Building Neuroinclusive Systems: Dr. Timothy Vogus’ Organizational Approach to Long-Lasting Change
For the past 21 years, Dr. Timothy Vogus has brought insight and innovation to Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management. Named one of the 50 most influential business professors of 2013 by Poets and Quants and recipient of the Excellence of Teaching Award from the Academy of Management in 2019, Dr. Vogus is nationally recognized for his teaching abilities and his passion in making workplaces and classrooms more neuro inclusive.
Beyond the lecture hall, Dr. Vogus is also the Deputy Director of Vanderbilt’s Frist Center for Autism and Innovation, where his unique position allows him to bridge his organizational perspective and neurodiversity advocacy. His work focuses on one of the most overlooked yet urgent challenges in today’s workforce: how to build systems that support neurodivergent individuals via sustained structural change. This mission is also personal to Dr. Vogus’ heart as he is a parent of a 23-year old autistic son.
Bringing an Organizational Lens to Neurodiversity
The Frist Center brings together multiple disciplines in pursuit of building neuroinclusive workplaces. Dr. Vogus represents a business school and organizational transformation perspective. For Dr. Vogus, the emerging Frist Center was the perfect opportunity to pivot his research to refocus on organizational culture and practices to creating the conditions and processes for building more neuro inclusive organizations.
One key role Dr. Vogus’ plays is supporting technology development by conducting qualitative research to discover user needs and preferences. He has worked closely with Nilanjan Sarkar, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science in the Vanderbilt School of Engineering, in their development of the Career Interview Readiness in Virtual Reality [CIRVR] system. As Vogus describes “I interview autistic adults, support professionals including job coaches and career counselors, as well as employers, to get an understanding of what the barriers are in their organizations to becoming neuro inclusive.” The experiences of autistic adults, employers, and support professionals serve as inputs to ensuring the features of the system help its users overcome barriers to employment.
In parallel, Dr. Vogus uses his writing to encourage organizations to think about how to change organizational culture to increase neuro inclusion. That is, questioning the unspoken rules and norms that assume all members of the organization are neurotypical and, consequently, when norms aren’t followed it is an act of defiance rather than a breakdown in understanding. His work pushes organizations to recognize and interrogate their assumptions of neurotypicality.
Redefining Inclusion from the Classroom to the Boardroom
Dr. Vogus also applies the same tools to reimagining the operations of the business school and is collaborating with Jennifer Spoor and Jon Billsberry of La Trobe University in Australia and Tiffany Jameson of Grit and Flow on research that details how business schools can become neuro inclusive. The work focuses on how business schools create barriers to inclusion in the admission process, in part, by using admission interviews that emphasize “cultural fit” which is often equated to neurotypicality. The dominant mode of teaching in business schools is case-based and discussion-oriented, which presents a challenge for individuals who aren’t comfortable with fast-paced verbal contributions in large group settings. As a result, neurodivergent applicants are often underestimated during admissions and misjudged in the classroom. Vogus emphasizes that business schools could start by recognizing the value of neurodiversity as a means of cultural evolution and growth and recognizing diverse modes of participating and contributing.
Vogus also noted the neurotypicality of the business school curriculum “we use case studies of companies, intending to provide a first-person perspective on business issues. But the protagonists are almost exclusively neurotypical.” Changing the narrative, Vogus has experimented in his own classes. This past semester, he taught a one-credit elective on neurodiversity and work, where he put neurodivergent protagonists front and center in the cases to think about neuro inclusion in a very explicit way. The Frist Center is working to build on the success of this course to help other business schools develop similar courses or otherwise incorporate neurodiversity content into their curricula.
Aside from his course the lack of neurodiversity content, he suggests, isn’t just about curriculum design but is also rooted in the mindset of faculty. Many business schools, he explains, are grounded in neurotypical assumptions and resistant to different approaches the fall outside students who sit at rapt attention for faculty lectures or are comfortable with the open discussion of the case method. This creates challenges for students whose learning styles fall outside of this rigidity. But there are approaches to curriculum design and classroom management that can make everyone feel more seen, supported, and feeling like they are fully participating within a program.
Universal Design for All
While conversations about inclusion often focus on formal accommodations for people with specific diagnoses, Dr. Vogus challenges us to think bigger. Rather than placing the burden on individuals to request support, he advocates for a more proactive approach rooted in universal design, the idea that classrooms and workplaces should be accessible to everyone from the start.
In his classes, he practices what he preaches. Dr Vogus includes an “access charter” to his syllabi where he gives a list of possible accommodations that his students can receive. “It doesn’t limit it to people who have a formal diagnosis. You don’t need to go through the access office. You just tell me you need something. We’ll figure it out. That is my approach to it,” he notes. He emphasizes that people shouldn’t need a label to get their needs met.
The universal design approach also addresses the cultural stigma that often surrounds accommodations on campus. “I think that’s why that’s some of what inspired me to put the policy up front to say, this policy is for everyone. If you need something, and I’m telling you, it’s okay to ask whoever you are. I am putting no barriers here.” He continues, “I’m making it accessible to everyone.” Dr. Vogus emphasizes that if you design a workplace so that anyone can thrive, it ends up being an environment that’s better for everybody.
However, Vogus acknowledges that resistance to inclusion often stems from faulty assumptions: that accommodations are unfair or that neurodivergent individuals must prove themselves to be exceptional from the start in their work to be accepted. “There’s this pressure to be not just good employees but world historically great employees, because you are the representative of this entire category of people in your organization,” he says. He calls this the “superpower stereotype” – a damaging myth that prevents people from simply allowing them to do their jobs well.
