Robert D. Austin and Javier Busquets
Managing Differences
Discussion de cas sur les innovations:
Specialisterne
Autism is both a disability and a difference. We need to find ways of alle-
viating the disability while respecting and valuing the difference.1
—Simon Baron-Cohen, autism expert
The example of Specialisterne, its mission and accomplishments, inspire us at the
broadest human level. It’s a story about a father’s love and sacrifice for his son,
about members of society left behind and counted out who return in triumph.
About mothers moved to tears by the long-awaited and fervently hoped-for suc-
cesses of their children. And about good done for individuals that is also good for
us all.
The importance of such stories (as the pages of this fine publication demon-
strate, there are many others) has been widely agreed. According to The Economist,
social entrepreneurship was the hot topic among world leaders at the 2008 Monde
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.2 That entrepreneurship has taken a social
turn is an exhilarating fact both for the good it can do and for the new challenges
social systems and contexts present to conventional ideas about management.
Within such enterprises, we find unfamiliar business questions (Why do people
care for each other?) channeled within familiar frames (How can we design incen-
tives to make the most efficient use of such motives?). These questions, et d'autres
like them, invite us to reflect in new business-relevant ways on issues of our own
human nature and how we interact.
Thorkil Sonne started Specialisterne to create employment opportunities for
people like his young son, who had recently been diagnosed with autism. As an
expert in information technology, Sonne realized that some of the traits he
Robert D. Austin is Professor of Managing Creativity and Innovation at Copenhagen
Business School and Associate Professor (on leave) at Harvard Business School, où
he chairs the school’s executive program for Chief Information Officers. His new book
on managing in creative businesses will be published in 2009 by Stanford University
Presse.
Javier Busquets is Professor and Department Chair of the Department of Information
Systems Management at ESADE Business School.
© 2008 Robert D. Austin and Javier Busquets
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Managing Differences
observed in his child fit very well with the ordinarily tedious and exacting tasks
involved in software testing. Here was a job, he reasoned, in which people with
autism could excel, in which they could earn their own way without charity from
others. So he founded his firm as a for-profit business. But he quickly discovered
that the usual principles of business don’t extend seamlessly to social enterprises.
Conventional wisdom in marketing, Par exemple, didn’t help that much as he con-
sidered how the company should manage perceptions of its unusual mission.
Specialisterne’s social mission helped him get through the door to meet new
clients, but it also threatened to undermine perceptions of the firm’s capabilities
(because people assumed, wrongly, that clients would hire the company to do good
rather than because its consultants are good at what they do). Such unconvention-
al challenges stretch our thinking about marketing and business in ways that
advance our general understanding of those subjects.
En effet, there are many, similar reasons to examine this company, reasons that
don’t rise to the level of importance of the firm’s and founder’s overall accomplish-
ment, but that nevertheless offer other firms lessons that might apply to them.
Without taking anything away from Specialisterne’s larger significance, we’d like to
focus on one issue the company’s example suggests for all firms in an economy that
trends increasingly toward knowledge-based and innovation-based value creation:
managing differences. More specifically, managing people differences.
THE BENEFITS AND COSTS OF IDIOSYNCRATIC TALENT
One of our colleagues, a senior business school professor who serves on the boards
of directors for several large international firms, recently read a Harvard Business
School case we co-authored on Specialisterne;3 he immediately raised the follow-
ing issue:
The item that is hard to sort out in the case is how much (if any) of a cost
is being incurred by a customer to use these resources. Is it mostly break
even with extra coordination costs or are there significant economic
advantages? You tease out the issue but it is hard to know the economics
associated with it.4
In meetings we have attended, Thorkil Sonne, when asked why his company oper-
ates as a business instead of a charity, has always highlighted the advantages (à
everyone, staff and customers) of viewing the special skills of ASD consultants as
a source of competitive advantage, rather than as a disability to be overcome. If we
engage this point with seriousness and evaluate the firm as a business, on the busi-
ness value it creates, then an unusual feature of its interactions with client firms
demands closer examination: the extra support and extra management required of
both Specialisterne and the client firm when consultants have ASD.
