organization, it has a high hidden cost, and leads to mediocrity and failure.

Now, there is some research and theory – most commonly you’ll hear Dan Pink – that paying someone well enough that money is not a problem is a huge motivator. And it is. But only because money issues are a distraction from the ability to do meaningful work. Now, I’m not 100% in on Pink’s theory, but only because I think “meaningful” is a term with many meanings…that’s part of what I’m getting at here (it’ll make sense).

What do we want as employers? We want performing teams and individuals. We want them to be effective, interested, and engaged. We want them to invest in our work and organization. We want them to do work that brings the org and its clients forward. We want their best work. We want a great pool of skilled people to choose from when we hire. We want to keep valuable people in the org.

I would argue that there’s some other things we should want, but these are pretty common and non-controversial.

Let’s deconstruct a bit.

Hiring

Hiring is pretty simple, right? You have work you need done, you write a job description, maybe an ad, you post it, you call some people, you have some interviews and you pick the person who is the closest to the job description. Easy Peasy.

Nope. Not at all. Now, I’m going to have to write another whole post on hiring processes and where we fail ourselves and our candidate pools, but let me focus on one aspect…

There are a lot of pieces to this, but in my experience and observation the best candidate is not necessarily the one with exactly the skills you need now. The best candidate is often one that is in the right direction with (depending on level) applicable or translatable skills and *a proven track record of learning and adapting* (or the strong potential). A hard working, capable person with the capacity to learn and think critically or problem solve is going to grow with you and your needs. Someone with curiosity and an understanding of the conceptual foundations and the “why” of what you’re doing will be the one who moves you forward.

But here’s the thing. This person will likely be phenomenal. But without some effort on your part they aren’t staying. Because even a big paycheck (assuming you have one to offer) isn’t everything, and if you’re not paying top end of market the other pieces matter even more.

Once You Have A Talented Person

Great! You made an awesome hire. So by traditional theory we want to focus them on the work we most need done and keep them in this role as long as possible right? Again, not so much.

Earlier, we talked about what we need as managers in our employees. We want investment and people’s best work. Why is a talented professional going to give us that if we put them in a box?

So what does the employee need or want? Well, people vary but here’s a few things:

• Meaningful support from management and team members
• Respect
• Room to learn, grow and develop into the job role
• Room to develop and learn beyond the original scope of the job
• The ability to do novel things
• Agency and a voice in the direction of their work
• Support in working toward (and sometimes developing) career goals
• The ability to learn from communities and resources beyond the company
• Over time, the right to be supported in achieving the next opportunity

Does money matter? Yes. Do the tools to do the job well matter? Yes. But it’s not the be all and end all. Work that is *satisfying* (meaningful to an individual) matters.

Employees often don’t stay forever. That person was only going to stay in that role until they outgrew it anyway. Might we have put the person on a path to outgrow it sooner? That’s possible. But that’s not a bad thing. That extra six months you might keep them is not going to be worth what it could have been if you were getting the best from the beginning.

Here’s the trick.

If you put the person in a box, they are less happy, they can feel the limits, they can feel the lack of support and growth. Which means they have no reason to give their best work. If you invest in the person’s growth then every day you are there, that growth benefits your org. Now obviously this is not unlimited. If you are at a technology company and the person is a developer and what they really want to do is play soccer professionally, there’s not much the job can do to allow them to develop in that direction. But to the extent it’s possible, professional curiosity and growth will benefit your team and your goals.

(Also, these things are just good and responsible management for non-toxic environments)

What Happens If (When) They Outgrow This Role?

Oh no, *panic* — our amazing hire might want to move on!

Ok, cool. So what’s next for them? They don’t have to tell us, nor take us up on assistance and coaching. But with enough trust, they likely will.

Is there a role within the org which suits their next goals? Are they well set up for it? If not, is there an option for making that possible? If you can make this work, you allow them to grow while retaining their organizational knowledge and (hopefully) goodwill.

