The Human Factor is a strategy firm focused on using the power of stakeholder engagement to unlock meaningful change.
We support organizations taking on big challenges and our strategies account for the intricacies of your people and communities: your human factor. Our consulting teams thrive in complex groups of people and systems. We work across industries and come from interdisciplinary backgrounds in design, business strategy, engineering, and academia. In the past, we’ve helped organizations like Google and NASA approach important initiatives by understanding how to navigate the needs and barriers in their stakeholder systems.
Why Focus on Stakeholders?
In negotiation, we know uncovering the right issue is critical to reaching agreement. From behavioral economics, we know most folks are not naturally forthcoming—the information people reveal upfront can make it seem like there’s no deal to be made. As a result, a lot of value is lost because we simply don’t understand the other side.
In organizations, these natural, human tendencies have an even greater effect. We see organizations as systems of stakeholders, and we know that organizations with overlooked or misunderstood subgroups multiply their value lost. Stakeholders that would be important enablers for (or unsuspected barriers to) a new idea may not be obvious, or may be hard to get to know. Their real interests may be hidden, unspoken, poorly defined, or in direct conflict. It’s therefore unsurprising that the solutions these organizations develop– designed with face-value information only– can lead to lackluster outcomes, or worse, miss the mark entirely.
This is where understanding the subgroups’ deeper motivations, their underlying interests, becomes crucial. Why do stakeholders care about a particular result? This deeper understanding gets us to more options to find a solution with staying power, but it’s hard to do.
At The Human Factor, our goal is to find, understand, and represent the voice of the stakeholder when drafting a new strategy and defining its success. This approach keeps us focused on caring for the people involved– one of our company values. And, it’s just good business; history shows that this approach reduces wasted work down the line and increases the adoption of new initiatives. We slow down, to speed up success later.
Our Values
Relentlessly
Human First
We believe human ingenuity and empathy is the most potent combination there is. Understanding and investing in our people and those involved in our projects isn’t just part of our values, it’s good business.
Guided by Experience,
Committed to Curiosity
We are committed to continuously learning and growing our expertise. We implement practices that are consistently relevant and offer the best chance of the biggest impact, and we iterate to improve our methods, mindsets, and tools with every round.
Accountable Changemakers
We believe that tools are neutral—what matters is how you use them. We commit to entering complex systems with the utmost respect for the people and communities involved, by using what we learn to do good. We denounce tactics motivated by the suppression of another’s ability to live a healthy and fulfilling life.
Comfortable with ‘Imperfect Progress’
Change is hard and never perfect. Rather than waiting for ‘perfect’ (and maintaining the status quo), we pursue steps in the right direction. We are committed to our values and we are willing to start the conversation on tough challenges in a global world, without assumed vilification of any stakeholder.
Our investment
As a mission-driven organization, we are committed to supporting changemakers across industries and geographies. We commit to finding ways to bring our strategic work to organizations building a better world. Practically, if we’re working with a government agency to design community rebuilding programs, we also look for ways to support local organizations on the ground. If they need strategic support at a steep discount, we’re in. If not, we may decide to support their efforts financially. At our core, we’re about equipping people, whatever way is most effective.
Our Leadership
The Human Factor is a female-founded small business based in Boston. MA.
Rachel Moore Best
Rachel Best is the founding partner and lead strategist for The Human Factor. In this work, Rachel works with individuals from the executional level to the c-suite as they negotiate conflicting goals, organizational complexity, and human dynamics to solve tough challenges and form effective, sustainable teams.
Rachel Moore Best
Co-Founder,
The Human Factor
Along with her work as a strategist, Rachel is also an educator and researcher. Convinced that negotiation and advocacy skills are a big part of the solution to thorny problems, Rachel is passionate about translating skills, frameworks, and proven theory into actionable guidance for her clients' current challenges. Her dynamic, hands-on approach to education has led her to teach in multiple arenas, including graduate-level negotiation courses for MIT, creative university programs, youth conferences, government agencies, and corporate audiences. Rachel is currently a lecturer at MIT Sloan and MIT's School of Engineering, where she teaches Power & Negotiation and Negotiation & Influence for Technical Leaders. Her notable clients include Disney, NASA, and Boston Children’s Hospital.
Outside of work, Rachel is a musician and a language learner. These days, she finds herself deeply concerned with learning how to win negotiations in her husband's native language, Portuguese.
Kathleen Bond
Kathleen Bond is a partner and senior strategist at The Human Factor. With experience in human-centered innovation research and design, Kathleen looks at problems from a human lens and approaches her work through the tension between what humans need and how organizations can practically deliver with intention and integrity.
Kathleen Bond
Co-Founder,
The Human Factor
Also a trained workshop facilitator, Kathleen’s guided c-suites to think through a problem, and think through it again - to redefine it through the real needs and ‘whys’ and then to step back to see the undiscovered solutions on the periphery. At the point of innovation, she’s worked with graphic and industrial design teams to bring new processes, services, and products to life. Kathleen has worked across industries with notable clients like Disney, NASA, AbbVie, and Chase.
A dual citizen of Australia and avid traveler, Kathleen’s most recent adventure took her scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef and walking across Spain on the Camino de Santiago. Now back home, Kathleen’s taking recommendations on where to plant her future tomato garden and raise her fleet of (spoiled) corgis.
Our Team
Joe Buse
Co-Founder, Managing Partner
Joe Buse
Co-Founder, Managing Partner
Joe Buse
Co-Founder, Managing Partner
Joe Buse
Co-Founder, Managing Partner
Boston