We tend to think about infrastructure as something physical:
roads, power grids, networks, systems you can point to and measure.
But conversation is infrastructure too.
Every organization runs on it.
Every relationship depends on it.
And every breakdown eventually shows up as conflict.
When conversation works, problems surface early, expectations are clear, and issues get resolved before they harden. When it doesn’t, friction builds quietly until it spills into escalation, churn, or legal process.
Yet when conversation breaks down, our instinct isn’t to fix it,
it’s to replace it with process.
Tickets instead of dialogue.
Policies instead of understanding.
Courts instead of conversation.
That’s backwards.
Healthy systems don’t eliminate conflict.
They resolve it early.
Conversation, when structured and guided, is still the fastest and most human way to move forward. It creates clarity around what actually happened, accountability for what comes next, and outcomes people are far more likely to follow because they were part of shaping them.
What’s been missing isn’t willingness ... it’s scale and access.
Historically, conversation didn’t scale well. It required time, neutrality, and skilled facilitation. So organizations defaulted to rigid processes that traded humanity for efficiency.
That tradeoff is no longer necessary.
Technology now makes it possible to support conversation the way we support payments, logistics, or customer support, reliably, neutrally, and at volume. Not as a replacement for people, but as infrastructure that helps conversations happen earlier, more clearly, and with better outcomes.
That’s what modern resolution looks like.
Resolution isn’t a soft skill.
It’s not a last resort.
It’s critical infrastructure, and systems that treat it that way are the ones that actually move forward.