Somewhere there’s a porch with a light on.
Not a metaphor. An actual porch. The kind where someone sits and listens. Doesn’t fix anything. Doesn’t have a deck or a framework or a four-step process. Just listens. Asks the one question that matters: “What do you need?”
The institution didn’t have a porch. Had conference rooms. Had HR offices. Had mediation suites with separate entrances so you never see who you’re negotiating with.
But no porch. No place to just sit and say what happened without it becoming a memo, a file, a legal strategy, a settlement number.
A porch is the thing the institution can’t build because it requires something the institution doesn’t have: the willingness to listen without an agenda.
Somewhere there’s a porch with a light on. The light is for whoever shows up next.