The Song of Significance

What companies need has shifted, and suddenly. Instead of cheap labor to do the semiautomated tasks that machines can’t do (yet), organizations now seek two apparently scarce resources: creativity and humanity. Both skills involve dealing with other humans, creating strategies, and finding insights in a fast-moving world.

Yes, we need to make a living. But how do we make a life?

Significance is the generous incremental process of possibility. The smallest useful change produced for the smallest viable audience. Again and again, with humanity.

Significance creates change, and change is a dance with tension.

The alternative is a set of mutual commitments, together with trial projects, to see what’s really on offer. A key step forward is to find a path to mutual trust. Let’s get real or let’s not play.

Instead of hiring based on the performance of interview skills, perhaps we can pay people to do a project with us. The best way to see how someone works is to work with them.

The alternative is to measure the health and output of the culture itself. To hold the leaders accountable for enrollment, commitment, and the rigor of shipping work that makes an impact.

If the work of the organization involves innovation, connection, or the creation of change, then only humans are going to do that work. Treating them like a measurable asset is a trap.

Anything easy to measure is rarely important, because our competition is better at maximizing the easy measurements than we are.