Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel, never ending or beginning, or an ever-spinning wheel, like a snowball down a mountain or a carnival balloon, like a carousel that's burning, running rings around the moon, like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face, and the world is like an apple whirling silently in space, like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind. Like a tunnel that you follow to a funnel of its own, down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone. Like a door that keeps revolving in a half-forgotten dream, or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream. Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face, and the world is like an apple whirling silently in space. Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind. Those are the famous lyrics of the song Windmills of Your Mind, which still resonates today. When a child is born, no matter where or to whom, the neurological brain structure is formed without being seen. There are some forms of brain and mind creations that the medical professions like to systematize. For example, how old the child is when it speaks or forms language. Chomsky believed that a child has a language template inherent in their early brain formation. But children are unique and their development is enhanced or hindered by their surroundings. As we know, at times parents can do all they can and not recognize the limited or overdeveloped structural formation which in this our modern world can enhance you or hinder any child. We are now expecting children to be the proverbial square peg in a round hole and for all people to learn in a certain way. Through the word rather than experience. It wasn't that long ago that crafts and occupations were learned from father to son or mother to daughter. Now everything is through the word and robots are being designed to do the sensory aspect of our behavior. This sensory deprivation evolution is also damaging mental development and expecting humanity to be the same. There is also a theory that if an infant doesn't crawl, it will affect the brain's development. It affects the weaving together of the neurological pathways in the right and left-hand brain. The film called The Rain Man in 1988, with Dustin Hoffman as an autistic man who can calculate numbers exceptionally quickly, was cared for by his brother played by Tom Cruise. It raised the plight of autism. It highlighted the joy and annoyance of a difference of personality, but also because of the lack of interpretation of social and emotional cues, one brother cared for the other. However, it was also the same for Vincent van Gogh, but for different reasons. Vincent was cared for by his brother Theo. Let's remember, it was common for creatives to have patrons or to be cared for by families, as the creative or individual thinker had value and was understood to be in need of care. Now, care very often is outsourced, and hence The diagnostics have been created. So against this new and socially accepted criteria and expectation of learning and development, what is the understanding of autism? It is now on a spectrum which is so extensive that the simple early signs very often cannot be recognized. In fact, autism as a concept was defined in the '40s and '50s as a lack of attention by the mother, which some psychologists called the refrigerated mother. And later when the DSM— that's the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders— was beginning to be formulated in the 1980s, it was given a structural diagnostic form. That is, the response to sensory input may be restrictive or overwhelming, or specific physical movements of the fingers or larger movements of the trunk and body were assessed. In fact, one could say that the formula for Diagnostic Manual for Mental Disorder— for Mental Disorders has an element of autistic needs in its own right. It goes into the detail of any mental disorder to treat an issue or to control an issue. Today, early signs in an infant of repetitive stacking or lining up objects is associated with the autism spectrum, but when is it a problem? And when is the child trying to create order out of a chaotic world? ASD, or Autism Spectrum Disorder, is defined by two categories: impaired social communication or interaction, and two, restricted or repetitive behaviour. Is it neurological cross-wiring, or is it a way of thinking we should all learn? With an exception of children who find it hard to contain their emotions expressed through physical outbursts, which unintentionally harm themselves or others. The biggest problem is what is on the spectrum and what is your brain's thinking style. Is the autistic person so sensitive to the world that they become overwhelmed and that they have a breaking point, or that they are a savant which has exceptional skills like the Rain Man's photographic memory ability? But does having the lack of interactive social skills compensate for the focus on the unique advanced skills. I am Dr. Maria Kempinska, and this is Your Mind Matters. Today my guest is Cliff Idell, and he is joining my discussion on autism and structural detailed thinking. I have called this program The Nightmare to the Brilliant Mind. We will look at how the triumph of personality, which is strength, intelligence, skepticism, and I believe a necessary contrariness to overcome obstacles, created a business that relied on his unique way of thinking. Please welcome Cliff, and thank you for joining me. Can we begin by you telling me about your background? Um, yeah, I— my background, um, is originally actually in IT. I was always interested in electronic devices, and when I was younger, I used to take them apart and put them back together again. I was constantly fiddling with things and creating new things, taking things apart and putting them back together in different ways, and trying to figure out really how the world around me works. How it operates and how I could interact with it. And