The Evidence We Choose

By Jason Hall

The earliest conversations in a workplace project are remarkably consistent. Someone asks about the competition. Someone asks about trends. Someone asks for examples of what other organizations have done.

They're good questions. Looking outward broadens perspective. It introduces ideas and possibilities that might otherwise be overlooked. But I've become interested in what different kinds of information can — and can't — tell us.

Benchmarking can tell us what our peers have chosen to do. Trends can show us where ideas are moving. Case studies can help us understand what worked in a particular context.

Then there is another kind of information, much closer to home.

It's in the way work actually happens. The places people choose to gather. The things they've learned to work around. The relationships that make something easier. The ways of working that have become so ordinary no one thinks to mention them anymore.

Much of this is happening in plain sight, though understanding it can take time and conversation. What makes it interesting is how easily the familiar recedes into the background.

I've encountered this often in workplace projects. A conversation begins with what other organizations are doing, but eventually something much more specific emerges. This team works differently from the others. People keep using this space for something it wasn't designed to do. A process that looks inefficient from the outside turns out to support a relationship people value. Something everyone assumed was a problem turns out to be worth protecting.

Those observations don't make the external information less useful. They simply tell us something different.

The more I've paid attention to this, the more interested I've become in the evidence organizations already have around them. Not because it necessarily provides an answer, but because it can reveal things that comparison alone cannot.

Sometimes the most interesting question isn't what everyone else is doing. It's what is already happening here.