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Hundreds of thousands of peopleincluding meare heading to Austin, Texas, for the SXSW Conference and Festivals to learn, share, and meet others who are eager to propel business and culture forward. In perusing the lineup for this years conference, I was pleasantly surprised. In addition to Understood.orgs session, the agenda has half a dozen panels or meetups focused on some flavor of neurodiversityfrom the science behind neuroinclusive office design to learning to love your tricky brain. As a neurodivergent leader at Understood.org, I often find myself the lone neurodiversity advocate in professional settingscreatively connecting dots to make the business (as well as the moral and ethical) case for why people who learn and think differently shouldnt be overlooked at work, at school, and in the world. So, looking at the agenda, Im thrilled! Its incredible to see that people plan to proactively discuss people who learn and think differently at such an influential event. But Im also cautious. Because I dont want neurodiversity to get buzzword treatment. Weve seen it before: The viral business focus or philosophy that dominates headlines and conference agendas for a certain period of time and thenpoof! It disappears. Empathetic leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic-era. Fail smart before that. We cant let neurodiversity get labeled as a trend, because its not a trend. Neurodiversity is the future, and its critical for business growth. The future is grounded in neurodiversity Research shows that 53% of Gen Z identify as neurodivergent, and this revelation comes at a critical moment when Gen Z now outnumbers baby boomers in the workplace. This means that more than half of middle managersincluding those who will grow into future leaderslearn and think differently. Their neurodivergence may mean they have different expectations around ways of working, sharing information, and flexibility. Todays business leaders must understand the upcoming generation of talent so that they can unlock their full potential. This should also be a wake-up call for brands. Every brand leader is trying to better understand and penetrate the Gen Z market. Recognizing that more than half of these consumers identify as neurodivergent can potentially open up new opportunitiesfrom product development to marketing. Its estimated that neurodivergent consumers boast almost $2 trillion in spending power. In short, organizations are leaving talent and money on the table if they dont consider the neurodivergent population. Accessibility is a competitive advantage At a moment when there is sensitivity around language related to equity and opportunity, we must make sure accessibility remains. Accessibility helps everyone. Its often the first step toward building environments where people feel included, and its also an unlock for business growth. When people can access information easily, theyre enabled to do their best work. This is especially important for neurodivergent talent, who can offer creativity and unique problem-solving skills when granted the right support. In fact, Gartner research has shown that cognitively diverse and inclusive decision-making teams lead to exceeding financial goals for 75% of organizations. Its one of the reasons Understood.org leverages the principles of universal design in our operations. Universal design is a simple concept, whether its applied to architecture, education, or product design: If you design for the fringes, it benefits everyone. We know that using AI tools to take notes and provide captioning is beneficial to all, and that its particularly impactful for people with sensory or processing issues. We understand that using larger text sizes and bullet points in documents increases readability, and that these guidelines are especially helpful for our dyslexic talent. We adopted these practices so that the one-third of Understood employees who identify as neurodivergent dont need to ask for formal accommodations to do their job. Support is available to everyone and helps everyone. While language may change, the work to build accessible environments for your workforce or your customers shouldnt. Employers should view it for what it is: a competitive advantage, because it provides people with the opportunity to participate, engage, and play to their strengths. Where do we go from here? Im optimistic about neurodiversity being discussed openly at marquee events. Im encouraged by the inquiries we receive from leading companies wanting to be more supportive of neurodivergent employees or customers. I look at Google, which helped launch The Neu Project, and Hinge, which conducted in-depth research to improve the dating experience for users with ADHD. These brands get it. So, lets continue talking about neurodiversity at conferences. Lets continue celebrating the strengths while acknowledging the challenges. And lets continue to push organizations to embrace neurodiversitynot just with words, but with action. Those that do will reap the benefits to their bottom line and do right in their world. Nathan Friedman is copresident and chief marketing officer of Understood.org. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
