Quite Voices and Blank Faces

June 2024

A few years ago, I was working with an IT team, studying their systems and processes in a diagnostic we ran. The company had layers of dashboards, analytics, and escalation procedures .

When the failure hit, dozens of people jumped on a bridge call. Little circles filled with initials, no faces.

I had a disturbing conversation with one of the engineers on that team. He told me that recently, an issue popped up, a major incident. He said the problem was a very specific server issue. He’d seen it before.

He told the team… twice, during the call…

No one listened, or they heard him but were too busy working on the backchannels, chatting with each other, and not bringing findings to the main group.

Roughly 24 hours later, after chasing dozens of false leads, they found the root cause, exactly where he said it was.

He did not think it was malicious, just too hard to focus for the group. He didn’t think they ignored him on purpose. Maybe if they saw his face instead of his initials, the communication would have broken through better.

In Atrophy Hunter, I write about how technology and structure can dull our ability to think. But the truth is, clarity isn’t lost all at once. It erodes in small moments — like the meeting where the person who’s right gets ignored.