First notes toward a research that has no conclusion yet.
We live in a world that has become extraordinarily capable at producing, optimising and systematising. What we have developed far less is the capacity to discern what is actually worth producing, or what makes us more genuinely capable of understanding each other. This is not a problem of execution. It may be a problem of a different kind of intelligence, one that precedes systems rather than operating within them. The Greeks called it Métis. This paper is a first attempt to notice what its loss might look like, and why that question might matter far beyond any single industry or discipline.
This Circle does not aim for agreement. Disagreement and nuance carry as much weight here as consensus, because the plurality of human judgment, kept from being standardised into one method, is exactly what this research is trying to keep alive. In that sense, this document doesn't only describe Métis. It tries to practise it.
This Working Paper is not intended to be cited. It is intended to be challenged.
Something has quietly shifted in how organisations relate to the world around them. The tools for producing, measuring and optimising have never been more powerful. The capacity to read what is worth producing, to notice what is actually changing before it becomes obvious, to understand humans before deciding how to address them: that seems, in many contexts, to have weakened.
This is not specific to any one industry. It appears in organisations that have become so efficient at executing within their own systems that they have lost the ability to question whether the systems are pointing in the right direction. It appears in cultures that have learned to make things extraordinarily well, while asking less and less about what those things are actually for.
What Makes Us Human is a practice built on one response to that observation: work upstream of the brief, before the direction is fixed, where the quality of what follows is actually determined. That conviction grew from over twenty years of moving between cultures, industries and countries, learning to observe environments that weren't expecting me. In trying to articulate this practice more precisely, a larger question appeared that the practice alone couldn't answer.
The voices in the Circle, alongside this text, are a first sign that this question isn't confined to one field. This paper is an attempt to keep inviting others in.
A conversation with Olivia Riant, founder of DOJI (School of Innovation Science), introduced a distinction that gave this inquiry its vocabulary. The Greeks distinguished between Logos, systematic and reproducible, and Métis, situated and irreducible to method.
Something seems to have shifted in how organisations relate to these two forms of intelligence. The Logos appears stronger than it has ever been: more rigorous frameworks, faster processes, more measurable outcomes. I am less certain about the Métis. Whether that uncertainty reflects a genuine loss or simply my own vantage point is one of the things this research is trying to find out.
One recent example, examined in Perspective Shift 01: a technically extraordinary film that expresses everything a brand can produce, while revealing almost nothing of what the brand has observed. The execution is Logos at its finest. The Métis that should have preceded it is invisible.
This is not a criticism of any one brand. It is an observation about a broader pattern. And the hypothesis may be wrong. That is precisely why this is a research question and not a conclusion.
Olivia's work clarified something else: DOJI operates downstream, making innovation operable and teachable. What this inquiry is exploring is upstream: the moment before a direction exists. These are not competing. They are describing the same journey from opposite ends, with a very large and mostly unoccupied space between them.
These questions are not rhetorical. They are genuinely unresolved. Each one is a potential direction for future Working Papers, and each can be answered directly, not just read.
The Circle of Inquiry is open to everyone to read. Contributing works differently: it happens by invitation, extended to people whose field or experience can genuinely displace the thinking, not validate it. The most useful contribution is the question this document hasn't asked yet, or a framework from another field that puts what is described here in a different light.
Useful perspectives might come from: cognitive science, clinical medicine, decision theory, philosophy, organisational anthropology, design practice, or anywhere else the question of how human judgment changes, and under what conditions it weakens, is being taken seriously.
This Working Paper is written in English, the working language of most of the fields it draws on. Contributions in French, or any other language, are genuinely welcome. Write in the language you think best in.
None of these three people know each other. Each comes from a field with no reason to talk to the other two, or to WMUH. What follows isn't a list of influences. It's a pattern: three disciplines arriving, independently, at versions of the same observation.
What she helped me see is that what I'm exploring is upstream: the moment before a direction exists.
Olivia introduced the Logos/Métis distinction, the conversation where this research found its vocabulary.
Thank you. Fabien reads every submission personally.
What I had been thinking of as a problem specific to creative strategy, she was encountering in medicine.
Kristin studies what happens to clinical judgment when AI is integrated into decision-making.
Thank you. Fabien reads every submission personally.
How does a practice become demonstrable without becoming a method?
Simon's question, asked over lunch, may be the most important one in this paper.
Thank you. Fabien reads every submission personally.
Not a reply to one perspective, a new one. If your field or experience puts this inquiry in a different light, this is where it goes.
Thank you. Fabien reads every submission personally, and will follow up if it belongs in the next Working Paper.