how— sorry, I can remember when I was very young, I used to really be in my own little world. Did you? And how did you manage that with going to school? And just to say, of course, we're doing all this remotely, aren't we? So I can't see your visual cues anyway. No, not at all, which is comforting in some respects. Yes, which is comforting in some respects, I agree. Um, but how did you match your world that you were interested in, uh, the world of potentially in psychological terms, they, you know, psychological types, they might call an introvert, with going into school and learning what the school thinks they should teach you? Well, I mean, when I went to primary school, I loved it. I was very, very interested in the sort of learning that was there, and I really did feel a part of the learning process. I didn't always enjoy the interactions with other people. But I did enjoy learning, and I've always enjoyed learning. Things didn't go quite so well at secondary school. When I got to secondary school, I felt very out of place. I went from a mixed, mixed school at primary school to an all-boys school at secondary school, and I found myself in this heavily male-dominant sort of arena, as it were. And I felt very awkward and out of place, and I found it very challenging interacting with the people around me, my peer group. I preferred, from a very early age, interacting with adults. I'd prefer to talk to an adult than I would somebody my own age. And was that because you were advanced? Obviously, as a teenager, you don't know that. And young people don't know who they are very often until it's reflected back to them. That's why parents and teachers are so important to reflect back to the growing child, the growing human being, who they are and what they're good at. Um, so was that your own definition? You understood that you could make more sense from adults, they were clearer thinkers? What was it in your assessment? Can you view that now and give an assessment of why? I think it's because, yeah, they— I got better answers that I understood more, if that makes sense. It was also the focus. My peer group wasn't necessarily focused on sort of learning and absorbing the knowledge of things. Whereas adults to me were this reservoir of information that I could tap into. I couldn't do that with my own peer group. I, I found it very difficult, you know, discussing ideas, discussing concepts. And although I didn't know it then, I now know that's because I was probably quite advanced for my age. Yeah. And so the fact is they probably didn't actually understand what I was talking about. And also, if you are— have your own way of thinking and you have your own way, your ability to look at scientifics of mechanisms, which is where you were, you know, sort of you had that interest, if other people didn't enjoy that, you're going to be separate anyway. You're going to be off on a tangent. You're going to be on the periphery of that world. And it's not a social thing because you have brothers and sisters, so it's not that you needed to socialize at school particularly because you were socializing at home, weren't you? Yeah, absolutely. Um, I mean, you know, we used to do a lot as kids together with my siblings, and we'd go out playing over the park and things like that. And, and I've never really felt a need to socialize with other people. I've always been comfortable. So, yeah, so what about, you know, being at school and, you know, with all the teachings they had there and, uh, sports and everything like that? Did you feel compelled to join in, or did you join in and still stay on the periphery? What was How did that work for you? Well, at primary school, um, it worked very well because there was far more creative play. There was, and, and the other kids around me were also into creative play, so that worked really well for me. I enjoyed those interactions. I enjoyed, um, playing with other people, you know, playing games, whether that was, you know, say a sports game, or even if it was something role-playing. Most of the stuff I did at primary school was probably role-playing, where we'd pretend to be in a particular situation and we'd act things out, or, um, we'd be pretending something's a base. And, and those sort of things I, I thoroughly enjoyed. When I sort of moved to secondary school, not so much. There was Whether it's because I, I sort of went into this really male-dominated environment, um, I, I don't, I don't know, but I just felt like a fish out of water. I felt compelled to do things, not, not because I really wanted to do them, but because if I didn't do them, you would get teased or you'd get bullied. I mean, one of the processes I use, just in terms of my thinking process, is I talk to myself. So I can hold a full-blown conversation like we're doing now, but with myself. And it's almost as if I'm sort of role-playing. And sometimes I do it before I talk to people, so I can try and prepare the conversation and get an understanding of how the flow of the conversation might go. What they might say and what I might say. When you're a teenager and you're kind of doing that in the playground, it doesn't quite go so well. No, but today, you know, there used to be a time— that's so interesting— when, you know, if anybody walked down the road and was talking to themselves, everybody used to say they're mad. But nowadays everybody talks to the— looks as if they're talking to themselves, but they're talking on the phone, aren't they, because they've got these Bluetooth ears. Absolutely. I mean, if I'd had Bluetooth technology at secondary school, it would have been fantastic because I could have just stuck an earpiece in and nobody would have been none the wiser. But you know what's so interesting about you saying that? There's a number of films actually now, and that one I recall, I think it was called 24, something like that, with Edward Norton, where he talks to himself in preparation in a mirror before he goes into a situation. Now