They were doing their job.

They were sitting at their desks, in meetings, in the elevator, answering emails. They were working, engaging in one of the most important places where life happens for all of us.

For the hundreds of first responders that day, their job was to enter danger to help people they did not know, as it is every day.

25 years ago today, 2,977 people were killed on 9/11. More than 6,000 were injured. At the World Trade Center alone, 2,606 people died—including roughly 2,200 civilians and workers and more than 400 emergency personnel. Among them were 343 FDNY firefighters, 23 NYPD officers and 37 Port Authority police officers. And the human toll continued long afterward through 9/11-related disease with thousands impacted even today.

On that day, coworkers helped each other. They physically carried one another, they searched, they comforted, they communicated, they slowed down to help. Titles and org charts were irrelevant and efficiency and optimization were insignificant.

Connection, and connective labor, became a matter of survival after the attack, rather than optional. The profoundly human capabilities that are so easily dismissed at work as "soft skills" became life-saving.

Some of the most important decisions that took place that September 11 came from ordinary people, regardless of title, rank, or scope of authority. Ordinary employees who saw what needed to be done and did it.

People lost or injured in the crisis were not just FTE's, they were team members. Families, friends, local merchants, and colleagues. Teams were eliminated, companies changed forever. Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 employees, the impact of which is unfathomable for most of us. The relationships we have at work are not incidental to getting the job done, they are how we get the job done, and they matter to us deeply.

None of us thrives or succeeds alone, and today is a day for remembering that in a crisis, 25 years ago, this interdependence mattered more than ever and was (and is) felt around the world. It is also true not in a crisis, when work is blah and a colleague is struggling, a team is fractured, or someone needs help stating what they need.

On the worst workday imaginable 25 years ago on September 11, humans showed us what humans at work are capable of.

Not productivity.
Not engagement scores.
Not perks.Not profits.

Courage. Agency. Service. Sacrifice. Connection. Love.

Twenty-five years later, perhaps honoring those who lost their lives and those who still live with loss means remembering that these things don't only matter when buildings are burning. They matter every day we go to work.