The values/capacity distinction here is the most useful thing I've read on this in a while, and I want to add one layer from my own lane.
The translation layer you're describing becomes significantly more expensive when cultural mismatch is also in play. A high-context communicator in a low-context organisation, or someone navigating a workplace whose unwritten rules are genuinely foreign to them, is already running a permanent background process before neurodivergence enters the calculation. The cognitive overhead isn't one translation layer - it's two running simultaneously, each drawing from the same finite capacity reserve you're describing.
Which has a practical implication your framework points toward but doesn't quite name: for people navigating both kinds of illegibility at once, the capacity question isn't occasional. It's structural. And "push through discomfort" versus "protect finite capacity" becomes a much harder distinction to make when you're never quite sure which tax you're paying.
Hi Caroline, thanks, as always, for sharing your thoughts! I love how you are extending my thoughts by adding the cultural dimension. I would like to loop @Marie-Christine Oliver, who also writes on neurodivergence, workplaces, and capacity. I’m sure she will enjoy your writing. Cheers!
Thank you Sven - always. The cultural and neurodivergent axes feel like they’re doing similar work from different starting points, which is probably why they keep showing up in the same conversations:)
The concept of translation layer is very interesting, and to be honest, I’ve never thought of it. Most of time you feel like you have to choose if be yourself or a masked inauthentic version that can be accepted by the organizational system, but both of them have a cost: on one hand, you risk to lose career opportunities and be marginalized, especially if you’re neurodivergent; on the other hand, it’s like to have a “cognitive transaction cost”, and you risk even more, that is going in burnout and losing yourself. Well, it's easier said than done to build that translation layer, but I will reflect on it.
Anyway, after I read your post, I got something: organizations work like “communication protocols”, so they don’t really reward value in itself, nor merit or effort. Instead, they reward the value that can be read by the system. This means that social capital relies more on visibility and readability than competence, and at the end of the day this explains why people who have less substance but greater social fluidity get best opportunities.
Let’s put it like this: professional performance is often a social technology for compressing ambiguity, so frameworks, slides, storytelling, and managerial rituals aren’t really needed to think better, but to make behavior predictable within complex systems. What do you think about this, Sven?
On the other hand, I can’t help but think that companies practically shift the cost of adapting to the dominant organizational protocol onto the worker, and this explains why diversity & inclusion in most cases bullshit is just, and people like me feel like they're being taken for a ride.
I can see things I have done through my time in employment, but without the foresight of what I was up to. It's good to have a clear explaination that I can deliberatley engage with.
Another great addition to the series
The values/capacity distinction here is the most useful thing I've read on this in a while, and I want to add one layer from my own lane.
The translation layer you're describing becomes significantly more expensive when cultural mismatch is also in play. A high-context communicator in a low-context organisation, or someone navigating a workplace whose unwritten rules are genuinely foreign to them, is already running a permanent background process before neurodivergence enters the calculation. The cognitive overhead isn't one translation layer - it's two running simultaneously, each drawing from the same finite capacity reserve you're describing.
Which has a practical implication your framework points toward but doesn't quite name: for people navigating both kinds of illegibility at once, the capacity question isn't occasional. It's structural. And "push through discomfort" versus "protect finite capacity" becomes a much harder distinction to make when you're never quite sure which tax you're paying.
Hi Caroline, thanks, as always, for sharing your thoughts! I love how you are extending my thoughts by adding the cultural dimension. I would like to loop @Marie-Christine Oliver, who also writes on neurodivergence, workplaces, and capacity. I’m sure she will enjoy your writing. Cheers!
Thank you for the shout out @Sven Brodmerkel (PhD) and for pointing out to @Caroline Klokmose’s newsletter, it is certainly worth a subscribe!💛
Thank you Marie-Christine, that means a lot - and thank you Sven for making the introduction. Looking forward to reading your work too!
Thank you Sven - always. The cultural and neurodivergent axes feel like they’re doing similar work from different starting points, which is probably why they keep showing up in the same conversations:)
Hi Sven,
The concept of translation layer is very interesting, and to be honest, I’ve never thought of it. Most of time you feel like you have to choose if be yourself or a masked inauthentic version that can be accepted by the organizational system, but both of them have a cost: on one hand, you risk to lose career opportunities and be marginalized, especially if you’re neurodivergent; on the other hand, it’s like to have a “cognitive transaction cost”, and you risk even more, that is going in burnout and losing yourself. Well, it's easier said than done to build that translation layer, but I will reflect on it.
Anyway, after I read your post, I got something: organizations work like “communication protocols”, so they don’t really reward value in itself, nor merit or effort. Instead, they reward the value that can be read by the system. This means that social capital relies more on visibility and readability than competence, and at the end of the day this explains why people who have less substance but greater social fluidity get best opportunities.
Let’s put it like this: professional performance is often a social technology for compressing ambiguity, so frameworks, slides, storytelling, and managerial rituals aren’t really needed to think better, but to make behavior predictable within complex systems. What do you think about this, Sven?
On the other hand, I can’t help but think that companies practically shift the cost of adapting to the dominant organizational protocol onto the worker, and this explains why diversity & inclusion in most cases bullshit is just, and people like me feel like they're being taken for a ride.
Thank you.
enjoyed the read.
I can see things I have done through my time in employment, but without the foresight of what I was up to. It's good to have a clear explaination that I can deliberatley engage with.