you get that a lot on films and it's allowed on films. And the whole preparation verbally is so important because it's very different to reading something through that you're going to read aloud, to actually reading it aloud. So when I was doing my MA, my tutor said to me, "Oh, you know, Maria, you've got dyslexia." And I thought, here am I, you know, I'm grown up, and she says, "I'm dyslexic," and she asked me to go and see somebody who did an assessment. She said, "No, you've just got to read it aloud." But that also comes from a Polish background. So my first language was Polish, coming back to a language template. My first language was Polish, which is one of the hardest languages you can learn. And of course, I then didn't have the English structure as such. So I learned that because also I taught English. But when you come to write, and speak. They're two different things. So, you know, to speak out loud. And also what they stopped doing, which is really sad at schools, they stopped the drama. They stopped drama where people were allowed to get on stage and perform and speak aloud in, you know, with different emotional context. Yeah, I mean, I actually found, because I did sort of performing arts at secondary school, and I did actually find it helpful in terms of expressing my emotions. One of the things I've always had difficulty with is identifying and expressing my emotions. You get a feeling and you don't really know what to call it. You don't know why it's there. But also, you see, this is interesting, and I know that you and I have had this conversation before, But in psychological types, a thinking type takes a few days even to recognize their own emotions, because their first psychological template, if you like, their filter, is to think things through. So the emotions don't kick in, the understanding of what they're feeling emotionally, they don't understand. It could be for a few days even. Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's exactly what it's like for me sometimes. I mean, I've gone months before I've understood an emotion and where it's come from and what, what the cause of it is, um, and what to do about it, how to manage it, how to stop it becoming overwhelming. And so you do need people around you. So if you come from a highly charged family where emotions are discussed and talked about, or if there are lots of people in the family and they all talk. And, you know, it's very difficult to be heard in those situations. So for you to speak out loud, coming back to the whole process of speaking out loud, can be quite difficult for a person to actually not only speak out loud but also understand their own emotions and what's happening, because everybody else takes over. So I do think of large families and the youngest the youngest, not necessarily the youngest, but people in the middle often get caught up in just doing what everybody else does. And so they, as a personality, get lost because they don't know who they are, because they're just doing everything that everybody else does, because they become an observer in life, and the emotions are taken over by somebody else. I mean, I, I mean, I've been, I suppose, quite, quite lucky because My parents always encouraged us to be our own people, our own person, and I think a lot of people don't get that. They're expected to conform to the way that other people want them to be rather than the expression that they can be of themselves, and that's something that growing up I can't say I ever experienced in that way because if I wanted to wear fluorescent pink socks, then I got to wear fluorescent pink socks. Yeah. Um, that, you know, that my, my parents weren't too bothered. I mean, yes, there were certain situations where perhaps it might have been frowned on, um, going to a relative's funeral, uh, with fluorescent pink socks wasn't allowed. But, you know, in the main, um, those sort of things were explained, you know. So my mum or dad would sit down and say, well, you know, this, this is why we do this in this situation. And so I had very much the benefit of that teaching from my parents, which enabled me to grow very quickly into my own person. But in doing so, I very quickly realized how different I was from other people. And you've got an older brother, and what's the age difference there? And there's about 2 years between all of us. There's 4 of us, got 3 siblings and one sister, 2 brothers, and there's a— there's about 2 years between each of us. Yeah, and where are you? Number 2. Number 2, okay. And you had some children below and some above. So how did this ability to actually speak your mind, to say what you wanted to say, to actually be different, how did that affect your business when you decided to go into business? Um, well, it— I think it— I think one of the things it's given me is confidence. The confidence to be able to say, well, you know, I've made this decision and I'm gonna roll with it and see what happens. And in business, it's very easy to sort of dither over things, to wonder, should I do this, shouldn't I do this, and get caught up in what could or might happen. And I think that's one of the things that, that, that's given me, is that ability to sort of look at things, do the analysis, make the decision, and stick with it. And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. Rather than sort of looking at it as a failure, I, I was always taught to look at it as a step closer to success. And so as such, I never saw my failures as failures. I, I just simply saw them as trials in the never-ending process of getting closer to success, if that makes sense. Totally. So can you go through your business, how you set it up? Because it's very much— had you not set up with a brilliant, you know, a very concise, precise process, it wouldn't have been so successful. So do you want to give us an overview? Well, when I actually went into the business I ran was actually a domiciliary care provider, and we were looking after people