The following is the unpublished Postscript from the Book Modernising HR for Variant Minds: Autism - The Monotropic Mind. At the time of publication I was not comfortable with adding it to the book, so I cut it. Alas, some have said I should have left it in… so here it is.

(Available on Apple Books and Kindle).

Postscript: A Personal Reflection

I have to say, this book has been the hardest one for me to write so far. (Mind you, the future one on personal relationships is the one I’m really dreading!) The reason is pretty simple - how do I explain Autism to a world of HR people when society has gotten Autism all wrong?

Let me use a metaphor here (and I do this a lot, because it’s often the easiest way to help people understand something). It’s akin to calling coffee “normal” or “what most people drink.” Now, how do you describe tea? Or juice? Or water? Or the hundreds of other beverages one can have. Sure, there are lots of different coffees and ways to make coffee, but coffee is still coffee, compared to other drinks. So how do you write practical strategies for accommodating minds that could be anything except what we’re used to? Every single Autistic person is different from every other Autistic person. And that’s exactly the problem when companies try to hire Autistic people - most managers don’t understand us, most don’t think like us, and most can’t figure out why we act the way we do or what we need.

But then I reminded myself - that’s not really what this book is about. This book is about changing how businesses see Autistic people. Not as problems to fix or people to feel sorry for, but as valuable employees who think differently and can help companies do better. And if I stick with the established diagnostic traits only, then I can somewhat generalise some strategies … albeit, in reality, each person, each workplace, each leadership team will need nuanced refinement.

Writing about Autism today comes with some real challenges that go way beyond just workplace best practices. We’re living in a time when reality TV shows have turned Autism into entertainment. People watch these shows and think they understand what Autism is really like. Add to that the political climate over the past few years - that hasn’t helped either. It’s made some people question whether invisible disabilities are even real.

What really bothers me is how the media keeps trying to connect Autism with things like Down Syndrome or Williams Syndrome. Head on over to Google Images and search for “Autistic person” … more than half the results show images of people who have these conditions. It’s not because society wants to understand Autism better - It’s because people seem to need to see something different about a person before they’ll believe that person has a disability. Autism is seen as people who cannot function in life, that their disability means they walk around perpetually with noise-cancelling headphones on, that they are non-verbal and prone to “tantrums” … and while ASD Level 3 is truly difficult to support, it makes up smaller fraction of people who have been diagnosed with ASD. This book is not about that though - and even though the full spectrum of Autism deserves more informed attention than it currently gets - this book is about the larger portion of Autistic people who can work, who want to work, but have to navigate systemic thinking that impedes, and in many cases blocks, them from achieving successful working careers. This book is about a corporate society that is too comfortable in normality to understand that not being like others is where innovation is born, where excellence is born, where real advantage over normal-seeking competitors can drive phenomenal success.

And it’s not only the media misrepresenting Autism - there are also individuals who weaponise it as an excuse for inexcusable behaviour. The executive who mistreats employees and claims it’s their Autism. The public figure who engages in harassment and points to their diagnosis as justification. Autism is a set of observable traits, namely: a) persistent differences in social communication and interaction across contexts; and, b) restricted or repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests, or activities. Nowhere in that definition will you find ethics, morality, compassion, or malice - yet those who happen to possess both terrible character and Autism will blame the latter for the former. And the media will lap it up and run with it. I’ve noticed that most of these public bad actors also happen to have brown hair - so should we conclude that all people with brown hair are unethical? It’s ludicrous, yet this correlation-as-causation thinking persists because sensationalism sells, and too many people are buying.

And then there’s this thing that drives me crazy - people keep saying “everyone is a little Autistic.” I’ve written about this in my other books, Autistic influencers post about it on social media, and it just won’t go away. Even my closest friends have said this to me, even after I’ve explained why it doesn’t make sense. So now I usually ask them: “Close your eyes. What do you see?” They’ll say something like “nothing” or “darkness.” Then I say: “Well, by your thinking, blind people aren’t really disabled because everyone sometimes can’t see things!” I know it sounds harsh, and I don’t mean any disrespect to people with other disabilities. But sometimes you need a strong example to help people understand that invisible disabilities are real. And inevitably they’ll say “that’s not the same thing.” So here’s another example: Crohn’s disease, a debilitating condition of the digestive tract that causes intense and painful spasms and often leads to unexpected bouts of diarrhoea. It’s not a visible disability - but try to sit in a meeting when your digestive tract has its own agenda. Everyone has diarrhoea now and then - so it can’t be a disability, right? What makes a condition a disability is that it significantly impacts a person’s ability to function and requires meaningful support for that person to live a humane life. Autism is a disability - it’s included in many countries’ laws under their disability legislation. And yes, Autism is a set of diagnostic traits that many, if not most people may have - but what makes ASD “real” is that Autistic people need to navigate those traits every waking moment of their lives.

But here’s what most people don’t grasp about what makes Autism a disability: it’s not the traits themselves that disable us - it’s the world’s refusal to accept different ways of being. An Autistic person who processes information differently, who communicates directly rather than through layers of social convention, who finds comfort in routine and logic - none of these things are inherently disabling. What disables us is working in environments designed exclusively for neurotypical minds, being judged as “difficult” or “unprofessional” for communicating honestly, facing rejection for not performing the elaborate social theatre that everyone else seems to know the script for. The disability isn’t in our neurology - it’s in a society that mistakes difference for deficiency and conformity for competence - and the ostracisation that comes with that. We’re disabled by exclusion, by assumptions, by workplaces that could accommodate us but choose not to because “that’s not how we do things here.” That’s what makes Autism a disability in the legal sense - not because we’re broken, but because the world around us refuses to make room for minds that work differently.