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Lindsay Orr was active and healthy, running marathons and hiking all around Colorado. During pregnancy, she developed a persistent headache and dangerously high blood pressurehallmark symptoms of preeclampsia, a leading cause of preterm birth as well as maternal mortality and morbidity. She was induced at 32 weeks to save her and her babys life. Now, two years later, she continues to experience the long-term impact of preeclampsia as Lindsay developed chronic high blood pressure, a condition she never had before pregnancy. Pregnancy complications like preeclampsia, preterm birth, and fetal growth restriction are dangerous for mom and baby. These complications can strike without warningsending pregnancies into a crisis overnight. For women like Lindsay who are healthy and dont have risk factors for complications like preeclampsia, the experience is harrowing and surreal in what should be the most joyous time of a parents life. Its unacceptable for so many women, families, and doctors that the U.S. lags behind every major industrialized nation in addressing the maternal health crisis. Its heartbreaking that 20% of pregnant women experience the crisis of a pregnancy complication. It creates traumalong-term physical and mental health impacts on womenand also influences childrens health outcomes. A prenatal model designed 100 years ago As investment has lagged in obstetrics and pregnancy health, the prenatal care model for mothers health has remained largely unchanged over the past 100 years. Yet, rates of complications like preeclampsia continue to rise and preterm birth is at the highest level it has ever been in the U.S. We must understand whats going on biologically in pregnancy to reverse these trends. In the absence of biologically-driven approaches, overstretched and underresourced OB/GYNs and care teams have had to rely on generalized characteristics and demographics. Those include age, BMI, race, and socioeconomic status, to try to identify who may be at risk for pregnancy complications. The U.S. Preventative Services Taskforce guidelines define these as moderate risk factors. Unfortunately, 80% of pregnancies have at least one of these moderate risk factors, making it a poor indicator of who is truly at high risk for preeclampsia. Its no wonder that patients, clinicians, and care teams have little guidance on where to focus to create a personalized care plan to reduce preeclampsia risk. Some who have no risk factors end up developing severe forms of preeclampsia, and most with moderate risk factors have normal, uneventful pregnancies. The status quo isnt working. Women deserve better. Moms deserve better. Families deserve better. We need to understand the biology of women and their pregnancy journey if we want to make progress in understanding how to more precisely prevent, treat, and manage diseases that impact women. A new era of pregnancy health To create healthier futures for moms and babies, we need scientific advancements to better understand whats happening in pregnancy so we can prevent crises caused by complications and preterm birth before they happen. This idea is not new, of course. Five-year survival rates for breast cancer went from a toss-up to around 90% once we brought to bear the scientific understanding of breast cancers molecular drivers. Mirvies foundational, first-of-its-kind study uncovers insights we never knew about pregnancy. We examined the biology of nearly 11,000 diverse pregnancies from women enrolled across the United States and collected thousands of RNA transcripts and hundreds of clinical details from each patient, translating into millions of data points. Using this rich dataset, combined with advanced machine learning, Mirvie has identified unique molecular signatures to predict the risk of preeclampsia, preterm birth, and severe fetal growth restriction, months in advance. What does this mean for clinicians? Physicians and care teams can move away from generalized risk factors and move toward a personalized care approach driven by a precision understanding of the disease. By identifying care plans and monitoring methods for the right patients at the right time, clinicians and care teams can create better outcomes for mom and baby. Personalized medicine is the standard of care in fields like oncology and cardiology. Being able to finally understand which pregnancies are truly at high risk for complications based on ones biology can allow women to plan ahead and do everything possible prevent dangerous complications like preeclampsia by adhering to evidence-based strategies like taking daily aspirin, monitoring blood pressure regularly, and incorporating lifestyle changes like diet and exercise. Then we can potentially prevent disease, near-death experiences, long NICU stays, and trauma. With this type of information, we can shift toward personalized patient care and precision medicine by developing new, targeted therapies in the future. At a molecular level, we are closer to understanding whos most at-risk for pregnancy complications and how biology impacts those at highest risk. Similar to the breakthroughs made in breast cancer in the 1990s, obstetrics can move towards a new standard of care steeped in biology, tailoring care and treatment based on the molecular characteristics of each pregnancy. What gives me hope is that by finally being able to predict the risk of complications like preeclampsia, we can usher in a new standard of care that is preventive, and reverse course on the maternal health crisis. Maneesh Jain is cofounder and CEO of Mirvie. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
