Confessions of a Neurodiversity Strategist: Why I Think “Labels” Are Expiring

On a recent episode of the Conscious Curiosity podcast by Conscious Clarity, Frank and I ended up in territory that usually makes HR teams a little uneasy.

We were discussing the now-famous 2017 Harvard Business Review article on neurodiversity at work. In many ways, that article helped move the conversation forward. It pushed employers to see that cognitive difference was not simply a problem to manage, but a source of value they had been overlooking.

But as we talked, I found myself saying something that sounds strange coming from someone in my line of work:

I think workplace labels like autism, dyslexia, and dyspraxia are slowly becoming too blunt for the future we actually need.

That does not mean those words are meaningless. They matter deeply in many contexts. They can help people make sense of their experiences. They can unlock support, diagnosis, community, language and relief. I would never dismiss that.

But in the workplace, I increasingly think our over-reliance on labels may be starting to hold us back.

My “Oppenheimer” moment with online quizzes

Part of the reason I think this comes from a mistake I made myself.

Earlier in my career, I built a range of online characteristic quizzes to help people identify possible neurodivergent traits. My intention was good. I knew how inaccessible formal diagnosis could be: expensive, slow, confusing and often emotionally exhausting. I wanted to make self-discovery easier.

Instead, I had what I now think of as my Oppenheimer moment.

The quizzes exploded. Millions of people used them.

And I hated it.

Not because I did not want people to explore themselves, but because I realised how dangerously simplistic the process could become. Most people do not search for an autism or dyslexia quiz on a calm Tuesday afternoon because life is going brilliantly. They search because something feels hard. They are tired, confused, overwhelmed or looking for answers.

In that state, almost everything resonates.

It is a bit like going grocery shopping hungry. Suddenly everything looks relevant.

That experience taught me something important: labels are often clumsy tools when they collide with the full complexity of a human being. They can illuminate, yes. But they can also flatten.

The danger of replacing stigma with stereotype

I also think we are in a strange moment culturally.

For decades, neurodivergent people were told some version of the same story: you are disordered, deficient, difficult, less-than. The response to that was understandably a strengths-based correction. We started to talk about creativity, innovation, pattern recognition, hyperfocus and different ways of thinking.

That shift was needed.

But sometimes the pendulum swung too far into what I call the X-Men problem.

Suddenly, every autistic person is described like a coding savant.

Every dyslexic person is framed as an entrepreneurial visionary.

Every ADHDer is rebranded as a creative tornado of brilliance.

I understand why that happened. People were desperate for narratives that felt less cruel. But it is still a trap.

I am not an X-Man.

I do not have magical powers.

And neither do most people.

When labels become tightly linked to idealised strengths, they are still being used as stereotypes. They just sound more flattering.

That is not liberation. It is rebranding.

Labels are useful in medicine. Work is different.

I want to be careful here, because context matters.

In medical or clinical settings, labels absolutely have a role. If you break your ankle, you want the clinician to identify the fracture, not compliment your flexibility. Deficit-based language can be appropriate when the goal is treatment, legal clarity or clinical understanding.

But work is different.

In the workplace, the question is rarely:

“What category does this person belong to?”

The better question is:

“How does this person work best, where is the friction, and what design changes would help them do good work?”

That is a very different frame.

And it is one reason I think labels are becoming less useful as the end point of workplace thinking.

The future is not label-free. It is less label-dependent.

To be clear, I do not think workplaces are about to abandon diagnostic words overnight. Nor do I think they should pretend they do not exist. Many people rely on those labels for legal protection, self-understanding and access to support.

What I do think is this:

The most mature workplaces of the future will become less label-dependent.

They will stop asking:

• “What are autistic people like?”

• “What do dyslexics need?”

• “How do we manage ADHD staff?”

And start asking:

• “What conditions help this individual think clearly?”

• “Where is the overload in this workflow?”

• “What is this person unusually strong at?”

• “What gets in the way of that strength showing up consistently?”

• “What does this team’s cognitive mix need from the environment?”

That is a much better conversation.

The spiky profile is more useful than the category

This is why I keep coming back to the idea of the spiky profile.

A spiky profile accepts that most people are not evenly skilled across all areas. Some things are easy. Some are hard. Some are unusually strong. Some create disproportionate drag.

That is true of everyone, but it is often especially visible in neurodivergent people.

The problem is that labels tempt us to assume too much too quickly. We see “autism” and think one thing. We see “dyslexia” and think another. We start guessing before we start listening.

The spiky profile pulls us back into a more honest question:

What does this actual human being find easy, hard, energising, draining, natural or effortful?

That is far more useful at work than a neat diagnostic box.

Because no two dyslexic people are identical.

No two autistic people are identical.

No two people with ADHD are identical.

And yet many workplace conversations still behave as though the label has told us most of what we need to know.

It has not.

The real goal is not better categorisation. It is better design.

This is probably the heart of my argument.

The future of neuroinclusion is not going to be won by getting better at categorising people. It is going to be won by getting better at designing work.

Better:

• communication

• meetings

• onboarding

• feedback

• workflow

• flexibility

• prioritisation

• sensory awareness

• clarity around expectations

When those things improve, the environment becomes easier not just for “neurodivergent staff” as a category, but for actual humans with different profiles, pressures and ways of processing the world.

That is why I increasingly think the real destination is not a workplace where everyone wears the right label.

It is a workplace where people need the label less in order to be understood well.

Why this makes some people uncomfortable

I understand why this view makes people nervous.

Some worry that moving beyond labels means erasing identity.

Others worry it will weaken legal protection.

Others hear it as a denial of lived experience.

That is not what I mean.

I am not anti-label.

I am anti-laziness with labels.

I am against the idea that once we know the word, we know the person.

I am against employers treating diagnosis as the main unit of understanding.

I am against replacing one stereotype with another and calling it progress.

The label can be a door.

It should not be the whole room.

What I think comes next

My prediction is not that autism, dyslexia or dyspraxia will disappear from human language.

It is that in good workplaces, these words will become less central to the actual design conversation.

They will still exist.

They will still matter.

But they will not do as much of the heavy lifting.

Instead, the best employers will focus on:

• individual working patterns

• team-wide cognitive diversity

• practical friction points

• strengths that are specific, not assumed

• environments that make better work possible for more people

That is a more sophisticated future.

And I think it is already starting.

The most innovative organisations are not waiting for diagnostic manuals or HR trend reports to catch up. They are already moving from category-based thinking toward design-based thinking.

That, to me, is where the real opportunity is.

Final thought

So yes, this may sound like a strange confession from a neurodiversity strategist.

But the more I do this work, the more convinced I become that labels are useful starting points and dangerous finishing points.

They can help people feel seen.

They can unlock support.

They can create language where there was once only confusion.

But they can also become shortcuts.

And shortcuts are rarely where good inclusion lives.

The future is not about pretending labels never mattered.

It is about building workplaces good enough that people are understood as full human beings, not just managed as categories.

That is the shift I care about most.

You can listen to the full Conscious Curiosity episode here: Neurodiversity at Work & Promoting Balance Beyond the Buzzwords.

Credit to Conscious Clarity for hosting the conversation.

For more reflections like this, explore the Divergent Thinking blog or learn more about our workplace neuroinclusion work.