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This week’s writing stayed close to a quieter theme for me. How often we move through things assuming we understand them, and how often that understanding arrives a little too late. On Monday, I wrote about a book that does not try to resolve loss. It simply stays with it. Not only the loss itself, but everything around it that remains unfinished. The conversations that stop without warning. The things we only realize once there is no opportunity to respond differently. Living and working in Japan shaped how I sit with that. Grief is not always something that is brought forward immediately. It appears in its own time, often indirectly. There is an acceptance that not everything will be completed or made clear. That awareness has stayed with me, especially in moments where the instinct is to move on too quickly. On Wednesday, I found myself looking at a very different kind of gap. Teams where people are capable and committed, yet things still feel harder than they should. What stands out is how rarely this comes down to effort. More often, it is about assumptions that are never fully shared. What feels obvious to one person is not necessarily visible to someone else. I see this often in organizations connecting Japanese and US ways of working. Both sides bring something valuable, but the translation between them is not automatic. I’ll be talking about this with Quick USA on June 17th, be sure to join us or sign up so you’ll have access to the recording after the event. To end the week, I went back to a much lighter memory. A weekend in Ueno Park, watching performers who were very good at letting you think you understood what was happening. Just long enough for you to act on it. It was playful, but precise. You responded based on your own assumptions, only to realize you had misread the situation. It stayed with me because the same pattern shows up elsewhere, just less visibly. We recognize something familiar, and fill in the rest without noticing that something is slightly off. All three pieces come back to the same thread. How much we rely on what we think is understood. Whether it is a conversation we assume we will finish later, a definition of “good” we assume is shared, or a situation we assume we have read correctly. And how often it is only afterwards that we see where something was left unsaid, unexamined, or slightly misunderstood. There is no clean way to avoid that entirely. But there is something in noticing it a little earlier. In pausing a little longer. In being just slightly more aware of what might not be as clear as it seems. Thank you, as always, for reading. Scroll down to the event section to sign up for the free Lunch and Learn event on June 17th! Warmly,
Saskia
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