In today’s New York Times, commentary on the emergence of Michael Phelps as icon for kids with attention deficit disorder, and how people perceive ADHD and other disorders:

On the one hand:

The notion that a disability can be harnessed in a positive way is not a new concept. Last year, a study found that 35 percent of the small-business entrepreneurs surveyed identified themselves as dyslexic. The researchers concluded that dyslexia made them better communicators and problem solvers, more likely to delegate authority.

…

“We want to tell children, ‘You’ve got a difference, but not a disease,’ ” he said. “Michael Phelps is one of any thousands of examples of mega-successful people, C.E.O.s and brain surgeons and famous writers, inventors and entrepreneurs, who have A.D.H.D.”

On the other:

Other experts, however, say that while such success stories can be inspiring, parents need to know that their children face real risks. Research shows that children with attention deficit have different brain patterns from other children, and that they are more likely to drop out of school, be involved in car accidents and use illicit drugs.

…

Ms. Knochenhauer, who has four children with the disorder, says they too were inspired by the astonishing performance of Mr. Phelps in Beijing. But she added, “I would argue that Michael Phelps is a great swimmer with A.D.H.D., but he’s not a great swimmer because he has A.D.H.D.”

Dr. Koplewicz, of N.Y.U., agreed. “There are lots of children in the world who have chronic illnesses or disorders like diabetes, allergies or dyslexia who accomplish great things in spite of the fact that they have these disorders,” he said. “I worry when we say A.D.H.D. is a gift, that this minimizes how real it is.”

Tara Parker-Pope, A New Face for ADHD.  And a Debate, New York Times, 24 November 2008.

I like Hallowell’s comment that ADHD ought be considered a “trait”, with all the pluses, minuses, and non-relevants that a trait can be.  As for the research into small business, the 35% dyslexic number is shockingly high to me.  I’ve wanted to do a similar survey for small business owners and ADHD.  If anyone would like to fund it, please email me!

Various websites have noted that champion swimmer Michael Phelps is a high-performing adult with ADHD. I’m inspired by his ability to focus in training for what I consider a remarkably monotonous activity.

Phelps’ mother advocates for others with ADHD through the community ADHDmoms on Facebook. Note that Phelps is not affiliated with ADHDmoms.com, which is just a link-aggregator for people looking for ADHD stuff.

This blog occasionally mentions how our ADD nature can be an advantage. But I hadn’t thought about this one:

As Major League Baseball begins to dig out from its steroids scandal, new kinds of performance-enhancing substances are sweeping big-league clubhouses: Ritalin, Adderall and other drugs designed to help with Attention-Deficit Disorder. According to records MLB officials turned over to congressional investigators as part of George Mitchell’s probe into steroid use in baseball, the number of players getting “therapeutic use exemptions” from baseball’s amphetamines ban jumped in one year from 28 to 103—which means that, suddenly, 7.6 percent of the 1,354 players on major-league rosters had been diagnosed with ADD.

One possible reason for this increase: in 2005 baseball banned the use of “greenies,” amphetamines that help players remained focused and energetic through the rigors of a 162-game season. Amphetamines were once as common as deli spreads in big-league clubhouses—in some, greenies were used to spike the coffee. Players are now seeking doctors’ prescriptions for ADD medications, usually Ritalin and Adderall, apparently to replace the now-illegal energy boosting drugs…

– Charles Euchner in Are players using an ADD diagnosis to evade the amphetamine ban?, Newsweek Web Exclusive. Feb 6, 200. Click title for full article at Newsweek.

This full article is worth a read for more than the tidbit, above.  There’s mention of athletic activity as “the best cure for ADD” via its emphasis on both exercise and focus.  There’s also mention of how the player’s working lifestyle (lots of travel, irregular schedules, and other things that match the experience of a business executive) fuel the symptoms of ADD.

“I don’t remember anybody’s name. Why do you think the ‘dahling’ thing started?”