in, in their own homes. And truth of the matter is, when I first sort of looked at it, I actually knew absolutely nothing about the care sector at all. So the first thing I did was I got a job as a carer. Mm-hmm. And I spent a year and a half doing care, actually learning about what was involved, the process, how it operated, what the different roles were, how they sort of moved together. And during that, I was sort of working out almost my business strategy in terms of moving things forward. When it came to setting the business up, I chose a franchise mostly because I wanted some additional support in the background. It didn't quite work out the way I had it in my mind, and I ended up doing a lot of the work myself anyway, but it did give me a starting point in terms of things like policies and procedures and ways of working. That I then could use as a basis to sort of attenuate towards the sort of business that I wanted. And so that's kind of how I started. And initially, once I'd sort of set out, yes, I want to— I'm going to do this, I'd actually been running another company at the time in the agricultural sector, and that was with a friend of mine, and we were actually manufacturing hemp products. So we were making creams, lotions, shampoos, conditioners, candles, fire lighters, all sorts of different things made from hemp. And that hadn't— we'd got ripped off in that business. That was a learning curve for me. Um, but I asset stripped it, and then as part of that, used the money that I raised from asset stripping the business and then invested that in the care business. And I basically studied nursing, so I went and got books on nursing, nursing procedures, and I sat down and I looked at them and looked at what was involved from the nursing side of it to see how— what the differences were between the kind of medical side as opposed to the social care side. And that enabled me to put in place and work with doctors, nurses, social workers to actually put in place very comprehensive care plans that really did work for the people that we were looking after and was tailored to their needs because I had an understanding of their medical conditions as well. But here you are, you're joining two things, aren't you? You're not only joining a process, process-driven company because people have to turn up on time, you need to register people, understand what their credentials have to be. You have to monitor them. They have to go in and care for somebody. And in the caring system, they have— it's a very emotional system. Absolutely. And, and to cater for that, I developed my own training system, right? So I developed, um, the systems to actually train somebody that had no knowledge of care at all right the way up to doing things like, you know, basic wound dressing. And that competency framework, as it became, I actually used the National Occupational Standards as the starting framework for the assessment of that competency. So at the time you had NVQs, similar to what you do now in care, although I believe it's a diploma they do now, or a certificate. Um, but back then it was NVQs. So I took those standards and I rewrote them as business processes so that I could use a continual assessment process for my employees. And so I then taught some of the staff how to do that assessing as well. Mm-hmm. And that enabled them to assess their peers. And so we had what was probably a very complex system, but it worked extremely well. Why? How did you make that work so well? Because by taking those National Occupational Standards, we had a starting framework. Now, some of them at the time— a good example the administration of medication. They didn't have anything for working with medication in somebody's home. They did have for care homes, but they didn't for domiciliary care. So I took the National Occupational Standards for administration of medication, which were written for care homes, and I then modified them for people that were working in people's own homes. And there are differences. A good example is controlled drugs. In a care home, they're kept in locked cabinets and they tend to be issued by specific staff. But in somebody's own home, they can leave them wherever they want. They can leave them lying around. And so I had to look at those processes and say, okay, what do I need to put in place to ensure that, A, the person's protected, B, the staff are protected, and C, that everything runs smoothly. And so what I did was I then modified the standards to meet that accordingly. So for example, in that situation, we had a record which was done as part of the reporting process of simply the number of tablets that were left. So what that meant was that if there was a situation where any where that number was vastly different, that would then promote an investigation. And so these processes were set with triggers, and when those triggers were hit, that would then set off a process. So that was built into the supervision process, right? So here we are, we're dealing with people who are going into somebody's home. So that is the mechanics, if you like, of of, which is great, you've got to have those, and you did that very well. But you're dealing with people's emotions here, aren't you? How did you— there's two questions I want to put to you. One is, how did you make sure that your carers behaved correctly and that, that their clients, if you like, the people they were caring for, didn't overstep their own boundaries with the carers? And secondly, how did you deal with the emotional side of running a business? But let's do the first one first, which is the carers and the emotional aspect of interaction with their clients. Well, what we had, the way we sort of structured it was you had the person that would go into the person's home. So we got regular feedback from the client, and what we did was we fostered a culture where there wasn't a knee-jerk reaction. So in other words, if they reported something minor, there wasn't this massive overreaction