Everyone’s heard of neurodiversity by now. Almost nobody’s asking what happens on a Tuesday morning when someone’s just trying to get their work done.

In this episode of The Shift, we sit down with Shawn Utterback, founder of NeuroTalent Connect, to talk about why so many workplace “performance problems” are actually design problems — and why building for clarity ends up working better for everyone, not just neurodivergent employees.

We get into:

• Why “culture fit” is really just comfort and conformity in disguise — and what changes when companies hire for culture add instead
• The DEI committee conversation nobody thought to have — and why it became one of the most-attended sessions his last company ever ran
• Masking, and the hidden cost of spending your energy decoding the workplace instead of doing the work
• The curb-cut effect — why captions, ramps, and clear documentation weren’t built for everyone, but end up helping everyone anyway
• AI as a two-edged sword: it can shrink cognitive friction, or just help bad workplace design move faster
• Building Workplace by Design, his in-beta “People OS” — and why he shipped a rough version instead of waiting six months for a perfect one

Because you can’t hire for cognitive diversity and then manage for conformity. Fix the system. Don’t fix the person.

Connect with Shawn:

LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnutterback/

NeuroTalent Connect — https://www.neurotalentconnect.com/