5.2 We are big-picture thinkers

The second reason why dyslexics make great entrepreneurs is we are big picture thinkers who keep it simple. The Dyslexic Thinking skill of Reasoning. There's plenty of complexity in building your own business, however dyslexics are brilliant at using their reasoning skills to see the bigger picture and simplify things. Many dyslexics take the skill for granted, imagining everyone sees the world in the same way, but they really don't.

Neuroscience and MRI scanning of dyslexic brains shows that dyslexics really are wired to think differently and to see the big picture. Our brains have a bias to long distance connections between the axons and mini columns of the brain which neuroscientists attribute to our big-picture processing skill. This allows dyslexics to make connections across complex issues, subjects and data, which others don't see. It also helps us to cut through the noise and see the big picture rather than getting stuck in the detail. US entrepreneur, star of 'Shark Tank' and real estate magnate, Barbara Corcoran, describes her big-picture thinking perfectly.

There's one gift that you always get with dyslexia, because I know so many dyslexic people who own businesses, and also contributes to why they do so well in their own shop, and that is the ability to see from the sky down. I have that gift. I had it as a kid. I have it as an adult. I would go into a business meeting. I don't care who I was with, I would have an idea – boom seen in my head as I was flying in the sky, look down and see who was going to do what, how the department was going to open, how we were going to make money, how many months it was going to take without knowing any math or anything.

And I would make my estimate accurate every time because I had the ability to see from the sky down. And, you know, some of the best coaches in the world are dyslexic because if you interview them, and maybe you have, they talk about being able to see the team from the sky down, with maybe different words but the same effect.

Helicopter view.

Helicopter view. Is there a word for that, helicopter view?

A lot of people refer to it.

Oh, you have heard that. Okay, so I'm not crazy thinking that. But it would sometimes startle me as to how well I could see it and in living colour. And it's also good for dreaming. I don't think back at that time in school daydreaming from 8.30 in the morning till 3.15 when that bell rang, I don't see that as a waste of time. I spent the whole day daydreaming, so I have a fertile imagination and that sky down, or as you call it the helicopter thinking, is about your imagination. You could just imagine it.

The first day I picked up the phone in my own business and answered Corcoran Simone – boom – I had an image of myself so clearly I could taste it. I could see myself as the Queen of New York real estate, people kissing my ring, having beautiful clothes, and everybody wondering what I had to say. And what do you think I did? I built exactly that person for myself. But could I have done it if I hadn't seen the view of it? The whole view in living colour? Never. I think that daydreaming ability to see a whole picture versus a digit or the numbers, gets you so much further than seeing the detail. You don't have to be good at the detail if you could see the whole picture.

Barbara isn't alone. 9 in 10 dyslexics describe their Dyslexic Thinking as being able to 'see past the detail to gain a strategic, big-picture view of a subject or problem'. And this helps us to simplify things. And while simplifying comes easy to dyslexics, it’s something others need to learn because it's a hugely valuable skill for entrepreneurs and everyone.

As fellow dyslexic thinker and Founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, explains in this brilliant quote: 'Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean and simple. But it's worth it in the end, because once you do, you can move mountains.' Apple built a brand on simplifying the complexities of technology by creating devices that not only look beautiful but are super simple and logical to use. And simple propositions explained clearly are the secret of many dyslexic entrepreneur's success.

Take IKEA. Its Founder, Ingvar Kamprad, used his Dyslexic Thinking to simplify his business. IKEA started out as a mail order sales business and its products were identified by long numerical codes. As many dyslexics would, he struggled to remember the numbers. So he decided to create a new system naming each set of furniture after memorable Swedish names and places. And he designed visual instruction guides to help customers assemble products instead of wordy instructions. This simple system has been used ever since and is renowned around the world.

Keeping things simple is also integral to the DASH brand. Let's hear more from its Co-Founder, Alex Wright.

Keeping things simple is one of our brand values, which quite nicely aligns with Dyslexic Thinking skills, to keep things simple. Hence why it's one of our core brand values. And so a very simple ingredient deck, not having any sugar or sweeteners, so that very clear USP where consumers understand that they're getting something that is actually genuinely healthy as opposed to quite a lot of health claims that can be a bit more fabricated. And then being truly sustainable and having a very low impact on both people and the planet.

Whether it's keeping your ingredients, your product, or your messaging simple, it's good for all aspects of your business. And this focus on simplicity can help you to be bold, act fast and capitalise on opportunity. Nick Jones, Founder of Soho House, is also a fan of keeping it simple.

Complication really panics me and I spend my life simplifying everything. If it’s more than one page I don’t read it because I can't and I don't have the attention span to do that. But it forces people to simplify things and once you simplify things you can make decisions much quicker. And I think when you make decisions much quicker then that's good for everyone in the business I'm in and more importantly it's good for the customer.

Simplifying is also the mantra of dyslexic thinker, Roy Schwartz, Axios Founder and co-author of the bestselling book, ‘Smart Brevity’. He points out that keeping it simple in a complex world is not just valued by your customers, it's important for your staff too.

We had all of this data from the web and we could see that people were reading less and scanning more. And in fact the number that really spoke to me was 80% of people stopped reading after 250 words. To give you some sense, the average article was a thousand words. So it would be if Netflix did a show and it lasted an hour and people only watched 15 minutes, they would never make the other 45 minutes.

But yet news organisations just keep churning out thousand word articles and I spoke to my friends at the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post, it was the same across the board. People stopped reading after 250 words. We were trying to figure out why is that, what's happening? And we realised that people were overwhelmed. You get 300 emails plus a day. You get text messages, you might get Slack or Team messages, you get real news, you get fake news. And so you're overwhelmed and so you're trying to get caught up on information but it's really hard to do.

And so that was the insight that launched Axios. The idea of how do we give people news and information in what ended up being called 'Smart Brevity', this new format, and how do we do it in the most concise way possible? And 250 words happens to be the number of words that fit on one screen of your phone. And so we realised, oh, people want one screen of information. Maybe if they want to go deeper, two screens of information. So we basically put everything into, 'What's new?' and 'Why does it matter?' And very quickly we realised this is bigger than news, this is actually how people should communicate in this modern era. And that's why we wrote the book.

Here are three key takeaways from this section. One, neuroscience shows that dyslexic brains are literally wired to see the big picture. Two, we can naturally step back from the detail and have a helicopter view or big-picture view of a situation or market. And three, we use this insight to simplify our products, propositions and messages which is a recipe for success.