Future Design Inquiries. June 2025

Hello from ENSO, a future design company. We’re sharing the things that make us think, bring us joy or shift our perspective. 

What we’re reflecting on

Back to nature (culture by design)

At a time when many are going back to the office, we’ve decided to move deeper into nature. By 2022, ENSO had completed its transition from large, factory-model, office-bound organization to small, guild-model, all-remote company. This new structure worked well in so many ways – with the team spread out, it was easier to break away from the false paradigm that hours logged equals value created. Greater flexibility led to greater individual wellbeing, and it proved better for our families too. And yet, as time went on, something wasn’t quite working. Building a strong, resilient culture strictly over zoom was proving a real challenge, and as our connections frayed, resentments rose. We, and the work, suffered. Eventually, we realized that while the all-remote model was great for the individuals, it was terrible for the collective. We could get our work done from anywhere, but something else was eroding: shared context, emotional trust, and the glue that turns a group of people into a team. 

Still, no one was ready or willing to go back to the office grind. What to do? First, we tried one-day-a-month meetups in LA. It sounded good in theory—but it didn’t work. For those of us not based nearby, the travel was unsustainable. One day together turned out to be short and therefore felt forced, with everyone trying to cram as much in-person work and bonding as possible into one eight-hour sprint. But then, Sebastian had an idea: What if we met just a few times a year—but for a full week, in nature? That’s when Maya Cohan, an ENSO team member with experience in culture building, started designing something different. She realized that what we needed wasn’t just face time – we needed a ritual. Building on this idea, she came up with a few key parameters: 

1/ Each trip has to be a Monday through Friday – enough time to truly settle into the place and each other. 

2/ We have to travel to a ‘third place’ – a place that can truly become ours for the week. 

3/ We need structured and unstructured time – and they are equally important. We need space to work together and space to think, create and connect together, knowing that one always fuels the other. 

So we started traveling. And something interesting happened – as we went on more of these trips, we started developing a collective consciousness around them. We learned that being in nature works for us – in the redwoods, by the sea, in the mountains. We found the structured work time valuable, but the unstructured time even more so. Beautiful hikes, long dinners and easy conversations felt nourishing for the organization. And once we got back, the work would often flow in a way it hadn’t before. We started planning less – fewer scheduled activities, more spontaneous walks. And we always carved out time to do some inner work – to talk about the state of our organization, and where we want to go. In this process, we started to learn who we, as a group of people, are. And soon, our culture wasn’t suffering anymore – in fact, it was thriving. Two years later, these weeklong gatherings are a cornerstone of our culture. They’re less expensive than an office—and dramatically more valuable. Because great culture doesn’t require constant presence. It requires shared meaning. One long hike beats 10 status meetings.A week together builds more trust than a quarter of Slack threads. We believe this isn’t just a better offsite—it’s a new model for connection in the future of work. Most companies now operate in one of three models: 1/ all in office, 2/ all at home, 3/ a hybrid of in office and at home. This presents something entirely different: all at home periods, punctuated by immersive, collective connection. Not a retreat, not a conference, not an offsite crammed with content. Instead, it is a steady cadence of shared experiences. A week at a time, several times a year, to go deep—not wide. No forced fun. No corporate games. Just trust, time, nature, and intention. (HS)

Designing decency

“What we make stands testament to who we are.
What we make describes our values.”
You may have heard, Jony Ive made some news recently. But before the OpenAI news, he gave a great interview looking back on 40 years in tech. In 1992, he saw, “an innocent euphoria: like-minded people driven by values, in service of humanity — there was a strong sense of purpose, and that purpose was to serve the species. There was an underlying sense of our place as servants, and of principled service.” What’s changed? “That’s not the case [now] … there are corporate agendas driven by money and power.” The irony runs deep: those ‘money and power’ agendas seem to overlook the magic that made some of tech’s most remarkable success stories — the love that went into each product, ‘so people would know we cared about them’. This resonates with Jacinda Ardern’s call for ‘a different kind of power’ in her new book. She argues that traits we’re taught to see as weaknesses — empathy, sensitivity, self-doubt, humility — are actually sources of strength. “It’s not just what you do in government, it’s how you do it … that’s what the world needs right now.” (SB)

A brief history of happiness

Happiness, you might have noticed, is hard to pin down. Thanks to the positive psychology movement, we are living in a golden age of scientific understanding of how people thrive. But in addition to studying the present, it’s worth looking back — at how humans have thought about happiness over time. There’s some wisdom there. Kwame Anthony Appiah did a great, succinct retrospective recently. We turned it into a handy crib sheet. Where on that arc are you? (SB)

These nuggets are curated by enso partners Hanna Siegel (HS) and Sebastian Buck (SB).

12 things that made us think, gasp, share and laugh:

• Charles Brooks’ cool photographs of the insides of musical and scientific instruments

• Success is a sequence of failures
• The Paradox of Tolerance: Should we not tolerate some views?
• A heartwarming mystery and love story from my neighborhood, Mt Pleasant, Washington DC 
• Is the backlash to phone life finally giving rise to a civic awakening? 
• Meet the principal who convinced her students to give up social media entirely
• Why does every film and TV series have the same plot? The enduring ubiquity of the hero’s journey
• The beauty of moral courage
• Om Malik on designing the life he wants (clarity in chaos)
• Can behavioral science nudge growth?
• Abraham Verghese’ Harvard commencement speech is wonderful; a great year to hear from an immigrant who lived through an authoritarian dictatorship
• The V&A museum opened a new location; its storehouse

What we’re working on

ENSO is a small, senior team so that we can work on just a few initiatives at a time. This allows us to go deep on some of the biggest challenges/ opportunities. Recently, we’ve been working on a few main missions with our partners:

1. Defining how the world’s most dynamic ecosystem can be harnessed to fight climate change: Finding a way to turn the incredible research, education and innovation into a new future for the planet, and for us. 
2. A brand to radiate optimism: We think restoring optimism in the world is essential. We're working on a book and content series, while also exploring product and community approaches.
3. Changing the world of work: the labor market is the engine of prosperity, but ~80% of people are not engaged or thriving. We’re working to change the system. 

Want regular inquiries? Subscribe here to get our thoughts in your inbox every so often.

Reach us at news@enso.co

See you next time.

ENSO • 115 W California Blvd #9101 Pasadena, CA 91105