Something really interesting is happening in my office...
I work with adults with ADHD.
Many of them are smart, creative, strategic thinkers who have spent years struggling with things like drafting, organizing, summarizing, breaking a project into steps, or getting the email out the door.
Those difficulties can become so glaring that they obscure everything else the person brings to the table.
And lately, I’m watching AI change that equation.
Not by making ADHD disappear.
But by helping with some of the tasks that have historically created the most friction:
A blank page becomes a first draft.
A pile of thoughts becomes an outline.
A complicated project becomes a sequence of manageable steps.
An email that has been sitting unanswered becomes much easier to respond to.
And that has me wondering:
What happens when some of the weaknesses that have defined an employee’s performance become easier to build around?
Because many of the strengths I see in adults with ADHD every day are exactly the ones organizations say they want more of:
Creative thinking.
Pattern recognition.
Connecting ideas that other people don’t connect.
Challenging assumptions.
Seeing a problem from a different angle.
Reading the room.
For a long time, the cost of executive-function difficulties may have overshadowed the value of those strengths.
AI may finally change that balance.
What if we can increasingly build around some of those weaknesses—and create more room for the strengths?
Maybe the next conversation about ADHD at work isn’t simply about accommodation.
Maybe it’s about recognizing what becomes possible when we stop judging people primarily by the things technology can now help them do.