Stop Mining Our Ideas. Start Appointing Disabled Leaders.

Disabled people are increasingly asked to share plans behind closed doors — then we watch those ideas roll out without us. Real change starts when lived experience is valued as leadership, not as free research.

In recent weeks, a few organisations have appointed disabled people to senior roles. That matters, and it deserves applause. Yet a stubborn pattern remains: our ideas are welcomed; our leadership often isn’t.

I know this pattern well. Time and again, disabled leaders are asked to “share your plan,” “walk us through your strategy,” “tell us how you’d fix this.” We’re generous. We bring lessons forged through lived experience and years of work. Then the meeting ends, the emails stop—and months later our thinking appears in a strategic plan, a program or a glossy announcement. The job? It went to someone else.

I’m over it. And I’m not alone.

This is not about any one organisation or person. It’s about a system that treats lived experience like a free ideas bank—excellent for harvesting, optional for appointing leaders. When lived experience is treated as decoration rather than real skill, organisations waste money and trust by solving the wrong problems well. The pattern is familiar: a “quick chat” becomes a detailed plan, the risk sits with us but credit rarely follows, and the ideas are used while the people who shaped them are sidelined.

That matters ethically because it asks communities—who have already given so much unpaid labour—to give more. It matters practically because borrowed ideas often fail without the people who know how to deliver them. And it matters strategically because without disabled leaders in the room, signals from the community are missed or misread.

Appointing disabled leaders isn’t a box-ticking exercise. It leads to better decisions, stronger services and real trust. When the people most affected by decisions help make them, services fit the way people actually live. When the message is “you belong here,” staff stay, clients return and word of mouth grows. The problems that have resisted change, employment, accessibility, ageing with independence and more are solved more effectively when solutions are built “with”, not “for”, our community. Trust grows when there is openness about goals and results. Also, there is no tension between lived experience and sound management; the two strengthen each other.

So, what would moving from extraction to partnership look like in practice? It starts with respect for time and ideas. If you want real strategies or tools, engage people on a paid basis with a clear brief. Protect both sides with fair confidentiality and intellectual property terms. In recruitment, test thinking by discussing public past work or using anonymised scenarios, don’t set tasks that can be quietly reused. If you draw on distinct ideas from paid advice, say where they came from, and seek permission if you want to reuse tools. If you don’t appoint someone after substantial engagement, offer timely, specific feedback. And when you ask community members to advise, pay proper rates and show how their input changed decisions.

The next step is to appoint rather than outsource belonging. Set clear targets for disabled leadership at board, executive and management levels, attach timelines, and report progress. Targets are not favouritism; they correct a long-standing imbalance that skews who is seen as “meritworthy”. If you insist you “just want the best person,” then measure what “best” actually requires. Lived experience is a skill. It sharpens judgement, detects risk earlier and improves delivery. If you’re not assessing it, you’re not measuring “best.” And if budget is tight, spend it where it moves outcomes. Paying for expertise and appointing the right leaders saves money by preventing well-intended but ineffective projects.

Here is my boundary from today. The invitations to “share your plan” will keep coming. I’ll keep sharing—in public. I’m done with closed-door extraction. If you want the plan, you can read it here. If you want the outcomes, appoint disabled leaders—me or others.

This is also a constructive offer. I will work with anyone serious about change, including newly appointed leaders—disabled or not—who want to lift disabled leadership across their organisation. This is not about personalities; it’s about how we design leadership. Over the next quarter, you can begin by making a few concrete moves. Publish leadership targets with dates and report against them. Replace token consultation with paid co-design that shares decision-making power and closes the loop on feedback. Build paid leadership pathways for disabled staff and community members—secondments, mentoring and clear succession planning. Set practical accessibility standards for websites, apps and buildings, commit to timeframes, and publish performance. Track results that matter—jobs, participation, independence and belonging—and link executive rewards to movement on those measures. Work with peers rather than competing for profile when collaboration would deliver more. And, always, respect ideas: pay for strategy, credit sources and seek permission before reuse.

To the organisations that keep inviting disabled leaders to present: thank you for your interest. Our door remains open. But the next time you ask for our ideas behind closed doors, we will point you here. If these ideas resonate, appoint disabled leaders to deliver them. That’s how we stop mining ideas and start building results that last.