Specialisterne must either absorb extra costs, those over and above what would
be incurred in this category by a firm that did not employ ASD consultants, or pass
these costs along to clients in the form of higher prices. Costs incurred directly by
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Robert D. Austin and Javier Busquets
Chiffre 1. Net benefit of working with Specialisterne.
the client, managing the fact that many ASD consultants cannot work full-time,
say, amount to extra costs of doing business. To justify the additional costs in busi-
ness terms, Specialisterne must provide additional business benefits. There is evi-
dence that they do; the company estimates that their consultants are more than
20% more effective than traditional testing consultants.
But the real question, as our colleague points out, is about relative magnitudes.
Is the extra 20 percent in benefits enough to offset the added costs? We can depict
this question graphically (voir la figure 1 au-dessus de).5
Events in the case—a client who departed for the lower prices of an alternative
firm eventually returned—suggests that B, the “profit” that arises from working
with Specialisterne, is greater than A, the “profit” that arises from working with a
“non-ASD” firm. In other words, Specialisterne can provide additional benefits
that exceed the additional costs they impose on clients. Our purpose here is not to
argue this point or further analyze benefit and cost accounting in work with
Specialisterne. Plutôt, we wish to point out how truly general this question of rel-
ative benefits and costs really is when you’re managing specially talented employ-
ees. It’s nothing unique to ASD consultants.
A manager at one of Specialisterne’s client companies made this point elo-
quently. He argued that managing Specialisterne’s ASD consultants had made him
a better manager of all his staff. Managing ASD consultants, he said, was about cre-
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Managing Differences
ating the conditions required to make these staff members most productive.
Working on that problem resulted in an epiphany for this manager. He realized
that the same approach could be applied to all his employees, especially the partic-
ularly talented ones. Many (but not all) of those, he observed, had eccentricities or
other idiosyncrasies of personality or behavior. Dans le passé, he’d regarded these dif-
ferences as inconveniences he needed to “put up with.” After working with
Specialisterne, he began to ask whether there might be ways he could improve the
performance of all his employees by adjusting their working conditions to better
suit their preferences and idiosyncrasies. Atypical behaviors at work did sometimes
create coordination difficulties and additional costs, but this manager reckoned
he’d be dealing with those no matter what.
The shift in his way of thinking, derived from his work with Specialisterne, cre-
ated a greater possibility of increasing benefits from talented employees, without
necessarily increasing any costs associated with their atypical practices. The costs
of accommodating the eccentricities he was already paying, he figured, so why not
get some more benefit for his trouble?
MANAGING GOLDEN GEESE
A software company CEO told one of us a story about an unexpected difficulty
with her most talented developer. This company had grown rapidly by helping
large financial institutions join the ranks of the Web-enabled, but now the Internet
bubble was collapsing and the number of substantial engagements dwindling. UN
major deadline loomed on the company’s biggest project for its best client, and no
one could say for certain that they would be able to meet the deadline. The client
had communicated with great certainty, cependant, that a delay would be unaccept-
capable. Developers across the company worked long hours, trying desperately to fin-
ish in time. Everybody knew: the project would make or break the young firm.
Within this pressure-cooker environment, the CEO felt helpless. She was not
technique. If she’d been able to help with coding she would have, but she couldn’t.
She settled for all manner of supportive activities. If a developer wanted a cup of
coffee, she went to get it so the developer could keep cranking. While being thus
supportive she accidentally discovered something that startled her: her best devel-
oper had been working for months on a pet project that had nothing to do with
the big client project—that, in fact, had nothing at all to do with her firm’s busi-
ness.
This best developer, it turned out, was an activist for the cause of open source
software. He opposed efforts to patent software and work on this cause routinely
occupied his time at work, as much as a third of his time in some recent weeks
(including the current one). This surprised the CEO. It surprised her even more
that the developer made no attempt to hide his work on the pet project. When the
CEO noticed it, the developer proudly explained all of his work on the project. Il
seemed to expect her to approve of his working for the common good (not just the
company’s good).
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Robert D. Austin and Javier Busquets
The CEO withdrew, unsure what to do. She was, in turns, distressed and infu-
riated. She thought about firing the developer. But she knew she couldn’t. He was
the best at the firm. Without him there would be no chance of making the big
deadline. The situation provoked a crisis in her confidence as a manager. She did
not know how to react.