on the other end that then meant the next time they'd be less likely to raise something. So what we did was we almost created, I suppose, like a hierarchy of, you know, what the issue was. So if it was a minor issue, then it was dealt with, you know, sensitively, but for example, not as aggressively as maybe a major issue would have been. The staff that were actually going into people's homes, to make sure they didn't step sort of outside the bounds, they were involved in the care planning process. So we had gaps between clients, and in domiciliary care that tends to happen. Simply because of logistics. You've got somebody that's going on one side of town and the next client might be the other side of town, but that one's at 10 o'clock in the morning and the other one's at midday, so they'd have a 2-hour gap. And what I quickly realized was that I could fill those gaps by help getting them to do part of that process. So I taught them how to do care assessing. So when there were changes in somebody's care plan, the person that was delivering the care, they would be feeding into that process. So that made sure that if, for example, you know, they'd asked them to go and mow the grass when they weren't supposed to be there to mow the grass, that that was picked up very quickly. That was then fed back into our field team, and our field team did some of the supervision because we also did peer supervision. At the time as well, which was quite novel back then. So that's where we'd get one person to go out with somebody else that they don't normally work with, and then they had to give feedback on each other. And so all of those sort of issues that normally or might get missed didn't. They got picked up. And what about the interaction? Were there ever outbursts and, you know, the emotional outbursts, the emotional discontent, there's stuff that happens. How did you deal with that? Because now you're a thinking type, and you're dealing now with, you know, sort of emotional outbursts from people and trying to keep those to a minimum, and yet you're dealing with them remotely. Yeah, probably not as well as I could have done, if I'm being honest, but I try to support the staff as best I could. For example, a common thing that happens is people do pass away, and somebody's been looking after somebody for, you know, 6 months, a year, a couple of years, and that— they do get an emotional connection to that person. I mean, it's human nature, and so we'd be sensitive to that. We would give them paid time off to enable them to come to terms with it. We'd pay them to go to the person's funeral, for example. I mean, that was unheard of. I think it's still unheard of, but we would actually pay them the time so that they could go to the funeral and have closure. That, I think, dealt with a lot of those issues because they felt supported. Yeah, I do think that's what's missing. I remember being in a road accident I wasn't directly in it, but I was in the knock-on effect. I was traveling up to Nottingham, and the guy behind was on his mobile phone and crashed into the car directly behind me, who spun out of control, which had the knock-on effect, pushed our car forward. We're in a— although we're on a motorway, we're in a sort of traffic jam, and the knock-on effect went on car by car. But the car behind me, it was clear that the driver had been seriously injured, but the police wouldn't allow us to find out: A) which hospital they were in to send flowers, B) to find out if they're okay, or C) had they died from this incident. And what you're saying is that from your point of view in a work situation, and I think from a humanitarian situation, they shouldn't stop that from happening. No, and I— and there were times I was called crazy. Were you? Okay, for paying my staff to go to a service user's funeral. It's like, well, why would you pay them for that? Well, because they've got that emotional connection, that person. They've been working with them closely for a very long time, and they need closure. Okay, so where did you get— before we move on to you and the impact of so many staff on yourself and how you run a company doing all the structure and everything, and how you deal with the emotional overwhelm of that sort of job. But where did you get that knowledge from? I read books on psychology. Okay. And I read books on bereavement, and I spoke to or even counsellors. I spoke to the staff simply just to find out how they're feeling. And I would ask them if they felt supported, was there anything that we could do? And very often they'd say, "No, there's nothing that you can do." But just by being there and being able to provide you know, a genuine interest in their well-being, I think, went an awful long way in terms of enabling people to manage their own emotions. I mean, it didn't work all the time. No, which is inevitable. Things are gonna go wrong. But I think that's human nature, unfortunately, in some respects. But it did work the majority of the time. Certainly I know from the feedback that I got that people felt looked after themselves, the staff felt looked after in the business, and that translated into productivity. And although that wasn't my overriding interest at that point, productivity, I couldn't help but notice it. Yeah, and that helped with staff retention, did it? Absolutely, absolutely. The sector back then, and I think it's— I don't know what the numbers are now, but back then the average turnover was between 30 and 40% of staff, which is quite high. You'd roughly turn over a third of your workforce every year. Ours was less than 5%. How many? Less than 5%. There you are. You know, it was— I mean, we had staff but when I sold the business, we'd had staff— the majority of the staff had been there for years. And I think that's because of the systems and the structure and the support processes that were put in place for them as much as the business. But that is the business, isn't it? Absolutely, because if you— if I mean, one