The Human Side of Process Improvement
Most improvement work fails at the people layer, six to twelve months in, long after the consultants have gone. Not because the process was wrong. Because nobody took the time to understand how the people and the system fit together.
That gap is the whole job.
Our Mission
Build a world where wonder unlocks our passion and potential in work.
Most people spend more than forty years at work, and nobody ever asks them where they find joy or pain in it.
Wonder is the pause where someone finally looks up. For some it takes getting fired. For others, years of burnout. It does not have to cost that much. All it takes is asking why the work feels the way it does.
Once people know what they are built for, nobody has to be an island. They start to see the value in the person next to them, and a group of individuals becomes an interdependent team: asking for help without apologizing, handing work off without it dropping, disagreeing in the open at no cost to anyone. The hard conversation happens while it is still cheap.
Watch the short version if you would rather hear it than read it.
Where GNS came from
The Long Way Around
Mitch spent a decade in the same loop: a year or so of energy, a year or so of burnout, then the search for the next job. Working Genius finally gave him words for why he could never leave a process alone. Then a leader pulled him aside and told him he would be happier as an entrepreneur. He was right.
GNS exists so people can take the shortcut, without spending a decade in roles they were never built for. Pairing a background in social work with a passion for Lean and Six Sigma lets Mitch see the people inside the process. He starts by asking for the data nobody collects.
Where do you find joy in your work?
Meet the Team
Mitch Bliven
Mitch works on the human side of process improvement: the part that stalls a new leader, a new system, or a rollout long after everyone signed off on it. He builds for the people inside a company so they can take care of the people outside it.
With Discernment as one of his frustrations, deciding which idea is right drains him. Working Genius became his prosthetic for it, the thing that lets him read people accurately instead of guessing. He is not there to be right. He is there to help you see what is possible, and to let your team say which of it fits.
Husband, father, and systems nerd from Hudson, Wisconsin.
Cassie Bliven
Cassie holds a bachelor's degree in biology with a minor in chemistry, and she spent the first stretch of her career as a lab analyst. She was good at it. Then she stepped away to raise the kids at home, and somewhere in those years she found a knack for networking that no lab had ever asked of her. She was built for people.
Her work at GNS puts her where that wiring wants to be: closer to people, in service of them. Galvanizing and Enablement are her geniuses. She loves moving people through a process that already has a path, which is what booking a one-on-one or a client meeting is. If there is a GNS meeting on your calendar, Cassie is the reason it is there.
Mitch's wife, and the reason his ideas leave the whiteboard.
How we show up
Our Own Map
This is the GNS team map. Same artifact a client receives, with our real data on it. New to Working Genius? Start with the six types.
Mitch tenaciously wonders. Wonder and Tenacity are his geniuses. Invention is his first competency. He learned that chasing his wonder is where he finds the most passion, creates the most value, and that is what made him an entrepreneur.
Galvanizing is his bottleneck. It is one of his frustrations, so rallying people to move on something drains him instead of feeding him. Ideas arrived. Then they sat.
Cassie relieved that bottleneck. Galvanizing and Enablement are her geniuses. She carries the scheduling and much of the data management, which is what frees Mitch to spend his time on the wonder (the thing she hates the most).
What was left was a bad connection, and it was not one person's gap. Look at the middle of the map. Discernment and Galvanizing are both frustrations for Mitch: deciding which idea is right, then getting people moving on it. Wonder and Invention are both frustrations for Cassie: asking the question, then building the answer. He sits on one side of that handoff, she sits on the other, and neither of us has so much as a competency reaching across it. The thinking and the doing never met in the middle.
Then look at the Invention column. No geniuses. Inventing itself is not the cost: Mitch will spend two hours there and still be enjoying it, as long as he is inventing about something he is already wondering about. The cost is the lap back through Discernment, and that lap runs on nobody's genius here.
Which is exactly why we work with fractional partners: ops leaders, HR leaders, subject matter experts. They bring a piece to the room we do not have, and pretending otherwise would cost the client. We map the people and start the conversation. The process design comes from someone whose genius is actually there.
Why we start early
Before the Elephant Gets Big
Nobody on your leadership team had this conversation when these questions were cheap and easy to ask. They are finding out mid career, after it's been expensive: the pivot, the burnout, the Porsche in the driveway.
So we do this work with schools, nonprofits and civic groups at cost. Not as charity, and not as a separate mission. Someone who learns at nineteen where their energy goes does not need a crisis to find out.
We equip people to take a moment and wonder, to pause. It's about stopping long enough to look, to understand an issue rather than driving around it. Learn it early and the elephant is still small. Never learn it, and your team is working around an elephant that has been growing for twenty years.
The conversation is the same. The elephant is just bigger.
What Clients Say
"Mitch is able to explain Working Genius in a really succinct and personal way. He reflected back to me what I already knew to be true: that helping and inspiring people is at the core of who I am, and that the closer I am to people, the happier I will be. I had never heard it framed that way before, and it couldn't ring more true."
Brianna Pyka, Google review"What I appreciated most was his ability to create a comfortable conversation rather than simply review assessment results. He listened well, asked thoughtful questions, and helped me connect the findings to real situations in both work and life. Several months later, I still find myself reflecting on insights from our discussion."
Jason McBeth, Google reviewFrequently Asked Questions
What is a Collaboration Designer?
Someone who resolves the friction on the human side of process improvement. When a new leader, system, or methodology arrives, the people aspects of collaboration are what derail it. That is the part Mitch works on.
Who runs GNS?
Mitch Bliven, founder and Collaboration Designer. Cassie Bliven, Chief Enablement Officer, keeps every engagement organized and moving.