We used this true-life scenario as fodder for a panel discussion on managing
talented employees at the 2005 Seattle Innovation Symposium at the University of
Washington.6 Frank Coker, President of Seattle-based Information Systems
Management Inc. and a panel member, immediately weighed in with a similar
account:
One of my key players…really wants to be a [professional] musician. Il
quit [another well-known company where he made a fortune from stock
options] and now he’s working for me 20 à 30 hours a week. And what
a deal I have! But I’ve got to be willing to let this guy go on the road, dis-
appear for a couple of weeks at a time, go record CDs. But he does great
travail, so it’s an opportunity. You’ve got to have some boundaries…but in
général, I’m okay with this.
Jonathan Roberts, Founder of Ignition Partners (a venture capital group) et
another panel member followed with a similar story and unique way of framing
the same issue:
I worked at Microsoft for 13 years and had a chance to work on a lot of
the great businesses there, and while there I developed the notion of a
tax. At the core of every product [is a really great developer]. These guys,
no offense to them, but they’re all a little odd. I’ve developed a notion
que [if you are one of these guys] you can extract a tax proportional to
your degree of contribution. So if you are the core developer on a proj-
ect, you can extract a pretty high tax. You’ve got to isolate it from the rest
of the team. But I’ve had meetings with people where I’ve said: “Your tax
is getting a little high.”
This is, bien sûr, the exact formulation expressed in our graphic, and a further
conceptualization of the concern raised by our business school colleague. Le
“tax” Roberts mentions is the extra cost you pay for working with employees who
have special characteristics. Contributions from these employees make the tax
worth paying, as long as it doesn’t get too high. It’s important to notice, cependant,
that this tax, as described by both of these experienced executives, is just part of
doing business, an inevitable aspect of management in a successful (technologie)
entreprise.
Such stories are far from unusual. They are, on the contrary, par for the course
in an innovation economy. In such an economy, people’s talents are idiosyncratic.
You could say that people’s talents are idiosyncratic in any economy, but in an
innovation economy the idiosyncrasies are linked vitally to what we particularly
value in these employees. Each person represents a portfolio of “features” relevant
to creating value. You don’t apply interchangeable units of labor to a task; plutôt,
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Managing Differences
you “cast” a group of variously talented “actors” particularly suited to their roles.
And you don’t get to choose among the features, only among the people. Comme
DeMarco and Lister put it in their classic book Peopleware7, you can’t call down to
HR and ask for another John Smith who is a little less snippy than the last one they
sent up. Suppress idiosyncrasy and risk suppressing talent also.
There’s a larger reason why people’s whole selves have become more important
to value creation in an inno-
vation economy. Innovation
is about producing novelty
that differentiates a product,
service, or company. In a
world that grows ever smaller
as communication networks
expand and improve, ce
differentiation must increas-
ingly be world-class. Not just
a little better but a lot better.
Differentiation that is a lot
better requires going beyond
reliable step-by-step proce-
dures, performed over and
over by interchangeable “Full
Time Equivalents.” Apologies
to Larry Bossidy, but world-
class differentiation is often
about more than mere execu-
tion.8
The management behaviors
involved in working with
Specialisterne might be some of
the same behaviors you need to
develop the capabilities of
employees to their fullest.
Working with this company is
about looking at reality
differently, about care, tolerance,
respect, and also business
value—it might even be a path
to a vital education in the
evolving nature of management.
As the leader of a world-
class string quartet once said,
it’s about going beyond mere
technical competence to achieve artistry.9 And, as this same string quartet leader
also makes clear, the people who can take you to the heights of differentiation don’t
always arrive in the most convenient packages.
Sometimes they are software activists. Or musicians. Or consultants with some
form of autism. Most of us grow up in communities where people have much in
common; we establish “social circles” and we engage in relationships with people
like ourselves. Differences challenge us in the way we build trust. In a world in
which people engage in activities that involve people different in many aspects, le
Specialisterne example invites us to think of the extent to which management
requires building relationships and business requires grounding activities on tol-
erance and respect for others—making successful management of differences a
true competitive advantage.
In the software CEO’s case, she managed to have a conversation with her best
developer in which she delivered a message that could reasonably be approximat-
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Robert D. Austin and Javier Busquets
ed by “Your tax is getting a little high.” They hit their deadline, and went on to
greater future success. She survived her crisis of confidence and trust and emerged
a better manager.
