I’ve spent most of my career in strategy—chasing clarity, pulling threads, moving quickly from one idea to the next in search of something true. Insight doesn’t arrive in a straight line. It zigzags. It doubles back. It slides in sideways. And it hit me last week, mid-conversation with a client: there’s a good chance I’ve been doing all of this with undiagnosed ADHD.
Not in a dramatic, “everything suddenly makes sense” way—but in a quieter realization that the very thing that might be considered a liability in some environments has been a genuine advantage in this one.
The industry that rewards cognitive agility
Strategy, insight, innovation, agency work—whatever label you put on it—has a strange gravity. It seems to attract people who can jump from one idea to another without experiencing the mental whiplash that would exhaust or frustrate others.
In one day I bounced from pet care to IoT-enabled in-home care, from two pharma brands to a CPG food business. On top of that, I met with two creative directors and a qualitative research specialists all on different jobs with AFG. I'm not bragging about my day, simply stating that working in creative services like this often calls for "consistent inconsistency."
What ADHD looks like when it works
ADHD is often discussed in terms of deficits—attention, organization, consistency. And those challenges are real. But there’s another side that doesn’t get enough airtime, especially in creative and strategic fields.
When channeled (which I find happens in what I think of as Sprints), ADHD can show up as:
Hyperfocus on what matters
When something is genuinely interesting, focus doesn’t just appear—it locks in. Time slows down. Depth replaces distraction. This kind of immersion is gold in strategy work, where breakthroughs often come from staying with a problem longer than is comfortable.
Exceptional creativity and pattern recognition
Jumping between ideas isn’t always a bug—it’s a feature. Seeing connections others miss, synthesizing disparate inputs, and reframing problems quickly are foundational to insight generation. When we built CultureWaves in the early 2000's we called the people who could do this Long jumpers, cause they can take those big leaps from one disparate idea to another.
Rapid problem-solving in motion
Strategy rarely unfolds in perfect conditions. Deadlines shift. Inputs change. New information disrupts the plan. ADHD-wired minds often excel here, adapting on the fly and finding momentum instead of paralysis.
Resilience and comfort in ambiguity
Living with a brain that doesn’t always behave predictably builds muscle. Many people with ADHD develop an unusual tolerance for uncertainty and a capacity to keep moving even when the path isn’t fully clear.
Thriving in fast-paced, high-stakes environments
Crisis, change, pressure—these don’t necessarily shut things down. They can sharpen focus and provide clarity at a razors edge. It's not necessarily fight or flight but the recognition that transition/transformation might be imminent. I like to think about this like being on the balls of your feet mentally.
Not an excuse. A lens.
Calling this “Weaponized ADHD” isn’t about glorifying struggle or excusing behavior. It’s about recognizing that different cognitive styles bring different strengths—and that certain industries quietly benefit from minds that don’t operate on a single track.
When curiosity is aimed, when ideas are grounded, when teams are built to balance strengths, what might look like distraction from the outside becomes momentum from the inside.
A quiet realization
That moment with the client wasn’t an epiphany. It was more like a small click into place. This work—the jumping, the connecting, the reframing, the restless pursuit of insight—may not just tolerate synaptic nerves that operate this way, it may REQUIRE them.
And maybe the future doesn’t belong to the most linear thinkers—but to the ones who can move fast, think wide, and stay deeply curious without losing their footing. If nothing else, this explains why I have 30 browser tabs open!
