Article: The caveman was never built for the office

The caveman was never built for the office

Your brain is fully formed. Not since yesterday, but for a good hundred thousand years, shaped on a plain where your tribe was your only health insurance. That same brain we now park behind a desk full of quarterly targets, inside a matrix structure, next to a Slack channel that never knows when to stop. That's where it chafes. And that's exactly where every human-centred organisation begins: one that takes human nature seriously, because without that, flourishing never gets off the ground.

So the question isn't how to squeeze people into a handsome set of values. The question is the other way round: how is human nature actually wired, and what behaviour rolls out of it at work? The sharpest lens we have for that is evolutionary theory. Walk with me, step by step through the theory, and then we'll dive into practice.

Why old behaviour sticks

Variation, heredity, selection. Three words that explain why some traits stuck around. Whatever once helped with surviving, cooperating or raising offspring got a head start when it came to being passed on. And so tendencies wore themselves in: alert to status, keen to belong, quick to forge alliances, skittish about risk, and blessed with a nose for social danger.

Handy, on the savannah. Less handy, at the office or on the factory floor. Because those same tendencies now run in a setting they were never built for. That's a mismatch: old tools in a new house. Status battles, office politics and cold feet about change are perfectly logical behaviour, just in the wrong place.

Emotions do the work

For a long time the ideal employee was treated as a calculator: rational, profit-maximising, with emotion as mere static on the line. That picture lies in pieces. We don't behave 'irrationally' out of weakness; the behaviour becomes crystal clear the moment you know what advantage it once delivered. Gratitude oils cooperation. Anger sends an invoice to anyone who takes advantage of another's goodwill. Emotions, in short, do the real work: between colleagues, in teams and in the boardroom.

The figures bear it out. Almost every psychological trait is partly heritable: roughly half nature, the rest experience and whatever life throws at you (Willoughby, 2023). Partly fixed, then, and nowhere near entirely. What's more, culture can steer biology, not only the other way round. We took up drinking cow's milk and promptly acquired the genes to digest it later in life. Something similar is in the air now: high house prices turn out to go hand in hand with a smaller chance of having a child (CBS/NIDI, 2025). A housing shortage is no primal force, and yet it steers our reproductive behaviour.

Mind you, here's the catch. That a tendency has a biological basis proves nothing about the story we invent to go with it.

Fairy tales in a lab coat

Fabrications dressed up as science. Rudyard Kipling once dreamt up how the camel got its hump: as a punishment for idleness. Charming, and utter nonsense. The biologist Stephen Jay Gould christened such explanations just-so stories: behaviour to which you ascribe some evolutionary purpose after the fact, without a shred of evidence. A story that sounds pleasingly logical isn't true for that reason alone.

Four fabrications best read with a raised eyebrow:

• 'Start with why' works, because that's how your brain is built. Simon Sinek hangs his golden circle on three brain layers: reptile, limbic system, neocortex. Lovely patter, dated anatomy; that three-layer model now counts as a myth, because thinking and feeling are in fact intimately entangled (Steffen, 2022). Do start with your why by all means, just not because there's a lizard in your head pressing the button.
• We work best in mini-teams, just like in the old days. Whether those primeval bands really were so small is hotly disputed. And on complicated jobs the benefits of collaboration only start to count from about sixteen people up. Small isn't automatically lovely.
• You can only manage 150 relationships. Dunbar's famous number has taken a fair drubbing; other research counts networks of hundreds to thousands of people. That you keep only a handful warm is probably down to nothing grander than a day being stuck at 24 hours.
• Good leaders get imitated, and so everyone rises with them. That capable leaders work better than coercive ones is true enough. But the explanation underneath turned out to be a fairy tale itself, until a better one came along that turns on supporting human needs.

The lesson is simple: keep testing. A fairy tale can grow into serious theory, provided you have the nerve to check it.

The mismatch that hurts most

If one theme stands above the rest, it's status. Status was once the direct reward for a visible, valuable contribution to the group. That link still prods us to show our best, most helpful side.

On the modern shop floor that cord has been cut. Effort, contribution and reward (promotion, recognition, access to resources) often hang together murkily, or downright unfairly. Block the drive for status, or let it be felt as injustice, and what follows is frustration, stress and the nagging sense that the game is rigged.

Two things pour oil on the fire. Those who score low on integrity tend to chase status hardest, and in the least wholesome way; precisely the sort you would rather not take on. Screening helps, though it's cleverer to remove the breeding ground: no exorbitant bonuses, yawning pay gaps or privileges that widen the gap. And the moment the basic needs for autonomy, connection and fairness come under pressure, people start chasing status as a survival reflex, which only treads those same needs further into the ground.

And there's the key: status isn't a static need in itself, but a variable consequence. Keep autonomy, connection and fairness standing and the hunt for status subsides of its own accord; let them go missing and it flares up. A difference in position or salary is no problem, so long as two conditions hold: the position rests on real competence, and the hierarchy leaves people's fundamental equality intact.

