The Human Side
of your AI strategy
We help organizations develop the human judgment and trusted relationships AI cannot replace, by restoring the working conditions that make them possible.
The Human Intelligence (HI) Gap
Organizations are investing in AI. Few have asked the deeper questions.
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Human Intelligence (HI).
The intelligence humans evolved, includes three capabilities.
Reasoning: recalling relevant information, thinking logically, and applying analytical frameworks.
Judgment: making sound decisions under uncertainty and ambiguity, and owning the outcome.
Relationship: developing trust with others through authenticity and perspective-taking.
AI is taking over the well-defined information processing and analytical work that previously required high levels of Reasoning. The bottleneck is now the Judgment to make the right decisions in an increasingly uncertain and ambiguous world, and the Relationship skills to develop deep trusted relationships with clients and colleagues.
This is a big pivot in human capital strategy for many organizations that have, understandably, emphasized Reasoning over Judgment and Relationship in their hiring and development strategies.
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For most organizations the answer is “no.”
Why?
Hiring has typically focused on technical and analytical skill. This has resulted in a talent pipeline producing technically excellent people who struggle to develop genuine client relationships or make judgment calls in ambiguous situations.
Typical approaches to learning & development of “human skills” hasn’t worked. Training budgets have been spent on classroom-style learning content that never seems to transfer to actual skill improvement on the job.
The result is that most organizations are not currently designed to develop and sustain high levels of HI in their employees.
The HI gap is one of the largest and most urgent human capital challenges organizations have faced. You need people with sound judgment and relationship skills. You probably don’t have them.
This is the HI Gap.
We can help you close it.
HI Readiness Framework™
Human skills require human conditions.
Judgment and Relationship cannot be developed with a slide deck. Research shows these capabilities develop only when the working conditions support them, and atrophy when they don’t.
Our evidence-based HI Readiness Framework identifies the ten working conditions that support HI.
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The form of the work space. The natural elements in the working environment: light, air, living things, sound. The nervous system does its best judgment and relationship work in conditions it evolved for.
The function of the work space. Whether the space is configured for the work that matters now: rooms for genuine conversation, places for uninterrupted thinking, freedom to move.
The practice opportunity in the workday. Whether the work itself requires real judgment and real relationships, at every level. Capability grows only where the work demands it: nobody develops judgment doing work that never asks for any.
The feedback provided during the workday. Whether people see what their judgments actually produced. Judgment can only improve when people can see the results of their decisions.
The pace of the workday. Whether the rhythm of the day leaves room for the cognitive space judgment and relationship require.
The honesty within the work culture. Whether it is safe and normal to say what is true rather than what is defensible. Judgment cannot develop where candor is quietly expensive.
The incentives of the work culture. Whether promotion, recognition, and performance management actually see and reward judgment and relationship, not only the output that is easy to count.
The modeling within the work culture. What senior leaders are publicly seen to do. Their visible behavior sets what everyone else believes is permitted, and it is the one condition no policy can install.
The cultivation within the work culture. Whether the organization deliberately develops judgment and relationship skills by naming them, coaching them, and giving feedback on them, rather than assuming they arrive with seniority.
The purpose within the work culture. The story about why the work matters and the unique value employees bring as AI does more and more of the work. An organization that has adopted AI without deciding what role its people will play leaves everyone guessing.
The HI Readiness Framework is evidence-based and derived from research across anthropology, cognitive psychology, Industrial/Organizational psychology, and environmental psychology, including our founder's published work on how environments shape cognition.
The working conditions that support HI do not exist by default. They have to be deliberately designed.
HI Readiness
Know the future HI of your organization, today.
HI Readiness is whether your organization's conditions can grow and sustain the HI it requires. It is measured across all ten dimensions of the HI Readiness Framework using evidence from accurate and validated psychometric assessment tools, including our HI Readiness Survey, along with interviews, a review of relevant documents, and where useful a site visit, all evaluated by trained HI experts. The result is your HI Readiness Index™.
Your HI Readiness Index is the leading indicator. It tells you whether your working conditions today are increasing or decreasing your HI of tomorrow. The outcome it predicts is your Human Intelligence Quotient (HIQ™), which is the actual level of judgment, reasoning, and relationship skill across your workforce, measured over time by your own managers, using rubrics we build with you.
Your HI Readiness Index tells you what your organization’s HI will be tomorrow. Your HIQ tells you what it is today.
How We Work
Become HI Ready. Stay HI Ready.
1. HI Readiness Checklist
Start here. Free, quick, evidence-based checklist which evaluates your organization’s overall readiness to develop, scale, and sustain HI. This is an introduction to the concept and framework.
2. HI Readiness Assessment
A two-week expert-led assessment of your organization’s HI Readiness. You receive your HI Readiness Index™ across all ten working conditions from the HI Readiness Framework, and your HIQ for tracking growth in your HI over time.
3. HI Readiness Roadmap
At the end of the two-week HI Readiness Assessment we deliver your tailored HI Readiness Roadmap which contains our expert’s recommendations for increasing your HI Readiness. We offer quarterly check-ins for 12 months following the HI Readiness Assessment.
4. HI Readiness ReAssessment
We recommend a follow-up assessment at 6-12 months following the beginning of your HI Readiness journey, to track progress and identify the most important next steps.
Not ready for a conversation? Start with the free HI Readiness Checklist.
About
Built on two decades at the intersection of human capability and AI.
James Meaden is an I/O psychologist with 18 years of experience across human capability and AI. His work includes building AI-powered assessments of human capability, publishing research on the performance limits of AI models and also the working environments that support human cognition, and working with organizations on both the technical and the human sides of AI transformation.
His background spans private sector consulting and technology (Accenture, Revolut, Codility) and federal work (VHA, FAA, DoD). He is based in the Washington, DC region.