“The first query [in a survey of women] on  was: What intrinsic qualities do women have that give them a competitive edge over men? By an overwhelming margin, the trait they touted most was their multitasking expertise.

“‘I challenge any man to talk on the phone, send a fax, reply to an e-mail, change a diaper, get a toddler a snack, monitor what your school-age children are watching on TV and add to the grocery list — all at the same time,’ wrote Heather Lawrence, owner of Texas Stork in Hickory Creek, Tex.(http://www.texasstork.com), which rents ’stork announcement’ yard signs for new parents. Ms. Lawrence, who has two children aged 2 and 6, says her business makes about $1,000 a month, most of it pure profit.

“…Of 80 replies, 34 used the word ‘multitasking.’

“Aside from their juggling prowess, women say they are more intuitive than men, and thus more sensitive to nuance; are better problems solvers; have more energy; are more patient, and are more likely to share their know-how with one another.”

– Brent Bowers, in Women Take Off the Gloves and Come Out Multitasking, New York Times, July 18, 2007

Early in my first job out of college, I asked my boss if she would assign me to an interesting new project  that our company had just started.  Unfortunately, started. Unfortunately, she told me, it would be at least six months before there’d be a slot for me.

“Have patience,” she said.

“‘Patience’”, I asked. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know, but I’m told it’s a virtue.”

Though this conversation is now almost twenty years old, I remember it often, especially in the context of “play to your strengths.”  Many smart people suggest that in our careers, our twenties are a time for finding out what we’re good at and what we’re not — a time for trying to “fix” our weaknesses.  But by the time we’re in our 40s (or 50s, as my then-boss was), it’s time to play to our strengths.  Patience was not one of hers, and she didn’t put herself in situations where it was a critical success factor.

In some ways, the same advice applies for executives with attention deficit disorder: we have a nature that’s great at some things and lousy at others, and we should find (or create) environments that make the most of the good and that don’t penalize us severely for the bad.  That said, most (or at least many) executives with attention deficit disorder got their diagnoses later in life — sometimes years or even decades after being in the working world.  With these late diagnoses, we didn’t have the normal “learning sequence” of coming to understand, in our teens or twenties, what we were good or bad at.  Which is to say, we may have some catching up to do.  It may make plenty of sense to spend time “shoring up our weaknesses” (e.g., time management, communication skills, etc.) even if we’re well-established in a career that rewards our other strengths.

“If you want to know what is happening in the rest of the forest (and be in business fora long time), perch in different trees from time to time. Force yourself to travel to places you’ve never been before, shop in stores you never frequented before, eat in restaurants that you’ve never patronized, read books and magazines that are outside your specific industry, and attend trade shows of other industries.”

– Guy Kawasaki in Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services (1997).

How is this relevant to executives with attention deficit disorder? We can’t help but perch in different trees from time to time — sometimes from minute to minute!

Kawasaki’s point is this: our flitting about, our wandering, and our “aimless” explorations of new things are useful business traits. More importantly, Kawasaki is pointing out that many other business people should push themselves to do more of what we do naturally. In this, we have a competitive advantage.

Good breathing helps calm the mind and allows us to stay present during difficult moments when our attention might want to flee.

We knew that already, but in case you wanted a reminder written in heavy-duty scientific language, see the abstract, below. Now loosen that necktie!

Mechanisms of mindfulness: Emotion regulation following a focused breathing induction
Joanna J. Arch and Michelle G. Craske, University of California, Los Angeles.

Abstract

The current study investigated whether a 15 min recorded focused breathing induction in a normal, primarily undergraduate population would decrease the intensity and negativity of emotional responses to affectively valenced picture slides and increase willingness to remain in contact with aversive picture slides. The effects of the focused breathing induction were compared with the effects of 15 min recorded inductions of unfocused attention and worrying. The focused breathing group maintained consistent, moderately positive responses to the neutral slides before and after the induction, whereas the unfocused attention and worry groups responded significantly more negatively to the neutral slides after the induction than before it. The focusing breathing group also reported lower negative affect and overall emotional volatility in response to the post-induction slides than the worry group, and greater willingness to view highly negative slides than the unfocused attention group. The lower-reported negative and overall affect in response to the final slide blocks, and greater willingness to view optional negative slides by the focused breathing group may be viewed as more adaptive responding to negative stimuli. The results are discussed as being consistent with emotional regulatory properties of mindfulness.

in Behaviour Research and Therapy
Volume 44, Issue 12, December 2006, Pages 1849-1858

Hyperverbalism (rapid, non-stop talking) is a common symptom in people with attention deficit disorder. For the executive with ADD, the effects of hyperverbalism are at least twofold: (1) it impedes the ADDexec’s ability to listen and (2) it hampers the ability to understood.

