I get on a call with a leader, and most of the time I can hear the hesitation before he names it.

He wants the team to work better. He knows his new leaders are in over their heads. He knows the tension between two good people is starting to cost him real money. And when I say what it would take, an advance to reset the team, coaching for the new leaders, a mediation to clear the air, he goes quiet. It is the same quiet every time. He is doing the math, and the human work always feels expensive.

Here is where I wait.

This same leader will renew a five-figure software contract without blinking. He will fund the dashboard, the analytics, the platform that promises to measure his people. But ask him to spend a fraction of that on the actual work of connection, and suddenly it is a hard sell.

I understand the pull. The tool feels safe. It has a login, a report, a number that goes up and to the right. The human work is messier. You cannot put a mediation on a dashboard.

And yet the human work is the only part that cannot be automated. A machine can tell you engagement fell. It cannot sit two people down and help them hear each other at last. It can flag that a new manager is drowning. It cannot coach a new leader through the week he almost walks out.

This is connective labor, and it is the least automatable work there is. It is also the work we keep starving, while we pour millions into the tools that only measure it.

The advance. The coaching. The mediation. These are load-bearing and they require craft and nuance, followed by new ways of showing up.

Reply and tell me. What is the human work you have been hesitating to fund? I read every one.

With care, Moe

P.S. I wrote about this dynamic in Company recently. Check it out here.​

P.P.S. If helping leaders spend on this work is what you do for a living, keep reading this month.