of the things I noticed in all the business training that I did, whether that was seminars, books, courses, etc., was there was much talk of people as human resources, but very little description of supporting those human resources and how to support those human resources and what you might be able to do to support those human resources. I mean, for example, a simple thing we did was we recognised everybody's birthdays, and so everybody always got a card on their birthday without fail. And we had a system in the office totally designed to make sure that when we took on a member of staff, their birthday was inserted into the birthday calendar and then every day somebody in the office would check the birthday calendar, see whose birthdays were coming up, and we would then order cards and get them posted out. And yes, it cost the business money to do that, cost business time, but the benefits I felt that the business got from that far outweighed the cost because it showed people we were interested in them as people. They weren't just employee number X, you know, Y, Z. Which we're going to come to shortly, but before we move on to the anonymity that's beginning to happen in the business sector, but in life as well, how did you deal with the overwhelm of emotions in running any business? Because there you were, you set it up, you're managing, you're the CEO, owner, but you're managing everybody. How did you cope with that? To be honest, I didn't. Okay. I had meltdowns. I would get very frustrated. I would get emotions that I didn't recognize and didn't quite understand. And then when I got home, that's when it all came out. And I'd have a meltdown. And then once the meltdown had finished, I'd pick myself back up and just get straight back on in the saddle and off I'd go again. So, um, how did you deal— before we go into that a little bit more— how did you deal with that side of business? Because let's face it, anybody who runs a business and they do have— or, you know, so many businesses have these books, don't they? Keep the door open, you can walk into my office at any point, I'm here to be spoken to at any point, any time, which frankly I can't believe works, having run a business myself and also in that world. You know, how can it work when you're trying to focus on something else? Well, I think you're right. I mean, it works when you're very small. Once we had 150 staff at one point, that was different. I had that policy, but I struggled to maintain it. So what did you put into place to help you with that? Well, I essentially delegated part of that responsibility to some of the office staff and some of the field staff. And so what I implemented was a kind of chain, in effect, so that if they were having issues, they'd discuss them first of all with their supervisor And then if they weren't getting anywhere with their supervisor, they could then go to one of the assistant managers. And the way I monitored that was I monitored it myself. Aha. So I would speak to the field staff and say, "What's going on? Who's happy? Who's unhappy? Who's running us down? Why are they running us down? What is their chief complaint?" And then what I would try and do is address those in the background. But I would push it back through the chain again so that from the individual's perspective it was being dealt with. So they might not have known that actually I dealt with it and I was the one that changed something for them, but that whole chain was kept quite tight. So coming to your own meltdowns, how did, in the end, did you manage to cope with those? I didn't. I got autistic burnout. Right. And towards the latter part prior to selling the business, I was finding it very, very difficult sort of coping with the stress and the emotions and what was going on. And It took me about a year to recover from that. So I didn't cope towards the end of it very well at all, and that was partially, I think, because I took on more problems than I probably should have done. Aha, and is that because you took on too many problems of your staff? Yes. Okay. You know, they would come to me with things like they don't know how to fill out their immigration forms. Yeah. Or they don't know how to, you know, they don't know whether the lease they're about to sign is, you know, going to rip them off. And so because I had this sort of drive to help people— yeah, it was one of the reasons I started the business in the first place— um, I would help them because I knew and understood those systems. Yes. I would say, okay, well, you need to do this, this, and this. Do this, this, and this, then let me know what happens. So that need for responsibility. So coming back to the autistic nature, it's not without emotions, is it? Because very often one of the overwhelming impressions that people get with autism, um, is that there is this sort of detachment And, and yes, and, and there is, but when you do get emotions, you get them very strongly. And I think that's the bit that tends to get forgotten about. Yeah. And I think that is the biggest problem for people to understand, you know. Somebody doesn't have a meltdown for no reason. Yeah, quite. You know, something's got to a point where you just simply can't cope with whatever it is at that point. And it's almost like, for me, it's like almost like a tension release. I get this sort of buildup of tension in my mind that I can't dissipate, that I can't seem to calm, and then eventually it comes out in a meltdown. Yeah, but it's also— and I'm fine. Yeah, but it's a meltdown for you. Absolutely. You know, it's you that is impacted on this. I mean, there may be a repercussion around you and your family in, in terms of sound or something like that, but fundamentally the person that's being affected here, wounded if you like, is you. Yeah. And, and, and towards the sort of latter part of owning the business, I did have to step back from, from helping people with problems and instead I had to say, look, this isn't really something we should