“We’re doing this because there’s all kinds of talent out in the world, and we want to make sure we can access it,” he says. “Not because we expect every neurodivergent person to have superpowers.” True inclusion, Vogus argues, is about expanding access, not narrowing it through unrealistic expectations.
A universal design approach addresses the fear that inclusion is zero-sum. Universal design focuses on making a workplace, a space, or a class accessible to everyone. It means starting with an understanding with the full range of needs and the barriers to meeting those needs and then intentionally designing our organizations and classrooms to embrace differences and create conditions where everyone can thrive.
The Double Empathy Problem and Building Mutual Understanding
Throughout history, changing organizational culture tends to be the neurodivergent individual adapting to the neurotypical standard and so I asked Dr. Vogus how we are able to achieve a sense of mutuality and what does that look like. He responded, “So this idea of the breakdown and mutual understanding is sometimes labeled the double empathy problem, where there’s just differences in lived, neurocognitive, and sensory experience on the neurotypical and neurodivergent side of an interaction and so people are talking past each other.”
He emphasizes that the key to building a mutual understanding between two people is to start from square one. It’s about being honest about your intentions, yourself, your preferences, your pet peeves, things that may irritate you, and the like with the individual with whom you are interacting. Everyone has needs. Everyone has preferences. The important thing though is to be upfront about those things to create a better understanding.
Dr. Vogus has translated these ideas into his classroom setting in a class he teaches known as “Leading Teams and Organizations.” “On the first day, I have students prepare what we call a personal user manual. So, they write up about themselves and their communication and work preferences, their pet peeves, things they’re personally working to improve among other things,” he explains. “And then in class, they get assembled into diverse teams for the duration of the class, and they have time to share their user manuals with each other and then start to discuss how do we turn this into norms for how we’re going to work together. They have to talk through what those norms are.” He emphasizes that people can’t just simply assume what the other person wants and needs, but instead teams need to create space and time for being explicit about them.
Dr. Vogus attributes part of his inspiration for the user manual work in class to a company based in upstate New York called Ultranauts, whose workforce is 75% individuals who are neurodivergent.
Outside of the traditional classroom setting, Vogus is working with Sarkar and Nigel Newbutt, a professor at the University of Florida to tackle the intersection of technology and the double empathy problem. “What we’re doing is we’re developing what we call collaborative virtual environments. So, it’s where a neurotypical and a neurodivergent person work together on some kind of shared task,” Dr. Vogus explains. Just like within his case studies in the classroom, the research is creating a workplace context since in a traditional workplace interaction there will be things someone knows, and another person may not know. When there are breakdowns, they are hoping that the technology and educational interventions they are developing can intervene and help both neurodivergent and neurotypical people can better understand each other’s perspective, draw upon each other’s unique expertise, and collaboratively solve problems and conflicts and, in turn, create teams and workplaces that are more neuroinclusive.
From Pilot Projects to Real Change
Many institutions and companies have dipped their toes into neuro inclusion through small pilot projects. One significant issue is translating these pilot projects or neuro inclusive ideas to long-term real changes. How do you turn the research into significant practices? Dr. Vogus calls this the “billion dollar” question and admits it’s one of the most frustrating parts of his research.
In both his teaching and research, he often finds students and organizations enthusiastic about making a difference, only to discover that most examples of success in this area are extremely limited. “Ultranauts is a couple hundred people. That’s great but that’s a couple hundred people and we’re talking about something that affects millions of people.” Other promising models, like Rising Tide Car Wash or DXC Technologies, show sustainability over time, but not on a large-scale. Even major corporations like Microsoft have long running initiatives, yet aren’t truly neuro inclusive across the entirety of the company.
Vogus sees multiple paths forward. For one, he sees education and leadership training as promising. He is also a strong believer in neurodivergent-led startups. When neurodiversity is part of the founding DNA, it inevitably doesn’t have to be retrofitted later. Companies like Ultranauts offer a glimpse of what it looks like when inclusion is incorporated from the start.
Ultimately, generational change may play a key role. Vogus sees younger generations as a major source of hope. “There’s more language around neurodiversity through social media and other kinds of means… There’s just more familiarity,” he says. Classrooms are more inclusive and for many neurodiversity is no longer as foreign a concept.
Still transforming large organizations also requires more than just awareness, but it also takes imagination. Dr. Vogus explains that the issue isn’t always resistance, “Sometimes it’s a lack of imagination for what’s in the realm of the possible.”
Hope for the Future
Despite the challenges of obtaining meaningful neuro inclusion in organizations and on a wide scale, Dr. Vogus remains hopeful. Much of his optimism stems from his experiences in the classroom, particularly while teaching his MBA elective on neurodiversity and work. “The class was much larger than I expected, which made me happy,” he shared. Even more powerful than the numbers was the level of engagement with the material. Students, even those who were neurotypical, were engaged and deeply reflective. “In responses to the cases, discussion, and readings they were saying things like ‘Oh, this makes sense to me,’ or ‘This is something I would want to do as a manager, and it helps me too’.”
While other areas of diversity and inclusion have experienced recent backtracking or reframing, Vogus notes that neurodiversity efforts have largely continued. “I know that’s a low standard for hope,” he laughs, “but it’s important.” He believes that with more economic and policy certainty, efforts will continue to be ramped up. “What we, as academics in partnership with companies and self-advocates, need to do now is help companies figure out how to answer that billion-dollar question, how do you scale up?”
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