- Zsa Zsa Gabor, quoted in The ADDed Dimension — Everyday Advice for Adults with ADD

From the Wall Street Journal’s review of The Education of an Accidental CEO: Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office

Obviously, Mr. [David] Novak’s pitchman fervor and people skills are joined to a traditionally shrewd sense of how to make a profit. Still, he seems to relish being the hyperkinetic iconoclast. He describes himself as “the one among the Brooks Brothers power suits with his shirttail sticking out.” The CEO says that he avoids working weekends if he can help it, so as to focus on family and relaxation, and it may be good for Yum that he does.

“Sometimes,” he confesses, “the worst thing that can happen to our company is me getting a free day in the office. I’m a creative guy and I can start dreaming up stuff to do when we haven’t finished what we started.”

– Richard Gibson in “Business Bookshelf: Pitchman in the Corner Office”, Wall Street Journal, October 24, 2007.

Yum Brands is one of the world’s largest restaurant companies, whose brands include KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco bell, Long John Silver’s and A&W.

Mental coach Dr. Richard Coop has worked with numerous top athletes, including the late Payne Stewart*. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Chapel Hill Magazine:

Chapel Hill Magazine: What kinds of demons did Payne face on the golf course?

Dr. Richard Coop: Payne was a deep thinker about golf. He was much smarter than a lot of people, but was also very impulsive. He had a bad case of ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder] and so we worked with that. One thing about athletes with ADHD is that they can hyperfocus when the tension level is high. They can sit for hours in front of a video game or perform in a major championship. I used to watch Payne’s eyes in a major championship and he was hyperfocused, but in the John Deere Classic, he wouldn’t show up mentally. That’s one of the things we really had to work on hard with him. When the intensity level wasn’t high, his mind would go on vacation. We had to find ways to make a challenge out of something that he didn’t think was a challenge.

The worst shot I saw him hit was a plain vanilla chip, just something simple that you or I could hit very easily. It was too easy. He would have three or four different ways of playing it and he wouldn’t commit to a specific way. He would get caught in between.

So I would have him call his shot out loud to his caddie to commit to himself and to another person, and to be responsible for his shot. If he had a shot where he had to stand on his head and flop it up over something, he was fantastic. And those were the ones he wanted to practice, like a basketball player who just wanted to practice H-O-R-S-E shots.

–David Droschak, The Mental Side of Golf (Well, what other side is there?), in Chapel Hill Magazine, July/August 2007.

In three paragraphs, Dr. Coop vividly describes what can happen to many executives with attention deficit disorder. We excel when we face big challenges that play to our ADD nature, but we fade quickly when our ADD has room to play and distract. Not long ago, a client told me about one of his former colleagues who “was never happy unless there was a crisis. Unless there was a fire to put out, she didn’t know what to do with herself.”

Naturally, I couldn’t “diagnose” the former colleague without knowing more, but I might hypothesize two things: (1) she didn’t have a plan, and (2) it would have been nice if someone had pointed this out to her. That said, “knowing” her problem wouldn’t necessarily give her a cure.

David Droschak may well have known something about ADD when he asked the question, “What kind of demons did Payne face on the golf course?” To know your demons is an important first step. But to actually deal with them requires much more. Professionals like Dr. Coop can be a massive help. And when the stakes are high enough (e.g., for a professional golfer or for a business owner or executive), the results are well-worth the expense.

*Payne Stewart died in 1999 due to an airplane malfunction. Full story here at About.com’s Payne Stewart bio.

In ADD in the Corner Office: Five Top Executives Discovered that an LD can be a Capitalist Tool SchwabLearning.org provides a nice article on five prominent CEOs with ADHD, dyslexia, or both. Though David Neeleman (one of the ADHD execs) has recently been removed from his CEO post at JetBlue, his accomplishments in founding and running the company for as long as he did are fully impressive and inspirational. The article opens:

“As students, they seemed to be heading nowhere — fast. A teacher hurled an eraser at one of them, and asked, “Time passes, will you?” Another graduated at the bottom of his high school class and was strongly advised by his principal to go into carpet laying. A third was labeled lazy by her teachers because she had trouble memorizing basic math facts. A fourth was a whiz with numbers but found reading a book a difficult task. The last was always falling behind in his schoolwork and concluded that he was stupid. “How am I going to be successful in anything if I can’t read and write?” he wondered.