There isn’t room for their next step in your org and isn’t likely to be soon? Help them leave. If you have the means to help them make connections, prep their materials, be prepared for interviews….do it. If they are ready to go, keeping them is soon going to become a losing proposition. Back to the fact that frustrated, unhappy employees are never going to give their best. Now your goal is improving your professional community, keeping a positive connection, and having them leave supported. Most of our specialities aren’t that big. You are going to talk to this person again. You may exchange knowledge, or they’ll recommend a great hire to you, or an important client relationship. You are building the reputation of you/your organization being worth working for. You get to watch them go forward and do the work you know they’re capable of. A former employee outgrowing you is tremendously gratifying and should be one of our goals.

Crux

Our job is not to hire someone and keep them in the chair (role) we hired them into. We fail ourselves and our organization this way. We limit creativity, innovation, and end up with a field of mediocre performers while real talent stays engaged or moves elsewhere.

Our job is to invest in the success of the team and the org, and one of the keys to this is investing in the individuals and their career directions. It’s how you get their best work now, and how you line them up to benefit your org and your industry over time.

Once again, I have been inspired by an online conversation with a friend (oddly enough, same friend) and also by some of the conversations we have been having within my own org.

And I’ll give you this take which sr folks typically hate: the ones who can most easily tell you where design has failed are front line support. Your thing might be shiny by itself but if the experience breaks because something was poorly thought through, they know first.

— Amy, demigoddess of chaos, first of her name (@AmyPearlman) September 27, 2023

True, these folks are often (not always!) earlier in their career, and may not have the specialized expertise of an engineer, architect, developer, administrator or what have you. Certainly they aren’t as well paid. But I have been in charge of these functions throughout my career, and I have some news for some of these skilled and talented folks: they’re sleeping on real value. And those people you’re treating poorly have the potential to be your future colleagues (maybe they used to be you), so stop with the positional classism.

A higher ed colleague (and forgive me, I don’t recall exactly who), in a conversation about just this topic. She said “they’re the only ones who see it all” and it’s true.

It doesn’t matter if you support a product and a customer base, or you are support for your org or enterprise. Someone designs products/systems/services, someone builds and implements said products/systems/services and a support team becomes the first point of contact for these. Unless your org has a dedicated support team for each and every different component in the environment (rarely if ever), you have a team that sees not only one product, but several (or all) and how they interact or fit together.

What does your support team know that your engineers, architects, and designers don’t?

• What *really* works and what doesn’t
• Where “as designed” isn’t usable or useful
• What features and functions are discoverable and which are hard to find
• Where people using and administering these solutions run into trouble – points of friction
• Where solutions that are supposed to be consistent with one another…aren’t.
• What’s missing
• The myriad of ways to break everything
• Any accessibility holes
• Ways in which different components fail to correctly or smoothly integrate
• So much nuanced information you will never think to ask
• What the entire environment experience looks like from end to end

Chances are good that the support folks received different or less training than the client and is having to figure things out and try to meet the need. They may have documentation, but no documentation can reflect every possible thing a client will do with a system. They’ve had to figure things out…and without the ability other groups may have to specialize or look under the hood.

A few orgs have a formal or smooth informal process for integrating support feedback, but it’s not common.

The Challenge

Because most support teams live in a responsive frame, they don’t always know how to provide feedback in a way that fits into an improvement process. A tech can tell you a lot about a specific issue, incident, or set of circumstances, but typically if an engineering team were to ask how they make something better, they are going to get very granular, top of mind issues. There may need to be a fair amount of digging just to find out that the support desk wrote an internal memo months ago on a workaround for the most common issue, and solves it so routinely they don’t even consider raising it any more.

Interestingly, this immediate, responsive frame can sometimes keep an otherwise good technologist with potential from being successful at a broader or more project oriented role.

So what do we do?

• Build trending skills in team and service leadership
• Normalize involving support in project planning and design conversations
• Have specialized staff periodically observe or participate in support shifts or rotate serving as SMEs in active support chats/channels

“But no one has time for this!” Ok, I hear you. I have never worked anywhere properly resourced and these efforts can be expensive in time.

My question is whether you have time not to do it. And. Is there any better way to assure that support staff are prepared to be project participants and be ready to think critically when the time comes than giving them a more wholistic viewpoint where they can observe these processes?

