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Mindset Matters: Strengthening Business Intelligence Through The Disability Narrative

This article is more than 4 years old.

To truly move the conversation forward and embrace the disability narrative as a tool for leadership and business strategy it is critical to have a greater awareness of where we are now in terms of re-contextualizing its meaning and giving it a new set of values that it has never been associated with before. The modern definition of disability has been marked by an evolution of thought from two very distinct archetypes beginning with the medical model and evolving to the more current definition through what is often referred to as the social model of disability. These models have laid the groundwork for how society has defined disability and one may argue limited its potential.

The medical model of disability developed from a biomedical perspective stating the idea that one’s disability diagnosis is directly correlated to an individual's physical body and presupposes that this disability may reduce the individual's quality of life and only through medical intervention, can this disability be diminished or corrected emphasizing the need for curing or managing illness or disability. Unlike the medical model, the social model of disability contends that disability is caused by the way society is organized rather than by a person's impairment or difference. It looks at ways of removing barriers that restrict life choices for persons with disabilities. It is from this social model where social activism took hold and the rise of civil rights became paramount leading to numerous pieces of legislation among them the Americans with Disabilities Act and the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.  

While these laws and policies are fundamental for the continued inclusion of persons with disabilities in the larger fabric of society there is a ripple effect within the business community that often gets minimized or seen as an afterthought. However, if we are going to expand the parameters of the disability narrative into the realm of the business lexicon this is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room that must be discussed. Despite best intentions, there is still a residual apprehension from business leaders. While there is a plethora of information out there from hiring practices to the value of employing persons with disabilities backed up by significant research and data points from reputable organizations such as Accenture and the American Association of People with Disabilities and others, there is still a relative fear from business leaders stemming from the fact that the social model of disability has intentionally or unintentionally created a culture of litigation to make sure that the rights of persons with disabilities are being maintained. While litigation certainly plays a vital role in creating a more just society, it also can place business leaders on the defensive resorting back to areas of cost/benefit analysis of accommodations and other areas that look at disability through a lens of limitation. This idea can lead down a very slippery slope creating a back lash that is based on a form of myopia that in the end will not benefit anyone.

Therefore C-level executives, entrepreneurs, founders and business educators must begin to broach the language of disability in a new way. Rather than seeing the limitations of disability, the new narrative should approach disability as an instrument of business intelligence that can be utilized to provide leadership a means to impact growth across a broad range of an organization providing new avenues for both change internally and a competitive advantage externally. By redefining the narrative and distinguishing the lived experience of disability in a different context it now has the potential to highlight the value proposition and in addition give disability a new power to expand societies framework and understanding.

 Steve Case, the Co-Founder of America Online wrote in his book The Third Wave: An Entrepreneurs Vision of The Future that “The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stone. It ended because we invented something better.”  This new disability narrative should be viewed as something potentially better, a disruptor to the status quo, a disruption to the way business is done and how leaders have seen disability in the past to how it may be seen in the future.


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