I’ve often seen the explanation of a disability as a graphic where 3 people are standing by a fence trying to look over it. The first person is a lot shorter than the fence. The second is just as tall as the fence. And the third person is taller than the fence. This graphic is often used to describe that disability support is not about equality in resources, but rather equity in outcomes. That supporting the shorter person will need two boxes to get them as tall as the third, and the second person only needs one box to stand on. This anecdotal explanation tries to show that support varies depending on the severity of the disability. And this leads me to the second thing that really gets me angry - when people say things like “you’ll just have to mask more” or “can’t you just try harder to fit in?” or “everyone has to adapt at work.” This is akin to asking that short person in the fence graphic to jump up and down more so that they can see over the fence. And you know what? They can, and I bet they do - the alternative is to just give up, right? One would not dare say to a wheelchair-bound person that they can just leopard crawl up the stairs, because they can do that. So why is it okay to ask an Autistic person to mask more when the act of masking is what causes their burnout, anxiety, mental health impacts, identity confusion, and eventual loss of authenticity? And therein lies the problem … we can, and we do, but what if we didn’t have to? What if we just got the right support, or our hurdles removed, so that we can have an equitable and just existence as other people do? What if, instead of expecting us to exhaust ourselves jumping - or in many cases, we simply give up - someone just gave us the box we need to stand on? Or better yet, what if we just tore down the barriers that shouldn’t be there to begin with?

The other societal habit I have a distinct distaste for is speaking about Autism as something on a simple scale. Terms like “high functioning” or “severe” Autism suggest a measurable ranking of people, but that view is superficial and fundamentally flawed.

Consider two people. The first was diagnosed early in childhood with more pronounced traits but received proper support and coping strategies from the beginning. The second had less apparent traits initially, so they went undiagnosed. Perhaps they lived a privileged life where circumstances naturally accommodated them, or perhaps they simply masked brilliantly. Then one day, something changes - a new job, a relationship breakdown, a pandemic, burnout. What worked before suddenly doesn’t, and their life collapses around them. Many never even discover why. Who is “higher functioning” here? The person with stronger traits who learned to navigate them, or the person with milder traits whose life fell apart? The question itself reveals how meaningless these labels are.

And here’s what those reality TV shows and dismissive politicians consistently miss: Autism rarely exists in isolation. Many Autistic people also have ADHD, anxiety disorders, dyslexia, or other conditions. Humans aren’t singular, neat categories. Saying someone is “just Autistic” is like saying a person has a left hand and therefore they are a left hand, full stop - as if the right hand, the legs, the brain, the heart don’t exist or matter. Yet this reductive thinking persists.

Even the diagnostic frameworks can’t agree on how to classify Autism. The US system uses three levels based on support needs. The European approach classifies people by cognitive and language abilities instead. If psychology itself hasn’t found a consistent way to categorise us, perhaps that should tell us something: Autism isn’t a ranking system of who’s “better” or “worse.” It’s just part of what a person is - one aspect of their humanity, not a measure of their worth or capability.

So why write this book at all when there’s so much misunderstanding to fight against? Because despite all the confusion out there, some companies are figuring out that when they support neurodivergent employees properly, those employees become some of their best workers. These companies aren’t doing charity work - they’re making smart business decisions. This book comes out of frustration, yes, but also out of hope.

These pages aren’t about feeling sorry for Autistic people or doing the “right thing” just to be nice. They’re about making your business better. When you stop valuing people primarily for their social conformity and start valuing them for their productive contributions, when you stop seeing Autism as a list of problems and start seeing it as a different way of thinking that can help your company, that’s when real change happens.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably already someone who cares about doing better. And whether you realise it or not, you likely have something many Autistic people don’t: the privilege of social advantage. Perhaps you’re a hiring manager who finds networking effortless, a leader whose communication style naturally aligns with corporate norms, an HR professional who instinctively navigates office politics, or someone with connections in other companies. That’s not a criticism - it’s an acknowledgment of reality. But with that privilege comes an opportunity, and frankly, a responsibility.

Help us. Use that privilege to hire the candidate who interviews awkwardly but has brilliant ideas. Use that influence to challenge the manager who dismisses someone as “not a culture fit” simply because they’re different. Talk to your connections in other companies about this book - recommend it. Better yet, speak to those connections about considering neurodivergent talent that their recruitment processes are currently blocking. Champion the Autistic employee who delivers exceptional work but struggles in open-plan offices. Push back when colleagues mistake directness for rudeness or routine for rigidity.

Start small if you need to. Implement even one strategy from this book. Question one assumption about what “professional” behaviour must look like. Defend one Autistic employee from criticism that’s really just coded language for “doesn’t conform.” Create one policy that values output over social performance. That’s how systemic change begins - not with grand gestures, but with people who have advantage choosing to use it to dismantle barriers rather than reinforce them.

We’re not asking for charity or sympathy. We’re asking you to recognise that innovation, excellence, and competitive advantage don’t come from everyone thinking the same way - they come from making room for minds that work differently. The way things have always been done isn’t the only way, and it’s often not even the best way.

Help us. Because we can’t do this alone.