Taking Time To Listen

Paul texted me in May, and I missed it.

It was right after I’d sent him a demo report showing how Target’s cultural resilience had cratered from an 80 to a 53 in six months. His response was immediate: “I love what you’re doing at Seeqer. How can I help?”

I was drowning in everything else—building algorithms, refining rubrics, trying to turn cultural physics from theory into something measurable. So I didn’t respond.

Then he texted me a few weeks ago. This time, I locked it in. And it was amazing. We were discussing engagement scores and how HR has been stuck measuring unmeasurable things for decades. “Engagement is a made-up HR word,” he told me, and he’s absolutely right. We’ve built entire industries around concepts that are essentially the green-orange-red face on those airport kiosks—moment-by-moment feelings we pretend to measure scientifically.

Then Paul started spinning my work out to applications I hadn’t even brought up publicly yet. Political campaigns. Founder assessments for VCs. Individual coaching with quarterly KPIs. This wasn’t someone trying to be helpful—this was someone whose twenty years of navigating the impossible space between CFO demands for metrics and human dynamics let him see patterns I’m still discovering.

Sitting with Paul for an hour reminded me of something I’ve always known but rarely see talked about: intergenerational relationships aren’t just nice to have when you’re building something meaningful. They’re essential.

There’s something about that dynamic of maturity and experience combined with wisdom that creates possibilities you can’t access any other way. It’s not about someone older giving you advice and you following it. It’s about different generations of experience creating something neither person could build independently.

Paul understands the difference between surface-level culture initiatives and the deeper work of building organizational resilience because he’s lived it as Indeed’s first Chief People Officer. I understand how to quantify cultural physics because I’ve built the framework and discovered the field. When we sit together, we can see applications and solve problems that neither of us would recognize alone.

This is what I realized yesterday—and what I think most people miss about building sustainable culture: the intergenerational piece isn’t optional.

When we talk about creating culture that lasts, that adapts, that survives volatility, we’re really talking about knowledge transfer across generations of experience. The wisdom that comes from someone who’s built at scale, combined with fresh frameworks and new tools, combined with the energy to implement—that’s where real cultural resilience gets built.

It requires swallowing your pride, though. Admitting that despite building breakthrough technology, despite having the data and algorithm and research, I still need someone who understands the human side of bringing complex ideas to market. Someone who knows that CHROs are brilliant and intuitive but lack the quantified intelligence to make their arguments stick with CFOs.

But here’s the thing: Paul reached out because he saw something valuable, not because I pitched him. When he immediately grasped that my cultural resilience algorithm could quantify the intuitive knowledge great HR leaders have always relied on, that wasn’t mentorship—that was mutual recognition of complementary strengths.

The relationship we’re building doesn’t fit neat categories. It’s not formal advising, not traditional consulting, not even friendship in the conventional sense. It’s something more valuable: two people from different generations who approach culture from different angles, recognizing that our combined perspectives create possibilities neither of us would see alone.

This is how sustainable culture actually gets built. Not through peer networks or strategic partnerships, but through authentic intergenerational relationships where different eras of experience inform each other. Where someone who’s fought these battles for decades can help you see around corners you don’t even know exist. Where someone with fresh frameworks can help solve problems that have been considered unsolvable.

When Paul started seeing applications for my work that I hadn’t even considered, that wasn’t him being a good friend. That was the natural result of combining his two decades of organizational experience with my framework for measuring cultural physics. That’s what happens when intergenerational relationships work the way they’re supposed to.

The startup world talks a lot about disruption and ignoring conventional wisdom, but some wisdom exists for a reason. Some experience can’t be replicated by reading case studies or attending accelerator programs. The most resilient cultures are the ones that figure out how to transfer knowledge across generations while staying open to new frameworks and tools.

Yesterday’s conversation was a reminder of something I’ve always known: the relationships that matter most aren’t the ones where you’re trying to extract value or prove yourself. They’re the ones where mutual respect and intellectual curiosity create vehicles that can carry both people forward.

Sometimes the most important text is the second one. Sometimes the best relationships are the ones that remind you why intergenerational connection has always been the backbone of culture that actually lasts.