9 example Human Loops stories & analyses to help you think about situations
Read these mini narratives and analyses to start to get a feel for how Human Loops can help you start to improve the situations in your world.
Human Loops is a practical framework you can apply to your own situations in life, whether personal, professional, client, business or investing. Getting those thoughts out of my head and into yours will likely take a little time. So examples will help.
(Related: 15 Human Loops questions to help you start to think about any life situation)
1/ Night Panic
The bass from the club was still a dull throb in Anya’s ears, a ghost of the music that had felt so freeing an hour ago. Now, the only rhythm was the sharp, precise click of her own heels and the echo—a few steps behind—of someone else. She clutched her phone, its screen showing a dying 2% battery. She’d told her friends she’d be fine, it was just a few blocks. But these were somehow poorly lit streets she didn’t recognise. Her heart wasn't just beating; it was a frantic drum against her ribs, screaming that whoever was behind her was getting closer.
Human Loops: Her arrival energy creates heightened threat detection that narrows attention but also sharpens focus on survival options. The structural situation (unfamiliar streets, dead phone) constrains her choices while the physiological response provides energy for rapid action. Past-to-now safety programming conflicts with current uncertainty. Her fear amplifies risk assessment (expanding caution) while potentially paralysing decision-making (contracting options). The situation creates both vulnerability to panic and clarity about immediate priorities.
2/ Observing Frozen Energy
The CEO’s plan was a masterpiece of flawed logic, a costly pet project everyone could see was doomed. Ben watched the faces around the polished table: the dutiful nods, the pens scribbling notes to avoid eye contact. His eyes flicked to Sarah’s screen, where a frantic Slack message to another colleauge read: “This is a disaster, but what can we do?” Sarah’s loyalty to the team’s silent consensus was overriding her duty to the truth, her dissent neutered into a private complaint.
Human Loops: The team's mini-culture preserves short-term harmony while eroding long-term trust and decision quality. Power dynamics maintain hierarchical stability but suppress information flows that could prevent costly mistakes. Individual energy flows toward conflict avoidance (immediate comfort) and away from truth-telling (future credibility). The system reinforces existing authority structures while accumulating hidden dissent that may eventually destabilise those same structures.
3/ The Talent Exodus
Five resignations this quarter. Sarah, the brilliant ex-Google product manager, just quit for a 30% pay cut elsewhere. "Better cultural fit," she said diplomatically, but I saw her face after John's last team meeting—hollow, defeated. The CEO hits his KPIs by surgically dismantling people in public. "I thought someone with your background would grasp this faster." Tomorrow's board meeting: do I call it an "HR retention challenge" or name what I'm really seeing—our star CEO is systematically destroying our best people to feed his own ego?
Human Loops: The CEO's performance metrics satisfy board expectations while depleting human capital. Structural incentives reward quarterly results but penalise sustainable team-building. The director faces competing mini-cultures - one valuing measurable outputs, another prioritising psychological safety. Sarah's departure reduces immediate operational capacity while potentially forcing system evolution. The gap moment involves trading comfortable denial (preserving current relationships) for difficult truth-telling (preserving long-term viability).
4/ Contradictory Instruments
The autopilot just switched off at 37,000 feet. My airspeed shows 60 knots—impossible at cruise altitude. His shows 215. Ice crystals hammer the windscreen. Stall warnings shriek, stick shaking, screaming from the cabin. Training screams "don't stall, don't die"—so I pull back hard. But something feels backwards. The captain stumbles in, groggy. We're falling but my brain can't process contradictory readings in the dark. Years of training vanish under pure panic. Stop—breathe for five seconds. Are the instruments lying? Ice blocking the sensors? Should I push forward, not pull back?
Human Loops: Training protocols designed for normal operations become liability in anomalous conditions. Structural factors (ice, darkness, instrument failure) create cognitive overload that fragments decision-making while simultaneously demanding rapid action. Past-to-now muscle memory conflicts with real-time sensory data. The panic response narrows attention (limiting options) while providing energy for decisive action (enabling rapid course correction) but he gets it wrong. Survival might depend on temporarily abandoning proven procedures to access underlying flight principles.
