Only 16% of Autistic adults are in full time paid employment.
Why is that? Well we know why, it’s because they’re Autistic.
Case closed.
And that’s how easy it is to write off Autistic people.
The psychological term for ‘normal’ people is ‘Neurotypical’, Autsistic people are referred to as ‘Neurodiverse’, meaning a divergence from the norm. All very interesting but so what?
What happens when Neurotypical people are in charge of hiring? We now both know the answer, Neurodiverse people don’t get hired. This reality unveils some unflattering truths about our societies. The uncomfortable truth is that people are scared of differences. The unknown is intimidating and in defence the status quo must be protected. The effect of this is that an already difficult to navigate Neurotypical world becomes nigh impossible to function in. Society doesn’t want us in it.
Autistic people are commonly believed to have communication difficulties. We accept that because it makes sense to us, we all have an idea of what an Autistic person is like and this information confirms that. Here’s the thing though.
Autistic people communicate just as well as Neurotypical people.
Let the disbelief pass and open yourself to new information. Studies have shown that if you take 3 groups of people, 1 Autisitc, 1 Neurotypical and 1 Mixed group and ask them to play ‘Telephone’ (previously known as ‘chinese whispers’). The Autistic group performed just as well at communicating the ‘whisper’ as the Neurotypical group. The mixed group didn’t do very well. What does this tell us? It tells us that Autistic people communicate perfectly fine amongst themselves just like Neurotypicals. The difficulty is when the groups communicate with each other. This means something profound. If Autistic people have communication difficulties then that means Neurotypical have equal opposing communication difficulties. Newton’s third law. In practical senses it means that you, the neurotypical reader have the same communication difficulties as an Autistic person. Let that sink in.
My employment record is a touch chequered, my biggest issue is that I could never get past interviews. My body language is very fluid and I don’t like eye contact. In interviews this comes across a bit like I’ve just smoked a crack pipe. Sometimes we say the wrong things too which can often end up inadvertently offending or upsetting someone. Neurotypical language rules can be tricky for us to follow, you speak in the foreign language of subtext. We like to be blunt. As you can imagine, being misunderstood all the time can be incredibly frustrating.
In 2015, which was 68 years ago, I applied for a job at Adult Swim as some kind of Marketing Creative Director or something. I forget the job title (-10 points to Slytherin). My thought process in applying for the job was ‘show don’t tell’. I figured the best way to apply for a marketing job was to turn my job application into a marketing campaign. I would show them first hand my nuanced understanding of the human psyche. I would craft copy text that would make Steve Jobs buy a PC. From beyond the grave!
So as a display of my formidable talent in social media whatever, I sent them this...
And they liked it. Why?
We are the out of the box thinkers you are looking for.
Did I mention I’m Autistic? Diagnosed at 34. Which to be frank was a bit of a surprise because the only thing I knew about Autism is that I didn’t have it.
I had seen Rainman. I knew the score.
To talk about out of the box thinking we should first define what ‘the box’ is. ‘The Box’ is the society accepted way of doing something, it is the norm. We need the norm, it keeps society stable. We also need innovation. Innovation is a deviation from the norm. It’s 2 steps back and 3 steps forward. It’s not always apparent why you would want to deviate from the norm for something a bit more risky and with no immediate obvious benefit.
Then suddenly you see electric cars all over the world's roads. And they’re fast!
Elon Musk thought outside of the box and is now doing quite well for himself. The guy built himself a spaceship, who does that? Then what did he do? I’ll tell you, He gave himself a ridiculous amount of ‘free’ publicity (spaceships are actually really expensive to make, I looked into it then settled on a balloon. I blew it up and then let go of it as a sad metaphor for my dreams of going to space) because he shot a robot driving a car into space. Like him or not he’s made a pretty significant impact on the world. I would argue that his success is due to his ‘out of the box’ thinking. In the box thinkers don’t drive to space.
Out of the box thinking is innovation. It's doing things the unusual way because despite the usual way being comfortable, it will inevitably stagnate and become irrelevant as new innovations overtake it. We are in a period in history where the need for innovation is greater than ever. With the World going through covid and the Uk experiencing the biggest upheaval to Britain in living memory in the shape of Brexit, we need innovators. We really need innovators.
Innovators are out of the box thinkers. Out of the box thinking is unusual. Autistic people are Unusual. Autistic people exist outside the box. What better person could you possibly hire for the purpose?
Elon Musk, you could hire Elon Musk... Unfortunately for you though he’s busy sending Bitcoin to Mars or something. But also Lucky you! Autistic people might be interested in your business/idea/dream. I wonder what ideas they would bring to the table and what those ideas would lead to? I can promise you it will be something you hadn’t thought of
Remember when Blockbuster turned down an offer to buy Netflix for $50m? Netflix is now worth $125 BILLION. Don’t be Blockbuster.
I posted my job application memes online and gained 10s of thousands of views and likes and huge engagement. 10s of thousands of real people and bots alike engaging with my job application. I created a guerilla marketing campaign with zero budget. It had to be zero because my God, I was broke. It had a twitter, reddit and imgur. I engaged with the fan community, made a hashtag, created multi platform content and told people my story, Authentically. Then I released this narrative experience into the wild.
Out of the hundreds of applicants I got down to the final 2.
I didn’t get past the final interview. Oh well, onto the next thing. Autistic people bounce back quick. We’re known for it.
Out of the box or innovative thinking isn’t an exclusive autistic skill but In part 2 I will explain exactly why we’re particularly good at it. I will also explain why practical creativity is such a powerful and rare skill.
