Why Good People Keep Hitting the Same Wall: A Field Guide to Accessible Workplace Communication
I'm trying to make sense of something that's been bothering me for a long time: why do good people, doing good work, keep running into the same friction? Why does collaboration so often feel harder than it should?
For most of my life, I thought I wasn't a good student. I thought I was undisciplined. What I didn't know — because nobody had named it yet — was that I was neurodivergent, and the systems I was trying to use weren't built for how my brain actually works.
Project management found me before I had language for any of this. It gave me something I didn't know I was looking for: external structure for an internal world that didn't run on the schedule everyone else seemed to follow. Tracking systems, visual boards, milestone-based thinking — these weren't just professional tools. They were the first systems that worked with my brain instead of against it. I didn't just learn project management. I needed it.
That's part of why I hold the credentials I do — Certified Green Project Manager (GPM-b), earned as part of the first cohort issued through PMI's partnership with GPM Global, and Certified Sustainable Project Professional (CSPP). They're professional credentials, yes. But they're also proof of something more personal: that the thing I once thought was a deficit was actually a different way of creating order, solving problems, and building teams — and that once I had the right systems, what looked like struggle became strength.
Over the years, I've been releasing shame and collecting strategies — some mine, some borrowed, some discovered through trial and error — that help create order, unlock collaboration, and reduce friction. The Pollinator Group’s Root Systems and The Accessible Communication Field Guide is part of that collection I am excited to share with you.
I'm influenced and encouraged by Ludmila N. Praslova, PhD, author of The Canary Code. In her preface, she describes designing for "the canaries in the coal mine — the ones who struggle to breathe before anyone else is affected." Her central argument is that the way to prevent or heal toxic work environments is to "start at the margins" — building systems that support the people most sensitive to organizational dysfunction, who are so often the most excluded. Her model rests on six principles woven across every talent process: employee participation, a focus on outcomes, flexibility, organizational justice, transparency, and valid decision-making tools. Organizations built this way, she argues, don't just support individual wellbeing — they help create a more inclusive, thriving society.
The Accessible Communication Field Guide doesn't claim to be comprehensive. It claims to be useful — built from lived experience, professional practice, and the thinking of people like Praslova who've been doing this work far longer than I have.
This is also an evolving field. Microsoft's Xbox accessibility guidelines offer a model worth naming here: accessibility built in, not added on. That's the standard this guide is reaching for, even where it falls short.
Download a free guide and let me know what you think!
Stay curious.