How Neurodiversity Helps Solve Your Problems

Guildmaster uses a Dungeons and Dragons model for neurodiversity. I often speak of “fighters,” “rogues,” and “wizards” rather than directly talking about ADHD or ASD, as I think it helps us refocus efforts on the strengths of a diverse team rather than psychological diagnoses.

I self-identify as a rogue, and I’ve noticed many entrepreneurs do, too. Rogues are great opportunists, ideal for scouting ahead and pathfinding for the team, and can put together a plan that steals the treasure out from under the orcs’ ugly noses.

We can’t “tank” damage, though, and our actual output level is hard to gauge daily. We need fighters to help give us “space” to hatch our schemes.

I am not a wizard, though - they’re your team's mysterious and deep experts. The specialist’s specialist, in a way, they’re the complete opposite of rogues. They’re hard for me to understand and hard for me to advise you on.

But… I got to have an incredibly enlightening conversation with a Wizard I know and respect and got some key insights into how wizards can help your team.

We know wizards stereotypically can have deep expertise. However, they sometimes are alleged to lack social skills or seem angry and overly black-and-white. This comes from the wizard’s distaste for ambiguity.

If a rogue is in an ambiguous situation, they’ll fill in the gaps. We love ambiguity; it allows us to put our vision into action. When wizards see an ambiguous situation, they’ll point it out and ask questions. This approach is excellent!

Wizards make great product people because they will painstakingly find every single detail that needs filling in and point it out for you to fill in. They’re great architects because they can think of how a system goes wrong. And they’re holistic thinkers - not the way rogues are, where we can easily see larger systems and patterns due to being generalists - but rather because they literally can keep all the details in their heads and work them out.

Wizards are fantastic - great in startups/explore so long as their expertise is a core competency of the startup (even if it isn’t, it will be soon). Great at the middle/exploit phase as they begin to carve off key areas of competitive advantage. And great at large/execute phase as the company matures enough to host more wizards.