NOT BUYING PEOPLE’S TIME
We’ve been talking about idiosyncratic key employees, “golden geese” if you like.
But the point is even more general. Another of our business school colleagues,
Dick Nolan, a former principal in what was then, before its sale to another compa-
ny, the world’s foremost independent IT strategy consulting firm (Nolan, Norton,
& Co.), makes the more general point in a story about his interactions with a client
designing a new building for its IT group.
When the architects delivered the building design, the IT managers revolted.
The architects, it seems, had not sufficiently taken into account the managers’
desires to be able to “oversee” the work being done by their people. The managers
forced a redesign, a change to the building so that manager offices on a level above
looked down upon the main working area, a sea of cubicles, through glass walls.
These changes cost a lot. But when the building was finished and everyone moved
dans, the managers discovered something that Dick had tried to tell them and that
should have been obvious from the beginning: watching people type from a van-
tage high above didn’t really tell anyone very much about what or how well people
were doing. The only information really available in looking down from offices was
whether people were sitting at their desks. Managers were further disappointed to
realize that this is also not what they cared about most.
In an earlier time, in an earlier economy, time spent at your “station,” whether
a desk or a position on an assembly line, meant more. You had to be there to do
the work. The rate at which the work could be done was determined not by the
individual’s capabilities but by the overall process design—the speed of the line, pour
exemple. For a lot of work in the innovation economy, this is just not true any-
plus. You are, as Dick puts it, no longer buying people’s time. You are, plutôt, buy-
ing their special skills, inclinations, talents; their resourcefulness, their smarts, their
résultats. As a manager, your job has to be to tap those aspects of work that matter
most. Often this will involve creating the conditions in which people can be most
productive. And these conditions will not be the same for all the people on whom
you depend to create business value.
You could think of the demand to accommodate special needs as a tax. But you
should also accept that paying it is part of being a manager in the world into which
we are headed. Maybe your especially talented worker has ASD, or maybe he’s an
aspiring musician who goes on the road, or a single parent who needs to leave early
some days to pick up his children. Elton Mayo, the eminent Harvard behavioral
researcher, established three-quarters of a century ago that there is a relationship
between people’s productivity (and morale) and the conditions in which they
travail. Since then, much nuance has been added to those initial findings, mais le
essential message to managers unsettled by a worker’s special needs remains the
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Managing Differences
same: get used to it. Or, better still, get good at it.
Perhaps there are many potentially golden geese among your employees—if
you are a good enough manager. The management behaviors involved in working
with Specialisterne might be some of the same behaviors you need to develop the
capabilities of employees to their fullest. Working with this company is about look-
ing at reality differently, about care, tolerance, respect, and also business value—it
might even be a path to a vital education in the evolving nature of management.
1. Fradd, UN. et moi. Joie (2007) “A Life Less Ordinary: People with autism, a guide form donors and
funders,” www.philanthropycapital.org, accessed September 24, 2007, p.11.
2. “Mountain Meltdown,” Janunary 29, 2008, The Economist, http://www.economist.com/busi-
ness/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10596943
3. “Specialisterne: Sense & Details,” Robert D. Austin, Jonathan Wareham, and Javier Busquets, HBS
Case # 608-109, Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2008.
4. Personal e-mail communication with Robert D. Austin, Février 6, 2008.
5. Adapted from “Specialisterne: Sense & Details Teaching Note,” Robert D. Austin, Jonathan
Wareham, and Javier Busquets, HBS Case # 608-110, Boston: Harvard Business School
Édition, 2008.
6. Streaming video of this session is available on the web; see “The Organizational Dilemma of
Television,
University
de
Creators,»
Stewards
http://www.uwtv.org/programs/displayevent.aspx?rID=4858.
Washington
et
7. Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, New York: Dorset
Maison, 1999 (2nd edition).
8. We refer to Mr. Bossidy’s book with Ram Charan, called Execution: The Discipline of Getting
Things Done, New York: Crown Business, 2002.
9. “Paul Robertson and the Medici String Quartet,” Robert D. Austin, Shannon O’Donnell, Harvard
Business School Case # 607-083, Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2007.
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