Before 2019, work — while imperfect — rested on relatively stable assumptions.

Where we worked, how we worked, and what was expected of us followed patterns that had been reinforced for decades. Organizations optimized around presence. People organized their lives around predictability.

Between 2019 and 2021, that stability disappeared.

During the height of COVID, something unusual happened globally: disruption was shared. Countries, industries, and individuals were not competing for advantage; they were focused on survival. Fear was real, but so was coherence. The world paused together.

When work moved out of offices, it was treated as temporary. Few anticipated that the experience would fundamentally reshape how people related to work, to time, and to one another.

As restrictions eased, many expected a return to familiar ground. Instead, they encountered something else entirely.

Work resumed, but the context had changed. Expectations no longer matched experience. Some welcomed the flexibility that had emerged; others missed the structure and energy of shared physical spaces. What became clear was not preference, but divergence.

During this period, people quietly rebuilt their lives around a different reality of work — economically, psychologically, and relationally — often assuming it would endure.

In recent years, organizations have attempted to restore order. Return-to-office mandates, hybrid policies, and renewed emphasis on presence have been framed as solutions to declining productivity or engagement.

Yet these explanations often obscure a deeper issue: the workplace did not simply relocate during COVID — it changed. And many of the assumptions guiding leadership decisions were never updated to reflect that change.

Is presence design, in part, an attempt to manage what leaders don’t yet know how to see — particularly neurodiversity and invisible cognitive load?

Organizations today are not failing because they lack good ideas. They are struggling because prolonged global instability has made it difficult to see clearly. Under uncertainty, fear of error and blame increases, narrowing perception and shortening time horizons. In that context, it is understandable that leaders reach for visible, actionable solutions. The problem is not intent, but diagnosis. When systems cannot yet see the illness, they treat the symptoms—and interventions, however well designed, risk becoming temporary relief rather than lasting repair.