Maximizing human potential in a technology-obsessed world.
Navigate What's Coming
Independent Research and Strategic Advisory for the Future of Work, and the people who will power it.
The most expensive thing in your organization is invisible.
It is the distance between people, and you are already paying for it.
You pay in energy, because people spend theirs on being seen correctly rather than on the work. You pay in judgment, because the problems nobody raises are the ones that get expensive later. And you pay in decisions, because the people making them sit furthest from the work those decisions land on.
None of it has a line item, so none of it gets a budget. It compounds quietly, because every person who does not go first raises the price of being the one who does.
How far is the distance between people where you work?
Distance is a lens for examining where breakdowns occur. Many of us who see it have a tendency to stumble on it by accident. But once you see it, it cannot be unseen.
It shows up as the gap between who someone is and who they have to be here. Between people who have to work together in teams and groups and never really come together. Between the people making decisions and the people who do the work. Three vantage points, one thing.
Distance produces insecurity and isolation. Insecurity and isolation produce fear. Fear is what makes people do the things that cost you money, and "people" includes you, too.
Closing it is simple on the surface: get nearer, ask instead of assuming, get curious about someone else's experience. What makes this so hard is that to get closer requires vulnerability and self-understanding that allows people to choose differently. We are all human, after all. The solution is also the problem, so here we are.
We are studying whether the same few variables sit underneath all of it in the hope that we can help people, teams, and organizations carve the path through. There has to be a better way; no technology is going to reconnect us to one another. It is something that we have to do ourselves and then help others do the same.
The research is underway. The applications are not, yet.
Everything starts with the research, and the research runs in public. Findings get published. The instrument is being built. The people who contribute will see their own results first.
The survey opens to participants when the instrument is ready. If you want to be in the know, share your email below.
What we learn will become tools, conversations, and experiences, tested in real organizations by real people. What comes back goes into the next round.
Three things you can do today.
These simple actions won't cost you a dime.
1
Be human first.
Before a hard conversation, take thirty seconds to remember that the person on the other side is also a human, and they probably want the same things you do.
2
Ask instead of assuming.
The assumption you are about to act on took you half a second to make.
A question takes four. Ask it, and you will know instead of imagining.
3
Get curious.
Find out what someone's day really looks like before deciding what they should do. Most of what looks like resistance is information you didn't have.