Hyperverbalism is also a known symptom in several disorders, including bipolar disorder, autism (including Asperger’s Syndrome). Michael Bartos, MD, has an interesting list of ten similarities (and ten differences) between ADHD and bipolar disorder, available in this article at BipolarCentral.com.

A related term is logorrhea,* which Merriam-Webster defines as “excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness”. Dorlands Illustrated Medical Dictionary in MerckSource.com defines logorrhea as “excessive volubility, with rapid, pressured speech; as seen in manic episodes of bipolar disorder and in some types of schizophrenia” and lists several synonyms: agitolalia, agitophasia, pressured speech, tachylalia, tachyphasia and verbomania.

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*Fun fact: Fourteen-year-old Nupur Lala spelled “logorrhea” to win the 1999 Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee.

On executive behavior at strategic planning retreats, Dick Levin comments:

“I’ve observed that whenever you get a high-powered bunch of people together in a nice environment, away from all the mundane issues of running an organization, and ask them to consider futures, that setup presents an almost unavoidable temptation to bullshit. Bullshitting with intelligent people about where we ought to be ten years from today is a lot of fun, awfully stimulating, and sometimes unavoidable. Granted, we are at the retreat to do creative dreaming. But the difference between creative dreaming and bullshit is focus. So publish an outline [before the retreat starts], focus sharp, and knock off the bullshit.”

– Dick Levin in The Executive’s Illustrated Primer of Long-Range Planning(1981).

I was fortunate to take an MBA class from professor Levin just before he retired from teaching. He was an “old school” professor of management who leaned as much on data acquired from his own business experience as he did from data pulled from carefully designed surveys or government and industry reports.

The Executive’s Illustrated Primer of Long-Range Planning is not essential ADDexec reading, but it does a nice job of reminding executives in 2007 that not everything in business is about formulas. In fact, executives with attention deficit disorder might appreciate how Levin affirms the sometimes-neglected functions of intuition, observation, and not doing things the same way as everybody else (while also making sure you’re looking at the whole picture). Many of the book’s details are no longer true or relevant — business has changed since 1981* — but it’s a worthwhile read if you like incisive commentary on topics that newer texts sometimes ignore. Amazon has used copies of The Executive’s Illustrated Primer of Long-Range Planning from $0.01 plus S&H.

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*context: the National Institute of Mental Health had cataloged and named “attention deficit disorder” only one year prior!

“Of course, [Warren] Buffett isn’t the only person to have realized the power of building his life around his strengths. Whenever you interview people who are truly successful at their chosen profession–from teaching to telemarketing, acting to accounting–you discover that the secret to their success lies in their ability to discover their strengths and to organize their life so that these strengths can be applied.”

–Now, Discover Your Strengths, Buckingham & Clifton (2001), recently updated as StrengthsFinder 2.0: A New and Upgraded Edition of the Online Test from Gallup’s Now, Discover Your Strengths (2007).

ADDexec relevance: the authors identify 34 types of strengths in their system of “StrengthsFinder themes”, of which four seem to be typical of many ADDexecs:

“Activator: people strong in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.”

Adaptability: People strong in the Adaptability theme prefer to “go with the flow.” They tend to be “now” people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.

“Empathy: People strong in the Empathy theme can sense the feelings of other people by imagining themselves in others’ lives or others’ situations.

“Ideation: People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.”

One nice feature of this book is its section on how to manage people who have these different strengths. For each strength, the authors give a page of tips, such as these:

“How to Manage a Person Strong in Adaptability

• “This person lives to react and respond. Position him so that his success depends on his ability to accommodate the unforeseen and then run with it.

• “With his instinctively flexible nature he is a valuable addition to almost every team. When balls are dropped or plans go awry, he will adjust to the new circumstances and try to make progress. He will not sit on the sidelines and sulk.

• “Be ready to excuse this person from meetings about the future, such as goal-setting meetings or career-counseling sessions. He is a “here-and-now” person and so will find these meetings rather irrelevant.”

Whether or not you agree with the authors’ recommendations, you may find them useful perspectives as you consider managing individuals with their different strengths, or as you consider telling others (or yourself) how to manage your own ADDexec self.

It is a damn poor mind indeed which can’t think of at least two ways to spell any word.

– Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States (1829-1837)