Foreword

Learning from one another sets human beings apart from every other species on the planet. It isn't our big brains (though that doesn't hurt). It isn't that we have both spoken and written language (though that doesn't hurt either). And it certainly isn't because we are the largest, fastest, or most threatening of creatures. No, what makes humans unique is our unparalleled ability to learn from each other, both at once and across time.

It is learning that has given us the ability to reach a total population size that is vastly larger than would be the case for animals of an equivalent size. It is learning that has allowed us to survive, even thrive, in astonishingly diverse environments. Indeed, humans can be found in virtually all habitats on Earth, a quality unique to our species. And it isn't that humans simply adapt to the environments they find themselves in-they actively alter the environment through their command of energy and matter. Humans can innovate and build upon insights and discoveries made far from where they happen to be, in both space and time. With the press of a button, humans can access and build upon centuries of accumulated knowledge, generate more of it, and in turn share it with other humans who can do the same.

In this timely book, authors explore the implications of human connection and communication in an age of exponentially developing technologies. Both are essential to the extraordinary accomplishments of our species.

Let's explore three situations in which acknowledging participants' humanity has fundamentally shifted business outcomes.

Human Unpredictability and the Challenge of Scaled Systems

The very concept of scaled systems-systems that are designed to create outputs in a systematic and predictable way-is unique to humanity. Wonders such as the assembly line, globally precise supply chains, and the entire worldwide shipping industry are marvels of productivity. And yet, the very precision and repeatability that makes scaled systems so powerful is also often an enemy to the human beings enmeshed in them. As Paul LeBlanc, former president of Southern New Hampshire University, observes, scaled systems are built to ensure predictability and reliability (McGrath, 2024). Humans are capable of designing such systems, but when it comes to those that are intended to deliver care, they often fall short. Providing education, health care, recovery from the criminal justice system, and addiction treatment are all situations in which scaling struggles.

Humans are unpredictable. Their very ability to learn means they can do things like game the system, avoid sanctions, do things in ways that are more convenient for themselves, or learn bad habits that they in turn can pass along to others (Bloom, 2024). Similarly, rigidly built scaled systems with a one-size-fits-all approach often leave out solutions for those who do not fit their prescribed patterns. Evidence suggests that the more complex a scaled system becomes, the more resources need to be dedicated just to maintaining it (Ehrenreich, 2020). That said, we may well be on the brink of discovering a new solution to the perennial dilemma of the fragility of scaled systems.

With the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning, historical processes of human learning can accelerate. This in turn means that people with less expensive expert training can take actions and make decisions that previously required highly skilled experts. Further, instead of having systems that rely on predesigned solutions to succeed, humans can be at the touchpoints in which variability arises in the system. A fascinating example of a system that has achieved this is Nashville's CareBridge Health, which uses technology to surround its Medicare and Medicaid patients with the equivalent of 24/7 care and monitoring, bringing in expensive experts only when warranted. The rest of the time, the healthcare teams of physicians, pharmacists, nurses, social workers, and others providing care address issues such as preventing falls and limiting the appearance of wounds. The result is a system that profitably serves its patients at scale.

Human Learning Through Connections and the Debate Over Where Work Takes Place

It is a taken for granted assumption in much of the literature on workplaces that being together in a common place fosters learning, trust, companionship, and innovation. And yet, we also know that relying on working at the same place in person is not systematic. Further, the richness of communication between people is limited. As Thomas J. Allen famously discovered, once people are located more than about 60 feet apart, the richness of the information they exchange with one another drops off dramatically-from a high of 80% of shared, rich information to lows of something like 20%. And our wondrous channels of communication-telephone, email, short messages, and so on-don't make any difference to this reality (McGrath, 2023). As Allen himself noted, we don't substitute such communication vehicles for one another. When it comes to complex learning and problem-solving, there is no substitute for people being physically together (Allen and Henn, 2006).

This is perhaps the reason so many companies are hungry for their people to return to their offices-to the point at which some are punishing those who don't "badge in" (Cutter, and Chen 2023) enough with poor performance rating and financial consequences. Work by Keith Ferrazzi (2024) and others, however, suggests that companies have misunderstood the implications of the Allen rule. This is that the Allen effect takes place in situations of "serendipitous" bonding-bumping into one another accidentally, for instance. The level of team bonding reported by teams in Ferrazzi's study, on a 5-point scale, hovers on average around 2.8. That is hardly world-changing levels of team effectiveness! While the level of team bonding did drop a bit during the pandemic, the level achieved through serendipitous bonding leaves a lot to be desired. Instead, Ferrazzi suggests putting in place practices that foster the creation of bonding, trust, and common commitment proactively. The practices of team formation and execution that we have inherited from the past are not fast enough or reliable enough for the level of performance teams need to achieve today.

In other words, evidence suggests that intentionally designing teams for mutual success, bonding, and trust is what matters to human groups, not where they randomly happen to be working.

Humans as Costs-Leaving Value on the Table

Sadly, both in the United States and across the globe, systems have emerged that treat people, particularly frontline people, as cost centers. Efficiency-oriented systems therefore seek to minimize those costs as much as possible. As Zeynep Ton has argued in her marvelous books, The Good Jobs Strategy (2014) and The Case for Good Jobs (2023a), we have created a virtual epidemic of bad jobs. Low pay, unpredictable hours, little opportunities for advancement, and few opportunities to learn a variety of skills have cemented many employers' activities as essentially treating valuable humans like poorly performing robots. The business effects are not great either-high turnover, decreased customer satisfaction, poor productivity, and high levels of active disengagement are all outcomes.

Instead, Ton's work suggests that thinking of employees as units of revenue, rather than of cost, can yield tremendous benefits, even in low-margin sectors of the economy. As she puts it, ".what happens if your turnover level is one fifth of the industry average? That means that now for every new worker you can spend five times as much on hiring, on training, on performance management without increasing your hiring, training, or performance management budget. Can you imagine the competitive advantage that these companies have when they operate with such low turnover? There are so many other things that they can do. For example, they can ensure that their customers don't wait. They can ensure that their customers get service from people who are empowered, who know exactly what they're doing. They can ensure that their employees can constantly improve performance. These are all the things that are not available to companies that operate with high turnover" (Ton, 2023b).

Given that human learning is cumulative, it isn't surprising that firms that have figured out how to keep people, help them learn together, and adopt practices that are good for the enterprise outperform those that don't. One fascinating example of this is in the transaction led by Peter Stavros of KKR, in which CHI Overhead Doors was acquired by the private equity firm. In a departure from the standard playbook, however, every employee received an ownership grant of shares in the company through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), and when the company was eventually sold to Nucor Steel, employees made life-changing returns on their equity. What made this possible was attention to day-to-day improvements at the company. KKR had acquired the company in 2015 for US$700 million and sold it to Nucor Corp for US$3 billion in early 2022. It became one of KKR's best investments historically, on the basis of treating humans as the ingenious, cooperative creatures they can...