Humans In The Loop

“At the end of the day, organizations are human.”

Bryan Yuji Walker

Change Leadership Certificate Instructor & IDEO Partner

Most traditions are solutions to forgotten problems.

Our career decisions are more reversible than we think

Humans suffer from what psychologists call the end of history illusion. We tend to understand that we’ve undergone significant personal growth and changes in taste to bring us to the present moment, but we discount the fact that we’ll change in the future.

The end of history illusion is worth... See more

Agreeableness is not the same as agreeing. In fact, they have little in common. Finding someone who’s only job is to agree with everything that is said is easy. On the other hand, agreeableness is the skill of having a contrary position and being pleasant about it. It’s the hard work of bringing professional work to people who expected something... See more

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books (Dostoevsky and Dickens) that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves... See more

To be lost is to be human

Feeling lost is a fundamental part of the human experience, a feeling that traces back to the dawn of history.

As I discovered, talent and drive aren’t enough. If anything, talent can make finding ideas feel more daunting because it increases the number of available opportunities.

In practice, that meant permission to stop , permission to play ( including to do work that still felt truly fun), and permission to go internal (get back in touch with her internal compass, goals, and sense of self). She was still working, she was just being a whole lot more mindful about where she was directing her energy.