be dealing with, you know, this is— and I used to sign— and I started signposting people because I simply couldn't help everybody. Yeah, so this is quite a fundamental issue, I think, with people's understanding of autism and what it does to people, because you do have this— you as well have this sense of kindness that some people have And you want— because you're so smart in the way you deal with the natural processes, your ability to understand processes which other people do not understand. They talk about the computer being intuitive and it's not, you know. I mean, a computer does effectively what it's, what it's told to do, or, or in the case of AI, what it's trained to do. Yeah. And this is how you get these issues with AI where, for example, bias is creeping because everybody has these unconscious biases and with the best will in the world, those creep into the training, they creep into the documentation, they creep into the processes, and so then they get magnified. So here we are, and because this is only an hour on a subject that is so vast— and thank you for your story and how you think and how caring you are, but with this amazing, you know, this left and right brain, if you like, together, the caring and the thinking side that work together for you— here we are in a world where the algorithm created by somebody who potentially has got autistic tendencies in a bedroom creates an algorithm. And I've been in businesses where I've sort of gone in to do sort of temporary work where they rely on the algorithm. They don't even question what does it mean, how does it affect people. But here we are with algorithms that are being set up by people that are quite young, don't think through the impact it's having. Owners of businesses don't think through impact. And let's just flip forward, shall we, to the impact it's having on society. So we, you know, we're talking about things like social media and young people and the new meta world that we're going into, all designed by people as quickly as possible. Say if you take Facebook and the meta world they're creating, I'm sure Zuckerberg doesn't sit with the algorithm creators or the designers in their room to understand what exactly that, that their unconscious bias is in the process of making these algorithms and these websites. And these systems. I think at that level there's a little bit more to it in the sense that once you get to a certain size you're only working on parts. Yeah. And so you don't necessarily get to see how that part fits into the whole. So if you're a programmer and you're told to create a function that does X and return Y value, that's what you do. Yeah, but where is it? Okay, where's the primary driver? There must be a central core to this. Well, I mean, ultimately it all gets aggregated, but it's very process-driven. Yeah. And so Can it be controlled so that the right bias, if you like, is driven through the algorithm? Can it be controlled, or are you saying because of the nature of the processes that it's all disparate and people work separately but it's all brought together? Can it be controlled at that point so that the unconscious bias is a good one as opposed to a negative? Well, I think it can, but I mean, one of the other things you've got to take into consideration with the way technology has gone is there's been a move away from creating something and doing exhausting— exhaustive testing before implementation to creating something and effectively testing it on the fly. And it's what they call agile development. Ah, and that's what they're doing now. Absolutely. So that's where you get incremental increases in functionality, and, and the idea is that, that those incremental increases, um, don't need as much testing because you're only doing an incremental increase in functionality. The, the problem that I see with that, of approach is the fact that it's very easy to get caught up in just that one part. So you make that functionality, it gets implemented there, it's ticked off, done, great, wonderful. And nobody takes res— who takes responsibility? Well, that's the thing. I'm not sure as such anybody does. I mean, somebody will be responsible for a function that does something, somebody will be responsible for implementing that function in some way, but in terms of the overall impact that function might have on the entire system, that might not be looked at. So here we have— It might not be looked at because of the cost and the time that it takes to actually evaluate that at that level. So when you come to somebody like Steve Jobs when he was alive, what he made work so brilliantly, because he wasn't the developer, But he made Apple look brilliant, didn't he? He's made it look smooth, it looked very attractive, it was white, it was the perfect shape. And he used to complain if it wasn't done correctly and change it. But that's on the outside. So I'm sure the Meta system for Facebook is the same. But on the internal machinations and the complexity of the processes, as you say, that all come together, that could collide, nobody takes responsibility for that, it seems. Am I correct? I'm not sure that nobody takes responsibility for it. It's just more a case of, I think, it just doesn't get noticed. And so I'm saying, so they don't actually bother looking at it as long as it works and does the job. Yeah, so it's all quite, quite superficial. So at the moment, and, and you can see this in, in games development where a game will be released on a certain date, 2 weeks later there's an update, 2 weeks later there's an update, 2 weeks later, you know, and so it goes on. And yes, I mean, all software has bugs, they creep in, people make errors, things are implemented incorrectly, but the way that that gets picked up now is generally as you go along. Whereas the way, for example, I was taught was you thoroughly test it and you hammer it and basically you try and break it. Yeah. And then once you've broken it, you work out why it broke, how to fix it, and