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Today, no matter where you are in the world, it’s not unusual to find yourself working alongside an analyst from Amsterdam, a strategist from San Francisco, or a designer from Dubai. As companies look increasingly further afield for workers, they unlock a range of benefitsfrom wider talent pools that make it easier to find specialized talent to the injection of new perspectives that offer insights into diverse customer bases. While most business leaders agree that developing the right workplace model is crucial to their companys success, only 24% feel their organization is actually ready to fully embrace a distributed workforce. The list of potential reasons for this is long. Common worries include navigating different cultures, time zones, legal requirements, and compliance hurdles. We recently investigated how these problems manifest at each stage of the employee lifecyclehiring, onboarding, and management. Heres what we discovered about the challenges of managing global teams, and the solutions. The challenges of a global workforce There are three main areas of difficulty facing distributed organizations. Operating on a global scaleTraditional methods of hiring global workers, such as opening legal entities, are clunky and costly. Managing compliance across the globe is no jokenavigating laws across multiple countries increases chances of misclassification penalties and other legal troubleswhich is why more companies are pivoting to an employer of record (EOR) solution. Creating a unified teamBuilding teams across multiple countries comes with logistical and cultural hurdles. Clear communication is much harder than it might be in person, especially with workers operating in different time zones. This means global HR teams must create robust internal communication policies and guidelines to help teams stay engaged and in-the-loop. Leading from a distanceGlobal workforce management is the ultimate test of leadership qualities. Employees with different cultural backgrounds may have varying communication styles, work expectations, and even attitudes towards hierarchy. If managers arent sufficiently aware of and sensitive to these differences, morale-draining misunderstandings and conflict are oftentimes the result. These are thorny, intertwined problems, but that doesnt mean they cant be solved. Here are some concrete solutions that you can use to support your own workforce. Operate on a global scale Operating on a global scale is not purely a problem. Indeed, its one of the main draws of building a global workforce in the first place. A distributed team can cater to a global client base, with sales and customer service staff online to close deals at all hours and offer 24/7 support. The challenge is that operating round the clock introduces significant potential for silos between regions. As a survey revealed, working across different time zones ranks among the top five challenges of remote work. Helping managers maintain seamless collaboration and customer engagement despite time zone differences means setting clear expectations around communication. For instance, businesses should embrace forms of communication that dont require individuals to be simultaneously present, such as pre-recorded videos or shared kick-off documents. And if youre a global organization, you should act like it. Recognize the time zone burden and rotate meeting times, rather than defaulting to the time zone of a manager or a large office. Create a unified team Nailing communication isnt just good for operationsits at the core of any effective team. How can an organization function if its people dont know what everyone else is doing? Little wonder that a study from McKinsey found that companies with effective internal communication can boost productivity by as much as 25%. But good communication is especially key in distributed environments, requiring extra effort on the part of everyone. Among distributed teams, communication has to be intentionalwhether its via email, a video call, or a chat message. Crucially, a good communicator knows not only when to communicate, but how to limit non-essential noise. That means limiting participants in a meeting to only those who truly need to be there, or finding the right medium to communicate a specific pointa video, for instance. Lead from a distance Leadership looks different in a global company, and those with experience working in a culture different from their own have a clear advantage. Such people will naturally have gained the ability to navigate cultural differences and demonstrate self-awareness regarding their own biases. One study found that 89% of people who worked abroad said it improved their ability to work well with people from other countries and cultures. This doesnt mean that it cant be taught, however. It’s a skill that anyone can learn with the right framework of encouraging self-awareness and modeling the behaviors that make global teams a success. For instance, small demonstrations of leadership can mean a lot to workers, showing that managers care about them as people, not just commodities. Its worth brushing up on headlines for the location of the person that you’re about to talk to and understanding what might be happening around them. From challenge to advantage While there are difficulties to operating a distributed team, all can be turned into positives. By prioritizing communication, cultural understanding, and self-awareness, you can unlock the full power of a global workforce. Sagar Khatri is cofounder and CEO of Multiplier. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
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