“You might say that these nowhere kids turned their lives around. They are, in order, Alan Meckler, chairman and CEO of Jupitermedia; Paul Orfalea, founder of the copying empire, Kinko’s; Diane Swonk, a world-renowned economist; Charles Schwab, a pioneer in the discount brokerage business; and David Neeleman, founder and CEO of JetBlue Airways.

“Besides having difficulty in school, these executives share another thing in common: They all suffer from AD/HD or learning disabilities. Neeleman has AD/HD; Swonk, Meckler, and Schwab have dyslexia, and Orfalea has both. Each managed to turn his or her liabilities into assets on their respective career paths. If you have difficulty with organization, reading, or remembering math facts, these entrepreneurs prove that such limitations don’t preclude a bright future.”

Click here for full article at SchwabLearning.org.

The good news is that while ADD can be debilitating in children and other normal human beings, it is actually an asset in executives. I can’t imagine what corporate life would be like without it–sitting like a slug for hours attending to conversations, bending my nose to the grindstone as I tackle one aggravating duty after another…feh![Instead,] I’m…

* Often blurting out answers before questions are completed. Even when they’re wrong. I know many more wrong answers than right ones, and I like to offer them as often as I possibly can. I hate waiting to reply to people. It means that they’re talking and I’m not.

* Often interrupting or intruding on others. Have you ever known a senior manager who didn’t do this? You’ll be sitting in somebody’s office, having interrupted what they were doing, and another boss just strolls in and interrupts you interrupting the other guy, completely intruding on your intrusion! Man!

– excerpted from Stanley Bing’s Diagnosis: Executive ADD, Fortune Magazine, 31 May 2004.

This Bing guy seems to be onto something. Click link for the full article. You know, just as soon as you’re done interrupting somebody.

The “H” part of “ADHD” sometimes gets short shrift in the talk about adults with attention deficit disoder, but here’s an ADDexec (ADHDexec?) who takes plenty of advantage of his hyperkinetic nature.

“TODDLERS know Magnus Scheving, the boss of LazyTown Entertainment, as Sportacus. The hero of “LazyTown”, a children’s television programme that promotes healthy lifestyles, Sportacus lives in an airship, performs somersaults at the drop of a hat and spends his time thwarting the plans of the town’s lazy-minded villain, Robbie Rotten. The role fits Mr Scheving as snugly as Sportacus’s blue lycra suit. He has built a colourful business driven by his own cartoonish levels of energy. “I wasn’t made to sit at a desk,” he says, wriggling in his chair and constantly jumping up to scribble on a whiteboard, grab another piece of fruit or emphasise a point.”

The Economist quickly points out that movement isn’t all that Scheving is about:

“Restlessness should not be confused with a lack of focus. In his 20s, Mr Scheving and a friend challenged each other to succeed at a sport neither knew anything about. Mr Scheving wound up with competitive aerobics, became European champion twice and finished second in the world.”

It’s clear that Scheving has talent to spare — physical, creative, and intellectual. His success relies on harnessing and blending them all in a way that works, not only to create a great television show, but an entire brand built around not entertainment but an entire “lifestyle” for children.

reference: Fit for purpose in The Economist, Mar 29th 2007
From The Economist print edition

Equally important for me, I found that leaving headquarters got me away from the mundane, daily grind that left no space for insight, inspiration, or innovation. Instead of “chief executive,” I preferred the title of “chief wanderer.” While constant motion suited my constitution, it also fueled my creativity, which never seemed to flow in the office.

Kinko’s Founder Paul Orfalea in Copy That!, Fortune Small Business, September 2005

From Orfalea’s bio at the Library of Congress:

Orfalea’s success is especially impressive, in that he suffers from attention deficit disorder and dyslexia, and had struggled through school, failing two grades. In “Copy This!” Orfalea details how he used these potential disabilities to develop unorthodox approaches and create a culture at Kinko’s that made the company, according to Fortune, Forbes and Working Mother magazines, one of the best places to work in America.

For more on Orfalea, check out PaulOrfalea.com and his book tour webcast at the Library of Congress.