The Power and Peril of Storytelling
We all have a story to tell. Unfortunately, sometimes the story we want to tell doesn’t match the real story. I suppose that is how fiction originated. But when it comes to real-life storytelling, less than the real story is fake and sooner or later leads to failure.
A Personal Journey
Truth be told, I was telling the story of a more human future as far back as 2019, when I re-emerged on the LinkedIn scene after some arduous inner work. I was authentic, daily on my soap box, speaking from the gut and the heart about designing better work environments, human-centered leadership, and everything in between. I had followers, even a few kindred spirits, but I was, in many ways, a lone wolf. Raw-dogging it, as they say. And in that solitude, I came to understand something paradoxical: I was advocating for human-centricity while disconnected from its core essence: connection.
But life, in all its poetic timing, delivered the lesson I had been blind to in its necessity. Enter Perry Knoppert, the Founder of The Octopus Movement , and with him a wildly wonderful, curious, collaborative, and deeply connected community. That missing piece I hadn’t known I needed suddenly had form, voice, and energy. Lot’s of energy! 🐙 With them, the work shifted. It started to breathe. It began to feel.
Rewriting the Organizational Narrative
Every company leader has a story they want to tell, about their work, their organization, and its collective aspirations. But too often, the stories we leaders share aren’t grounded in the lived experiences of the people within our organizations. And when we build strategies, cultures, or systems around idealized narratives rather than authentic human realities, we risk creating environments where people fight to survive but don’t truly thrive. Leaders create organizations destined to fail, or at the very least, to never realize their full potential. How can they, if the collective of humans within their walls aren’t even scratching the surface of their own?
When we think about designing the future of work, we must move beyond surface-level innovation. It’s not just about launching the next platform, product, or performance metric. It’s about fundamentally reimagining the workplace as a space where all people can flourish. Designing with humans, not just for humans. This means engaging with the lived experiences of employees, not just during times of feedback or crisis, but continually and collaboratively.
Instead of asking, “How might we innovate for people?”, what if we began with, “How might we innovate with people?” This shift in orientation, from designing for to co-creating with brings humanity to the forefront of organizational transformation. It centers lived experience, shared meaning, emotional truth, and genuine self-agency.
A New Possibility
It’s in the sound of spontaneous laughter between colleagues. The DM to check on a colleague about an outside-of-work event personally meaningful to them. The scent of coffee shared during a morning check-in. The high-five in reassurance (you got this!) or celebration (you did it!). The sparkle in the eyes of someone who feels seen. And the unmistakable sixth sense the emotional resonance of feeling that you matter.
We’ve seen what happens when companies prioritize profit at the expense of people. But we’ve also seen what’s possible when they don’t. When organizations invite people into meaningful dialogue, when they trust them with shaping the future, when they listen not only to ideas but also to emotion, something powerful happens. Connection deepens. Creativity blossoms. Work becomes not just a place to earn a living, but a place to live with purpose.
Let’s take the lessons of the past few years and do something radical: build companies, associations, educational and governmental agencies where humans thrive not by accident, but by design. This is what Human Score exists to support.
As we launch this new chapter, we invite you to imagine the future of work not as a fixed destination, but as a beautifully evolving, deeply human process. Let’s make it together.
Curious how Human Score can help your organization thrive? Request a live demo appointment to explore the possibilities.