Welcome to Disruptive Empathy.

Finding the Human OS Among the Racks and Cables

So, for roughly twenty years now, I've been rummaging around in the IT consulting world's attic, if you will. Not quite literally digging in a dusty server room floor, but pretty close sometimes! I've spent my days (and often nights) knee-deep in tangled wiring, trying to wrangle documentation around confusing network diagrams, and attempting to steer technical projects without completely capsizing. Along the way, I've seen the perfectly racked servers and the ones that looked like they were held together with duct tape and a prayer. And after all that time getting my hands dirty with the stuff of IT – the hardware, the software, the endless troubleshooting – a really clear picture started to emerge: the tech is important, sure, but the people relying on it, managing it, and just trying to get their work done when it inevitably goes sideways? They're everything.

This blog, "Disruptive Empathy," isn't going to spend much time talking about RAID configurations or the finer points of firewall rules. Think of it less like a technical manual for the infrastructure and more like an exploration of the human operating system running underneath all those blinking lights and humming racks. We often talk about disruptive technologies, but I'm here to argue for disruptive empathy – the kind of understanding and connection that doesn't just make client interactions smoother, but fundamentally changes how we troubleshoot issues, manage projects, and navigate the demanding landscape that is IT consulting in the startup space. It's a force far more powerful, and often more neglected, than we realize.