5/ Identity Fatigue
The email inviting Lena to become a partner glowed on her phone, a monument to a decade of sacrifice. But staring at her reflection in the high-rise window, Lena felt nothing. The title “Partner” hung on her like a lead apron. The late nights, the negotiated deals, the suppressed opinions—it had all been a game she was brilliant at but now found utterly meaningless. The person who wanted this had vanished, replaced by a highly efficient stranger.
Human Loops: Past professional success systems created external validation while potentially atrophying internal meaning-making processes. Structural rewards (partnership track, peer recognition) functioned effectively within legal/business culture but may have crowded out personal values exploration. The achievement energy flow optimised for institutional metrics while creating disconnection from intrinsic motivations. Her current emptiness signals both the endpoint of one identity construction and potential starting point for different meaning systems.
6/ Founder's Trap
Chirag’s desk was a fortress of monitors, each displaying a different part of the codebase he was personally reviewing. His team hovered nervously by the door, waiting for approval to proceed on the smallest tasks. The company he’d built with his own hands was now paralysed by his own genius. His relentless attention to detail, the very thing that ensured their early quality, had become the bottleneck strangling their growth and innovation.
Human Loops: Quality control systems that enabled early success now constrain organisational growth. His energy investment in direct oversight maintains product standards while creating team dependency that limits innovation capacity. Structural bottlenecks preserve his central authority but reduce system resilience. The control mechanisms expand his influence over details while contracting the company's adaptive potential. Breaking the pattern requires trading immediate quality assurance for longer-term organisational capability.
7/ Fake News Bank Run
Sophie watched the numbers on her screen bleed red in a perfect, algorithmic panic. A baseless rumor on a financial blog had triggered a selling program, which dropped the price 3%, triggering margin calls, which forced more selling. The bank was fundamentally sound, but the market was now trading a narrative of fear, a self-fulfilling prophecy written in code. Reality was no longer a factor.
Human Loops: Information systems designed for price discovery become amplification mechanisms for narrative cascades. Structural elements (algorithmic trading, margin requirements) create feedback loops that disconnect market pricing from underlying fundamentals. The selling pressure reduces bank valuation while potentially triggering real financial constraints through self-fulfilling mechanisms. Energy flows toward risk aversion (immediate portfolio protection) and away from fundamental analysis (longer-term value assessment). Tweets move markets.
8/ Scroll of Shame
The blue light of Mark’s phone was the only light in the room, painting his face in the gloom. His thumb moved on its own, a piston of envy scrolling through a highlight reel of engagements, promotions, and tropical vacations. Each image was a tiny verdict on his own stagnant life, a drip of acid eroding his sense of worth. The more he scrolled, the worse he felt, and the worse he felt, the more passive he became, trapped in a cycle of consumption and shame.
Human Loops: Social media structures provide connection to others' experiences while enabling upward comparison that triggers inadequacy responses. The algorithmic curation system optimises for engagement (expanding time spent) while potentially reinforcing negative emotional cycles (contracting self-efficacy). His energy flows toward passive consumption (immediate stimulation) and away from active creation (longer-term satisfaction). The platform succeeds at capturing attention while potentially undermining the user's sense of agency and accomplishment.
9/ The Megaphone Moment
The crowd surges toward City Hall, thousands chanting "Send them back!" I'm shouting too—a laid-off accountant from Ohio, finally doing something with my estranged sister Sarah after three years of silence since mom's funeral. The megaphone feels heavy in my hands. Ten years ago I voted for immigration reform, comprehensive stuff. I remember Maria from the plant—sweet woman, hard worker, laid off the same day as me. But here I am, mouth opening automatically, words flowing like they're not even mine. Sarah's watching, nodding, smiling at me for the first time since we fought. The crowd expects me to speak.
Human Loops: The crowd structure provides community belonging and shared purpose while channeling individual agency toward group expression. Past-to-now economic displacement and family reconciliation needs intersect with current social movements. His energy flows toward tribal inclusion (immediate acceptance) and away from previous political positions (longer-term consistency). The moment offers both genuine community connection and potential compromise of individual values - Maria's memory represents alternative meaning-making that competes with group solidarity.
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Thank you. We certainly need this time type of thinking in health and medicine. Question is how to translate this into on the ground action. Seems to be that it emerges when there is a relentless focus and vision and priority on the aim of the system.