Why Harkn Failed — And What That Reveals About the System

Since announcing the closure of Harkn, I’ve been asked the same question repeatedly: Why did it fail?

Of course, there isn’t a single answer, but one reason stands out above all the others.

Harkn failed because we built something that told the truth — and too many companies would simply rather not know.

Some people who used Harkn said that transparency made things worse — that giving people a voice, especially during periods of uncertainty, just stirred up discontent. It’s not hard to see why they felt that way. When frustration, disillusionment, or fear are made visible — not just to leadership but to colleagues — it can feel unsettling, even destabilising.

But that’s not dysfunction caused by openness. That’s dysfunction revealed by it.

As one senior executive at a client put it: “We can turn this off anytime we like. It won’t stop people saying these things — it’ll just stop us hearing them.”

Constructive dialogue doesn’t always come easily. But disagreement isn’t the danger. Visibility becomes a threat only in organisations that aren’t prepared to handle it. Because when those frustrations and fears are made visible — not just upwards, but across the organisation — they carry weight. They invite acknowledgement. They demand a response.

You don’t just get feedback. You get discomfort. You get truth. And in many organisations, that truth — or even the threat of it — triggers something deeper: systemic resistance.

For clarity: when I talk about the system, I don’t mean Harkn as a technology platform. I mean the broader design of organisational life — the web of governance structures, legal constraints, cultural norms, and internal incentives that shape how decisions get made. It’s not a glitch in the machine. It is the machine.

In this system, visibility implies responsibility, and responsibility creates risk. So rather than face what’s surfaced, the instinct is to avoid it — not because leaders are indifferent, but because the system makes not knowing safer than knowing.

One example stands out. Towards the end of our time, a long-standing client cancelled our contract directly ahead of a major restructure.

The message from the top was clear:

“That platform must go before we announce.”

Not after. Before.

This was a familiar thread: We don’t want to hear it. We don’t want employees seeing what each other think. We don’t want to know how people feel. We want control of the narrative.

It was a decision rooted in fear. But that fear wasn’t personal — it was structural.

And it wasn’t a one-off. We saw the same instinct play out repeatedly — in leadership behaviours and in the structural reflexes around them. Some companies delayed or cancelled launches. Others sought to manage the way people used the platform during moments of pressure or transition. And in some cases, the teams responsible for employee voice, inclusion, or wellbeing actively resisted the adoption of Harkn.

Not because they didn’t care, but because their approach to care was shaped by the organisational context. They’d say things like: "We’d need to police this." "We’d need to know who’s saying what." "We’d need to control what people see."

These weren’t the words of people ready to listen. They were the words of people trying to protect the organisation from its own people.

And the actions that followed — the decisions to delay, restrict, or quietly retreat — revealed more than any rationale ever could. They were a not-so-subtle admission that opening up would expose what had long been denied. That honest dialogue would make visible the tensions, contradictions, and unresolved truths the organisation wasn’t ready to face.

And so the priority became containment. Not clarity. Not learning. Not trust.

What was being blocked wasn’t just feedback. It was sensemaking — the chance for people to understand, and respond to, what was happening around them, together. And that, perhaps more than anything, is the clearest sign of dysfunction: when even the teams tasked with listening prefer silence over reality.

These protective instincts became even clearer in the US. In one week, I met with five different companies. All five asked a version of the same question:

“What if there’s a live shooter situation?”

At first, I misunderstood. I thought they were asking whether Harkn could help surface a potential threat. But that’s not what they meant.

What they were really asking was:

"What if one of our employees was so unhappy they harmed their colleagues — and it turned out they’d said something on the platform?"

"What if we could have known?"

"What if we should have acted?"

That was the fear. Not the harm itself. But the accountability that might follow.

Because in this system, awareness becomes obligation. Obligation becomes exposure. And exposure must be avoided at all costs. So the safest structural choice is not to ask, not to see, not to know.

And the logic doesn’t stop there. One of our strongest supporters — a non-executive director across several UK boards — put it plainly: “We could never implement this in the organisations I work with. The regulator would be all over it. If something came up, it would become discoverable. That’s a risk we can’t take.”

Of course, this is about leadership. But it’s about more than that — it’s about how the system is built. We’ve created environments where not knowing is rewarded, where silence is easier to manage than truth, and where performative listening is safer than meaningful dialogue — not because it leads to better outcomes, but because it avoids accountability.

This isn’t a cultural flaw. It’s a design flaw. The system discourages awareness and punishes proximity to reality. It rewards detachment.

And that’s what Harkn revealed — not just what employees really think, but how hard it is, structurally, for those in power to bear witness to it. The frustration people feel at work isn’t just about being ignored. It’s about the futility of being honest in a system that’s not built to hear them.

“You’re not listening. You don’t care. Because when I tell you things, nothing changes.”

That’s what breaks trust. That’s what kills morale and momentum. That’s what keeps organisations from adapting.

It’s not the speaking that’s the problem. It’s the refusal to engage with what’s said — the structural, cultural, and legal incentives to look away.

That’s why Harkn failed. Not because it didn’t work — but because it did. It surfaced what was hidden. It made voice real-time and unavoidable. It offered truth — uncensored, unfiltered, and on record.

And the system wasn’t built for that.

In truth, it still isn’t.