A Field Guide to Working with the Unboxed

How to recognize, support, and actually use versatile humans on your team

Every organization has them.

The people who don’t fit neatly into a role. Who ask questions that seem slightly outside the agenda. Who can jump into wildly different conversations and somehow make all of them better.

They are often described as “hard to categorize," "a bit all over the place,” or "really smart, but…”

This is a field guide for working with those people. Not tolerating them. Not flattening them. Actually tapping into their talent intelligently.

First, how to recognize the unboxed

Unboxed humans tend to:

• See patterns across departments others treat as separate

• Ask why just as often as how

• Get bored with repetitive execution but energized by novel problems

• Translate easily between technical, human, and strategic language

• Feel underutilized in narrowly defined roles

  
  

They are not unfocused. They are context-sensitive.

And they are often your highest-leverage thinkers.

Common mistakes (please stop doing these)

Mistake #1: Forcing them into rigid job descriptions

Unboxed people can perform defined roles, but they rarely thrive in them. Over-constraining their scope wastes their integrative intelligence.

Mistake #2: Using them only in emergencies

If you only call on them when something is broken, you’re treating them like a fire extinguisher instead of a design asset.

Mistake #3: Measuring them solely by output metrics

Their value often shows up as coherence, foresight, risk reduction, and improved decision quality—things spreadsheets struggle to capture.

How to work with the unboxed (practical guidance)

1. Give them problems, not just tasks

Unboxed thinkers excel when given ownership over ambiguous challenges. Let them define the problem before solving it.

2. Let them move between domains

They are often at their best when allowed to sit at the intersections—between teams, functions, or disciplines.

3. Use them as translators

They can often articulate what one group means in a way another group can hear. This is not “soft skill.” It’s strategic.

4. Pair them with structure, not micromanagement

They don’t need tight control. They need clear intent, boundaries, and trust.

5. Expect nonlinear contributions

Their impact may not arrive in tidy increments. It often arrives as reframes, insights, or preventative clarity.

Why this matters more in the AI era

As AI systems take over routine execution, human value shifts toward:

• Sense-making

• Judgment

• Integration

• Ethical discernment

• Creative synthesis

  
  

Unboxed humans already operate in this territory.

They are often the ones best equipped to work with AI—using it as an amplifier while retaining human authorship and accountability.

If you don’t know what to do with them, your competitors will.

A note to managers

If someone on your team feels “hard to place,” pause before trying to place them.

Ask instead:

• Where are we experiencing complexity?

• Where are we misaligned?

• Where do silos prevent progress?

  
  

That’s usually where the unboxed belong.

A note to the unboxed

If you’ve spent years trying to compress yourself into legible shapes, you’re not alone. The problem was never that you lacked focus. It’s that the system lacked language—and method—for your kind of intelligence.

That’s changing. Those who learn how to work with the unboxed will shape what comes next.