what you can do to improve it so that it doesn't break in those situations again. And, and that's where I think testing in particular, I think, has dropped down the list of priorities because I think companies and particularly people have got into that sort of more instant gratification situation, the need to get something out there to get revenue, and so in that regard I think less testing, thorough testing, gets done than used to. And also, to carry on down this road, because we now have not such a great deal of time, but the impact on the individual, because we're not talking about the impact on adults who might understand this system, we're talking about impact on young people and children fundamentally, who deal with this non-tested advancement online, and we've all been forced to go online over the past 2 years, and people are dealing with that full-on. How, how do you control young people in front of the screen? How do parents do that? Well, I, I mean, from my own perspective, I've got a daughter, um, I've tried to teach her about the systems that are involved. So for example, one of the things that, that social media applications tend to do is they encourage you to engage with them. So that might be, for example, an algorithm that says such-and-such waved at you, poked, or something similar. Now in the background, nothing's happened. The person hasn't gone on to their application and actually waved at you. That's an algorithm that's designed to simulate that effect to get you to engage with the platform. But the problem is that, that then causes anxiety. So you then have a situation where, because somebody's not getting poked and they're not getting waked up, now they're anxious and they're looking at the phone every 5 minutes. And I think those negative effects, we're only just starting to see. And you see it with the way people interact with social media in particular. And I think because that goes to that sort of general need for interaction, of which there tends to be less physical interaction these days than there used to be, it tends to draw people in. And when it's not there, it creates a sort of sense of anxiety that they wouldn't normally have. So, um, if a parent doesn't understand— and this is, this is such a big, big subject because we are moving exponentially forward with AI. And coming back to Facebook, because they— it's almost like the boys in the office, the boys at the top. And there is this structure, isn't there, in the Silicon Valley, which is now, as we know, moving away from Silicon Valley, uh, geographically. But They are all fighting to be the first. The first with electric cars, the first to the moon, the first to Saturn, the first to Mars, and now the first with AI. And their game that they play psychologically impacts on everybody. So that the need to be first— absolutely. And I think it's the scale of it that, that, that starts to, to really amplify these effects. You know, when it's— I mean, algorithms have been used for years, not just when computers ran algorithms, were used before, they just weren't called algorithms, they were just processes. But I think it's where the psychology of things has been integrated into these and the way that, for example, a computer and the systems behind that can analyze data as it's coming through, that's where I think we're starting to see more and more of those negative effects. Because the outcome that they're looking for, for example, on social media is engagement, the person using the application, because that's where they get the revenue from. Yeah, and so the algorithm is designed to engage, but there's no distinction made between a good engagement and a negative engagement. So if somebody responds to negative things strongly, then the algorithm will push that because it's looking for the engagement. It's not looking to see whether they're upset by it. It's not looking to see whether It should be sending them that. It's simply looking to see, do you engage? And yes, when we shove this at you, you do. So we'll shove more of it at you. And that's where obviously the gambling sites all have got a mechanism underneath that can actually filter through to the person who's gambling, you know, here's an extra £5 to gamble more. Or I was told by somebody that in the music industry they can put on subliminal messaging under music, which I'm sure can happen, so that you are prone to listen to certain types of singers or a certain song. And yeah, I mean, I think that subliminal stuff probably goes on less than people think it does, because I think the, the main sort of target tends to work effectively anyway. But surely it's only because now, for example, in the creative world, particularly in music, all the little areas that you could have got music from— so when you bought something on iTunes, you bought an album or something, and you went to somebody's site, bought it on iTunes. Now you go to Apple Music or Spotify, and there are very few places you can buy something or listen to something new unless you know the artist. Artist. So this whole AI, this whole algorithmic process that is actually taking over the way we think and who's successful here. I— yeah, and I think that also goes with the business side of things in terms of consolidation. So where you can have all this stuff consolidated and consolidated and consolidated, whereas you had 10 people that provide the service Now you've only got 3. Right, so we're now just about to finish, I'm afraid, and it's such a fascinating and extensive conversation that we could have carried on. I just want to say, Cliff Eyedell, thank you so much. I know you're going to be doing workshops about this online for parents to understand and people to understand what really goes on and how to protect your young people, children, adults, everybody, with the games that go on behind the algorithm and understanding how that pulls you in. Thank you so much, Cliff, for joining me in Your Mind Matters. Thank you very much, Maria.