I know with my support folks, being caught up in responsiveness and unable to operate as a representative member of a project team or feedback loop is a real problem and one we are using some of these thoughts to work our way out of. Watching people’s minds unfurl is amazing.

Your support team likely has some things to tell you. They also likely have some hidden gems that would be fantastic in other parts of your org over time. You’re not going to find them if the only place you look is down your nose.

And here I am, writing a post in the middle of the night because my brain already wrote it and I need to get it out.

A conversation with a friend today got me thinking heavy thoughts about respect and responsibility.

Respect

Let’s start here: for me, respect is earned. Society teaches us we should respect certain people and positions, for example:

• Parents
• Elders – due to their wisdom and lived experience
• Religious leaders (usually of one’s own and compatible religions)
• One’s supervisor/manager/job-related hierarchy
• Political leaders (this one varies)
• Other notable figures who are said to have contributed to society and history
• Highly successful people

We also are told to “show respect” during certain kinds of events, usually those with some kind of significance or ceremony to them, whether religious, patriotic, or in some other way “serious.”

In reality, these are less about actual respect than:

• Authority (or sometimes control)
• Courtesy
• Recognition of acts

For the sake of argument let’s use the definition Oxford Languages provides to Google:

Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more

re·spect

/rəˈspek(t)/

noun

noun: respect; plural noun: respects

1. a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.”the director had a lot of respect for Douglas as an actor”
   • the state of being admired or respected.”his first chance in over fifteen years to regain respect in the business”
   • a person’s polite greetings.”give my respects to your parents”
2. due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others.”young people’s lack of respect for their parents”
3. a particular aspect, point, or detail.”the findings in this respect have been mixed”

verb

verb: respect; 3rd person present: respects; past tense: respected; past participle: respected; gerund or present participle: respecting

1. admire (someone or something) deeply, as a result of their abilities, qualities, or achievements.”she was respected by everyone she worked with”
   • have due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of.”I respected his views”
   • avoid harming or interfering with.”it is incumbent upon all boaters to respect the environment”
   • agree to recognize and abide by (a legal requirement).”he urged all foreign nationals to respect the laws of their country of residence”

So in reality, we are being told to provide a level of courtesy and deference to certain individuals or positions with or without the feeling of admiration (respect) being evoked. “Due regard” is an interesting phrase because it once again reinforces the societal *assumption* of tradition, feelings, or wishes which may not be your own as deserving of respect.

What makes that regard “due?” In a lot of cases it’s societal or cultural expectation. But at what juncture might that societal expectation be reinforcing inequity, bias, or privilege? At what juncture might you be asked to “show respect” for things you wholly disagree with? In my experience and observation, pretty often.

Here’s what actually earns my true respect:

• Integrity
• Authenticity
• Kindness
• Skill or knowledge, applied and shared
• Interest and capability in learning and bettering oneself
• Leadership qualities that are actually shown to benefit the people you lead
• Sharing insight or wisdom that makes the world better

Here’s what doesn’t:

• Being richer
• Having more degrees
• Having a title or role
• Hoarding information or gatekeeping
• Acting or speaking in judgmental and hypocritical ways
• Looking or behaving like a societal expectation of a particular role
• Treating other people as less, regardless of why

I’m sure I’m missing something here, but all of my answers are along these lines.

Which brings me to…

Responsibility

We are told our societal “responsibility” is to treat people and situations defined by norms “respectfully.” But what is typically implied is more than mere courtesy or politeness. One is expected to treat that person or event with the regard that others around you have for it, whether you have that same regard. And what does that mean?

Sometimes it means “behave.” Be quiet. Hold your tongue. Don’t cause upset. Conform.

And there is a way where this is ok, and a way in which its not.

We are told we need to respect roles, traditions, situations. Dress a certain way, comport ourselves is a certain way – whether in a professional setting, family, religious, formal, whatever. But what about respecting ourselves and our viewpoint?

Respect your parents, your elders. Does that extend to them espousing casual racism and misogyny at a family event? Do we take that quietly and “behave” — we’re often taught so, women in particular. Personally, keeping my mouth shut has never been my gift in these situations, but I have often been told I am being “disrespectful” and “causing conflict.”

