Maximizing human potential in a technology-obsessed world.
Insights
Observations, research, and applications. Done in public.
I write about the distance between people, what it costs, and what closes the space between us. The scientific process is only complete when we experiment and learn through experience. These are the insights gained from that process.
Before We Begin...
An Author's Note
The essays below were written between 2021 and 2023. It was necessary to consider if that diminished their relevance; I decided it did not. Human experience does not go out of style.
I realized that there was a larger arc across the writings that I see differently in hindsight. This particular group of six feels timely. Each is a lens built through observation, illuminating the gaps and tensions I felt in the environments around me. I arranged them to follow the arc rather than the calendar.
Selected Essays
December 5, 2023 | 7 min read
The objection first, because it arrives before the rest gets read. Work that centers people gets called soft by people who have not tried it.
July 14, 2022 | 4 min read
What the work actually is.
Thinking is a practice with methods, and almost none of us were taught any of them.
September 20, 2023 | 8 min read
A strategist arguing against the primacy of strategy. The plan was never the hard part. The people misusing the word often present the bigger challenge.
May 26, 2022 | 2 min read
The mechanism, and what it produces. People grow into the space they are given, which means the ceiling is usually not theirs.
May 6, 2023 | 6 min read
I was asked to teach a team to take more ownership, and to use myself as the example.
This is what I wrote instead.
October 27, 2021 | 5 min read
The oldest one here, and the one that started the question. Written five years before I had a name for the distance.
Where the Thinking Is Headed
The Working Hypothesis
The hypothesis that emerged over the course of nearly forty published essays in conjunction with the work since is that as the distance between people grows, the overall quality of our reactions and behavioral responses declines. This decline interferes with the collaboration, productivity, and forward progress that is necessary as we step into a different kind of future. When taken together, the realization of desired outcomes and good judgment is significantly constrained.
I wonder if by closing that distance and shifting our intentions to start with the way we engage with one another, we can realign to the possibilities currently latent for human potential. In the time between when these pieces were written and now, this has only become a more urgent challenge to address. The world is now greyer and the grey matter harder to see. Our very human reaction to the ambiguity and pace of change has counterintuitively increased the distance between us as we effort towards what our brains interpret as survival. The overstimulation that seems to become increasingly pervasive has been driven by and also accelerated our overdependence on technology and automation.
A byproduct of our withdrawal response carries the detrimental consequence of removing the incidental contact that creates conducive culture, team climate, and human interaction for solving wicked and existential problems. Remote work made this even easier. No more hallway conversations, organic handoffs, phone a friend, and even being forced to sit with a hard conversation - face to face in our shared humanity.
Self-imposed isolation has compounded problems between people that already existed. Organizations became petri dishes and the shifts demand study. The implications of the gravity pulling us away from one another, I believe, have ripple effects that are reframing our society and with it, the ability to be conscious of the right problems so we can establish objectives that are collectively beneficial and needed for us to work together to define effective solutions.
More recently, I have been writing about AI and the skewed perceptions driven out of FOMO and fear. When juxtaposed against the foundation of these earlier writings, it became clearer that the goal is not simply to determine if these new technologies work or add value, but on how our response to them may interfere with our ability to engage with one another and ourselves in more constructive patterns.
Bottom line? The through line hasn't changed.
We have come to a time where it often feels as though nothing is clear; dread and doom often make it hard to be optimistic. The onus is on us to slow down, go deeper, and become better thinkers. We must take a big breath and challenge ourselves to see things differently so we can do things differently. Reflection holds a key that we blaze past in the busyness, hustle, and effort to keep up with unrealistic expectations and demands that we create from a place of anxiety.
But take heart. We can still create meaningful change, so long as we remember that just because this is the way things are, it does not mean that it is the way it has to be.
The Distance
My thinking and the curiosity that emerged over the years of drafting essays in real time did not have a name when I wrote them. For now, I am calling it The Distance: the malaise underneath the problems that interfere with a more human future.
The Distance contains within it multiple levels: the gap between who we are and how we show up, the space between people, and the void between decision makers and the people doing the work. Dimensions of exploration currently include what fills that space, what it costs, our awareness that it exists through reflection of our own experiences and behaviors, and the long-term consequences of continuing down the path of withdrawing from the human experience.
It now has a page of its own and the beginnings of a research program behind the work.