09 Oct Nothing About Me Without Me
We’re nearly at our 29th October Conversation Café, Beyond the Silo: Bridging the Gap Between Support and Core Business. The threads of our recent reflections on values, identity, balance, curiosity, care, and connection have all circled the same centre: what happens when people and functions drift apart.
In Different Values, Same Business? we explored how HR, IT, Finance, and the operating core define value differently, often talking past one another. In Who Are We? we saw how multiple identities (professional, departmental, personal) can pull people in conflicting directions. Goldilocks and the Three Cares showed how the balance of self-care and care for others sustains healthy relationships, while Genchi Genbutsu reminded us to “go and see for ourselves.” Managing Silos asked whether management itself still matters in an age of systems and algorithms.
Together, these conversations point to a single truth: silos persist when decisions are made about people rather than with them.
Designing without dialogue
In our work, we see this every day. Organisations adopt new HRMS platforms, redesign workflows, restructure departments – and do so in the name of efficiency or compliance. The intent is good, the technology often impressive, but the process is strangely quiet. Systems get designed for managers and employees without those managers or employees having any real say.
We’ve watched this play out during HRMS rollouts, where HR and IT teams work tirelessly to automate processes for the line, only to discover later that the line was wholly unprepared for those processes. The resulting systems may comply with policy but alienate the very people they were built to serve.
Sometimes the silence is more deliberate. Confidentiality clauses, NDAs, and risk-averse legal processes prevent open dialogue before change is announced. Labour legislation, designed to protect, can paradoxically freeze the flow of conversation. Leaders see the storm coming but feel unable to engage until it is too late. The result is predictable: resistance, cynicism, and yet another layer of separation between “them” and “us.”
The curse of efficiency
Efficiency is a seductive ideal. It promises clarity, control, and speed. But when applied without participation it reducesclarity, diminishes belonging, and puts the brakes on organisational change. Change delivered to people, no matter how well intentioned, rarely sticks. It creates procedural compliance but emotional withdrawal. The human voice is replaced by workflow tickets and chatbots that answer questions no one actually asked.
When people are left out of conversations that shape their work, they do not just lose agency, they lose connection. Silos harden not because of distance, but because of exclusion.
“Nothing about me without me”
The phrase Nothing About Us Without Us has travelled far from its origins. It emerged in the disability rights movements of the 1980s and 1990s, first in Poland, then internationally, as a demand for participation and dignity. It meant exactly what it said: decisions that affect me must include me. Since then, the idea has influenced health care, education, social justice, and public policy.
At its heart, it is about relational ethics – the belief that people should not be acted upon without their informed and willing involvement. It is not just a slogan for democracy; it is a guide for every form of collective life.
From principle to practice
Applied to organisations, Nothing About Me Without Me challenges the assumption that expertise alone is enough. HR, IT, or Finance may hold the data, but the operating core holds the client. The best solutions arise when both are in the room, co-creating rather than exchanging policies.
In practical terms, this means designing HR systems with the managers and employees who will use them. It means involving frontline staff in shaping change before it is declared “rolled out.” It means making room for genuine engagement, even when it seems to slow the process down. The solution is to get better at engagement, get faster at collaboration – instead of bypassing them.
Participation is not inefficiency; it is investment. It prevents costly rework, builds psychological ownership and psychological capital, and keeps identity intact through change. It also re-humanises systems work. When people are seen, heard, and invited in, care returns to the relationship – care for the work, for the people, and for the organisation as a whole.
A lesson in balance
This is not a call for endless consultation or governance paralysis. There are times when decisions must be taken quickly, and confidentiality observed. But even then, leaders can act with transparency and respect, explaining the “why” as soon as possible and inviting the “how” from those affected.
Like the Goldilocks zone we wrote about earlier, there is a balance to be found: too much inclusion slows the system; too little corrodes trust. The art of leadership lies in finding that “just right” middle space where people feel involved, respected, and connected.
Join the conversation
At WorldsView, we believe that healthy organisations are built through conversation, where curiosity and certainty co-exist. Nothing About Me Without Me is more than a principle; it is an antidote to the silent silos created by well-meaning systems and hurried change.
Join us on 29 October for our online Conversation Café: Beyond the Silo – Bridging the Gap Between Support and Core Business.
We’ll explore how HR – and by extension IT, Finance, and other support functions – can build meaningful partnerships with the line by designing with people, not for them.Click HERE to register. It’s free, online, and 90 minutes (09:00–10:30 SAST).
Let’s talk about linking mechanisms, connection, care, and the kind of participation that keeps organisations whole.