Respect religious leaders. Even if they are preaching hate? Even if they are abusing people in their community? Even if they are indulging in politics from the pulpit?

Respect the leaders at your job. Even if they are showing a lack of integrity? Even if they are acting in a way which shows that they don’t respect their clients or the people in their organization?

Now…some of these things are easier than others, and depending who you are your milage may vary. Family can be complicated, and emotional connection can be all caught up in it. Nobody wants to cause harm to someone they love. You might not respect your organizational leaders, but you might not be in a position where you can afford to walk. I’m not saying the math is simple or that my answer is yours.

What I’m saying is this — we have been taught that respectful means sit down and shut up. What if it doesn’t? What if respecting tradition isn’t more important than respecting yourself and your own authenticity and integrity? And you’re saying “of course, I would never compromise my own…”

But we do, all the time. We reinforce privilege, injustice, poor treatment, toxic ideas, and casual hate by our silence. Now, you might be a rare person who doesn’t do that, but before you claim that look damn close.

What brought this on? I’m going to a family funeral this week with family members with whom…let’s just say I don’t agree. We are different ends of the American cultural spectrum. And I was talking about not starting fights at funerals and not wanting to upset my father (who for the record, while imperfect, is an amazingly loving and accepting person despite his subculture and is willing to hear other perspectives and learn). Now, I have been absolutely taught funerals are not places for fights, and certainly I shut down a few at my own mother’s funeral because they were arguments made of bullshit and purposeless drama and they pissed me off. And, my da doesn’t like conflict on his best day. I’m not going to this event for me, I’m going for him.

I am expected to behave within my assigned gender role, pretend to participate in the religious ceremony even if I’m faking, dress appropriately, speak softly, and make no waves. Now, as previously mentioned…never been something I’m great at.

The (smart and insightful) friend I was talking to said a couple of things that were good reminders and set me on this path. “You don’t owe anyone silence in the face of ignorance.” and “If people say hateful shit, and no one checks them, you check them. Anyone else’s feelings about that aren’t your problem.”

So what is my *responsibility* here? I need to have a certain amount of care for my da — I don’t wholly believe his feelings are not my problem – in one sense every person is responsible for their own, and in another sense, this is a highly emotionally charged event for him and he’s a person I love. And. That does not mean I need to let hatefulness and casual bias go without comment. It doesn’t mean I need to sit and listen while this grates on my soul. I do not need to “respect” my elders and the event so much that I disrespect myself and what I know is right by being silent.

I wish I could say I’d never done that. I wish I could say I had never bitten my tongue rather than cause conflict. I wish I could say I had never been complicit due to my silence. I’ve opened my mouth more often than I’ve kept it closed, but I can’t say I have not done it. But we live and learn.

My responsibility is not to be silent for false-respect. My responsibility is to say something — not punch people, or start screaming, or treat people badly — but to challenge assumptions. Sometimes this will do nothing. But the cost of silence is too high. Too many of us are silent and it allows people with toxic beliefs to think they are in a comfortable and unchallenged majority.

I haven’t posted here for a long while — I actually forgot this was still up — but I have been getting the writing bug again and I may be putting a few things down here in the coming days and weeks. I have a list of topics itching at the back of my mind.

As to where I’ve been? In 2019, I went into a new job and in 2020 I found myself IT Director of the Public Health Department for a major city. You might imagine how my 2020-21 went (or more likely you can’t — I may write about it but it was intense and nonstop). I then took a promotion to central IT for that same City and I’ve been running hard with that and the complications of life.

It’s getting past time to back up and think out loud again.

If you’ve never read it: https://blog.amypearlman.com/about/

I have been having many conversations both in person and online about living and succeeding as an ADHD professional. What I’ve found is that a lot of ADHD adults think they’re somehow broken, and we don’t share info with each other very effectively. I know I have received feedback that I could not be successful because of some of my coping mechanisms. These are statements made by people with little understanding.  I can’t claim to have all the answers, but I’ve learned a few things in the past [some number] of years and I thought I’d gather my thoughts here.  