Four findings that do hold up

Against those fairy tales stands a handful of findings that do check out, and that send your eyebrow shooting the other way. Four moments of 'you cannot be serious', and all four usable as tools:

• A view heals faster than a pill. Patients with a glimpse of a few trees left hospital sooner and reached for heavy painkillers less often than their fellow patients staring at a brick wall (Ulrich, 1984). No medicine, no invoice, just a window. Worth a thought before you reserve the finest view for the meeting room that stands empty anyway.
• One beat in time, and the sharing starts by itself. Have people move in sync for a moment and afterwards they cooperate more readily, right down to sacrificing self-interest, even when it doesn't make them a jot happier (Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009). Marching, singing together, rowing in unison: it looks like folklore, yet it's social glue in a party hat. That 'naff' warm-up round is secretly the most serious item on the agenda.
• Being left out genuinely smarts. Deny someone the ball a few times in an innocent digital game of catch, and the very brain region of a stubbed toe lights up (Eisenberger, Lieberman & Williams, 2003). Being 'left off the cc' isn't you being precious, then; your brain files it away as a bruise. Including everyone is therefore less a matter of etiquette than of first aid.
• The cleverest head doesn't build the cleverest team. A group's intelligence is barely predictable from the highest or average IQ. What does predict it: social sensitivity, evenly shared speaking time and the proportion of women (Woolley et al., 2010). In other words, the genius who drowns out everyone else drags the whole thing down. So recruit a room full of good listeners rather than one brilliant soloist.

How to design a human-centred organisation

Why all this? Because any experiment without theory degenerates into flinging spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks. Evolution tells you why something sticks, and under what conditions. With that, you choose what to test far more precisely.

Two caveats, so that we don't go writing a fairy tale of our own. In conflict, people do more often plump for a dominant leader, but strictly strategically: they want that pugnacity aimed outward, and fear that very same dominance the moment it turns on their own group (Petersen & Laustsen, 2020). And cohesion and trust don't turn on a magic number; they stand or fall on the quality of relationships and culture.

What holds up is surprisingly down to earth: we size one another up rather accurately the moment we can simply see each other's work, which explains why a genuine test of competence still says more than yet another job interview.

And here's exactly where we build the bridge to our own method. Where evolution lays bare the universal drivers behind human behaviour, 23plusone makes them visible: a visual set of validated cards of universal values you needn't explain, because you feel them at once. That's no accident, because decisions land first in the fast, intuitive feeling-brain and only then in reason (Kahneman, 2011).

Precisely because the method speaks to that feeling-brain directly through imagery, it nudges people towards their natural behaviour rather than rowing against the current. It hands you the levers that human nature already responds to, without a little list of values imposed from above. And so that evolutionary lens becomes a blueprint: you build the organisation around what already drives people, and flourishing becomes a good deal less a matter of luck.

The upshot is sober and hopeful at once. The evolutionary perspective leans heavily on surviving, stress and protection; it points out the pitfalls unerringly. But an organisation built to human nature wants more than mere survival: it aims to flourish. The caveman knows the dangers of the path. The direction is yours to choose.

Questions you might ask

What is a human-centred organisation?

A human-centred organisation is one that builds its structure, culture and decisions around how people naturally work, rather than squeezing people into systems that cut against the grain. It keeps autonomy, connection and fairness standing, and ties status to genuine contribution.

What is a just-so story?

A just-so story is an evolutionary explanation that sounds logical after the fact but rests on no evidence at all. The term comes from the biologist Stephen Jay Gould. A story that sounds like a foregone conclusion isn't true for that reason.

Does 'Start with why' work because your brain has three layers?

No. Simon Sinek's model leans on the idea of a reptilian, limbic and neocortex brain, and that three-layer model is now regarded as outdated (Steffen, 2022). Starting with your why can be useful, just not for that anatomical reason.

Is it true you can maintain at most 150 relationships?

Dunbar's number (150) is disputed; follow-up research finds networks of hundreds to thousands of people (Lindenfors, 2021). That you keep only a handful genuinely warm owes more to a shortage of time than to any hard ceiling.

Are small teams always better?

Not automatically. On complex tasks the benefits of collaboration only begin to count from around sixteen people up (Mao, 2016). The ideal team size depends on the task, not on some primal instinct.

What is the 23plusone method?

23plusone is a scientifically validated, visual method from BR-ND People built on 24 universal drivers. It makes visible what moves people, teams and brands, and speaks directly to the intuitive feeling-brain through imagery.

How do you build a human-centred organisation?

A human-centred organisation starts from the question of what behaviour springs from human nature. Keep autonomy, connection and fairness standing, tie status to real competence, and keep testing your assumptions rather than taking them for granted.

About the author

Alexander Koene is co-founder of BR-ND People and co-creator of the 23plusone method for emotive drivers. He advises organisations on strategy where brand and culture meet, and writes on human nature at work. Connect via LinkedIn.

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