The Gap Between Us

Why do organisations struggle to work together when they are filled with capable people? The answer may have less to do with individual performance than with the gaps between us. The Gap Between Us explores organisations as humanity's technology for coordinating thought. When no individual can hold all the knowledge needed to solve a problem, organisations allow different perspectives, experiences and expertise to be combined. But bringing more minds together creates a new problem: how do those minds develop enough shared understanding to think and act together? Drawing on observations from organisational life, alongside ideas from anthropology, organisational research and the study of collective intelligence, Alexander Juul Silver explores the hidden infrastructure that makes coordination possible: language, shared experience, relationships, trust, strategy and leadership. He argues that organisations accumulate a form of capability through working together an invisible resource that can make future coordination easier, but can also become a source of inertia when the world changes. Transformation, from this perspective, is not simply about changing structures. It is about relearning reality together. And as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly capable of interpreting, connecting and contributing to knowledge, the question becomes even more important: How do we think together?