Before I get started, some context: I am female (which I mention because it matters when it comes to how ADHD exhibits). I was what you call a “gifted kid”—generally considered to be of high intelligence (for all that IQ is worth). I was diagnosed while in college, and I am now mid-career with a relatively senior position.  I have informally coached and/or compared notes with both employees and other professionals with these issues. I am in Information Technology. I am not a medical or psychological professional and nothing I say should be considered to be medical advice of any kind.  I’m sharing observations, experiences, and opinions. And always, as it says on the label, these thoughts are unpolished.

Being ADD or ADHD is a type of neurodivergence.  According to Dr. Nick Walker “neurodivergence is not intrinsically positive or negative, desirable or undesirable.” Even within the diagnoses of ADD and ADHD, there is significant neurodiversity — meaning that we have different patterns and the thing that works for one of us may not work for all of us.

Also, the vast majority of medical and psych research over the years in this area have been on adolescent and pre-adolescent males, largely white males. ADHD exhibits differently in girls, women, and adults. I don’t have enough information to know how it may exhibit differently in people of color, though in my experience taking narrow research and trying to apply it broadly is not particularly effective.  I had symptoms as a kid, but my mother was told that I could not have ADHD because of the way I was able to focus on some tasks.  Today we know that hyperfocus on preferred tasks is a hallmark of ADHD behaviors.

So, here are some things I’ve learned:

• Our processes may look chaotic to others.  That doesn’t mean that others are right and we are wrong.  Neurodivergent brains can’t use neurotypical tactics and be successful. Learn to explain. Also learn when you need to translate your process to an ordered format in order to communicate your result.
• We work in bursts, rather than at steady rates. ADHD people can be very effective thinkers, amazing team members, and high producers, but it happens in rapid bursts, and requires taking downtime between. Eight hours of meetings in an eight hour day is rarely effective for anyone, but it’s a real issue for an ADHD person.
• Time and task management doesn’t work for us like it does for others.  Most popular task management methods are designed by and for neurotypical males, and we need to account for the refocusing time we need due to interruptions and task switching.
• Environment matters.  Balancing interactive time and quiet time and being able to both block out distractions and not fall too deep into hyperfocus holes are critical. 
• There’s more than one kind of drug.  Stimulant drugs don’t work for everyone. There are non-stim options like Strattera which work for some.  There are also many anti-depressants and other brain drugs which have ADHD-related off-label uses.
• Drugs are not the answer for everyone. Some people can use a measured stream of caffeine. Others can use tactics and manage their environment.
• Your food choices, supplements, sleep, and stress management are huge. Remember that your body essentially has a single pool of resources to manage your focus, stress, and any physical stressors—many ADHD individuals have additional conditions as well. You need to keep that pool as big as it can be which means managing your sleep, your downtime/recharging activities, and your nutrition. Some of us try to run on sugar—don’t fall into that trap. And as I’ve been known to say, serotonin debt is real.
• Managing your focus pool is critical. You’ve got to choose ruthlessly about where you spend your focus.
• Preferred tasks are an ADHD standard. We over-invest on things we like to do, and ignore or postpone other tasks. You either need to choose a job that leans to your preferred tasks, or find a way to focus on things that aren’t. For me, it’s about desiring an outcome and then doing what it takes to achieve it.
• There are adult and professional coaches, as well as therapists, that specialize in ADHD. Keep in mind that unless a coach is either ADHD or trained in tactics to understand how our brains our wired, their advice may not be applicable.
• It doesn’t matter how old you are—age, new roles, and desire to improve and advance as a person and a professional may mean you need help, drugs, or a change in tactics at different points in your life. For me, as I’ve moved up, I’ve had to rethink—you can’t direct other people’s work if you can’t present an organized vision.

I may explore some of these statements in detail on future posts if people are interested, but the point is this: it’s okay to need different things, to work in different patterns, and to need different organization. We add a lot of value. We see connections and patterns others don’t. We have significant creative potential. Often, ADHD people are highly intelligent and will find new innovations. However, in order to be successful we both need to know how to manage ourselves, and our relationships with our colleagues and our management. And we need to work in organizations that will accept our needs and value our contributions.