Some of the most costly mistakes in modern systems—whether in government, nonprofits, or business—don’t come from bad intentions.

They come from **good intentions built in a vacuum.**

Too often, new technology, new workflows, or new policies are created _for_ the people who will use them—without ever being created _with_ them.

The result?

• Systems that look great on paper but fail in practice

• Tools that meet the goals of leadership but frustrate frontline workers

• Interfaces that check every box—except the one that makes it truly usable

And most dangerously: silence from the people expected to live inside those systems every day.

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**Listening Is Not a Step. It’s a Safeguard.**

When feedback loops are missing from the design process, **the cost doesn’t show up immediately**.

It shows up slowly:

• As miscommunication

• As workarounds

• As burnout

• As wasted licenses and abandoned tools

• As public mistrust in digital services that don’t work the way real people need them to

We don’t always recognize it as a failure of _listening_.

But that’s often exactly what it is.

And in the context of government or civic systems, that kind of failure can feel like being shut out of your own community.

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**Who’s in the Room When Systems Are Designed?**

This is the question every agency, every business, every organization should be asking.

Because if the people designing the process…

• Don’t know what it feels like to serve clients directly

• Don’t understand the barriers facing someone navigating the system for the first time

• Don’t ask how legacy knowledge lives inside real people, not just documentation

…then the system will be incomplete from day one.

Not because someone failed to build.

But because someone failed to **listen before building.**

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**The Myth of Technical Neutrality**

There’s a myth that technology is neutral—that if it works, it works the same for everyone.

But the truth is: **every system carries the assumptions of its creators**.

What screen size they had in mind.

What “normal” bandwidth looks like.

What education level the user is expected to have.

What language is used in prompts, emails, or status updates.

What they think matters—and what they never thought to ask.

When those assumptions go unexamined, the result is a kind of quiet exclusion.

Not on purpose.

But at scale.

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**Silence Looks Like Compliance—Until It Doesn’t**

Sometimes, the people affected by broken systems won’t speak up.

They’ll find workarounds. They’ll stop using the tool. They’ll do what they’ve always done—because it’s easier than filing a ticket or requesting a fix that never comes.

But that silence is deceptive.

It can look like things are “working” when in reality, they’re fraying.

Trust is leaking.

Time is being wasted.

People are doing extra labor to compensate for the system they weren’t invited to shape.

Eventually, that silence turns into something harder to repair:

• Low adoption

• Staff attrition

• Community disengagement

• System failure

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**Listening Is a Strategic Advantage**

The good news?

Listening isn’t hard. It’s just often skipped.

And the organizations that build listening into their design process—from the very beginning—see the benefits everywhere:

• Better tool adoption

• Higher morale

• Fewer redesigns

• Smoother onboarding

• Stronger public trust

Listening creates alignment.

And alignment is where systems start to work—not just technically, but _humanely_.

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**Final Thought**

Every system is lived in by real people.

And the further those people are from the design table, the more likely the system is to fail them.

We don’t need more rollouts.

We need more _relationships_.

More conversations.

More questions that start with: “What’s your experience been like so far?”

Because the cost of building without listening isn’t just inefficiency.

It’s disconnection.

And in an age where technology shapes how we live, work, and serve—that’s a cost no community can afford.