Autism Vox

Corporate “Idiot-savance”: Is your organization autistic?

by Kristina Chew, PhD on June 3rd, 2006

Max McKeown of Management-Issues asks “Is your organisation autistic?”. Drawing on recent neurological research on the brains of autistic persons—in particular, findings on “enlarged frontal lobes (the bit that does higher reasoning) and an undersize corpus callosum (the band of tissue linking right and left regions of the brain)”—McKeown suggests a parallel between the functioning of an autistic brain that has “too many connections that are local and not enough that are long-distance between regions” and “certain organic or social view of organisational shape and function.” If social relationships are considered, by analogy, to be like synpatic connections in the brain,

…. just like autism, having more of the wrong type of connections or an imbalanced set of connections is likely to cause problems with cognitive functions.

The brain/organisation is not, in this instance, a slow learner or unintelligent but it does suffer from unhelpful wiring that make it hard for individuals with autism to relate to others.

This might manifest itself in difficulty translating a stimulus (”come here!”) into an action (getting up and walking) without explicit, detailed instructions (”stand up”, “walk forwards”, “stop”).

Similarly, individuals within “autistic” organisations might have problems relating to functions other than their own or reacting to subtle competitive stimuli, meaning that they have to wait for a crisis (or crisis management) to force basic responses.

McKeown further considers social-network theory to support his autistic brain-autistic organization analogy.

Inside a network there are nodes (the people) and ties (their relationships) which, when added up, give a person his total “social capital”. Represent this in a diagram and it quickly becomes clear that smaller, tighter networks (lots of close connections) are less useful than networks with loose, wide ranging connections because the latter are more likely to suck in new ideas and throw up opportunities.

If graphically represented in a picture, the “social network” that McKeown describes here and the synaptic communication or mis-communication in the autistic brain might bear more than a little resemblance to each other.

What I find striking in McKeown’s analogy is his noting that it is the wiring—neurological in an autistic person, technological in a social network connected through MySpace, IM, email, and more—that can, so to speak, screw up the connections, whether between the parts of the brain or among individuals. However intelligent the individuals in the organization, or enlarged the brain’s frontal lobes are, the result may be a lack of connectivity, with the appearance of stupidity.

…… perversely, those organisations that are most in need of the brain expanding benefits of social network growth are those least likely to permit the use of such software and approaches at work - presumably because of an unhealthy blend of ignorance, desire for control, and prejudice.

Yet we need to communicate. Restricting individual competence to narrowly-defined areas - a form of corporate “idiot-savance” - is not enough to meet organisational objectives. At some point (sometimes it takes only a couple of people, occasionally only one) an organisation’s size outstrips it’s [sic] connective intelligence.

Charlie has always had a big head with a big brain. We are convinced of his intelligence, though Charlie’s difficulty (and frequent inability) to connect sensory data (a moving car in front of his bike, a sentence a teacher says) to his thoughts and perceptions of the world does result in him appearing to be of less than average intelligence.

It makes me wonder: Will we soon be hearing about MBA programs that offer courses not in business psychology, but in business neurology?

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POSTED IN: Language, Neuroscience, Work