Solving the Right Problem

Years ago, I worked with the New York City Department of Health when they launched their restaurant rating service, the program that scores restaurants on cleanliness and safety. It solved a real problem. But they’d answered a narrow question: how do we score these restaurants? The bigger question—how many people will actually depend on this, and what happens when they all show up at once—went unasked. Back then, before today’s cloud scalability, you built for the demand you predicted. They underestimated it, and the platform buckled under its own success.

The lesson stuck with me. They solved the problem in their line of sight. They didn’t step back to see the whole picture.

I think about this a lot, even on the trail. When I hike, I can’t stand doubling back. Retracing the same path feels monotonous, like motion without progress. What I love is reaching a destination by moving forward the whole way, point A to point B, looping through new ground instead of repeating what I’ve already covered. That’s where the real sense of accomplishment lives for me. And it’s exactly how I approach problems: don’t just keep circling the thing in front of you. Find the path that actually moves you forward.

I see the same pattern across nonprofits and education organizations right now. They’re deeply mission-driven. They want to teach people, coach them, help them build sustainable lives. But they’re drowning in paperwork—compliance forms, funding audits, administrative processes. They’ve got attorneys doing tech work. Social workers doing data entry. Coaches buried in compliance spreadsheets.

The problem they’re solving isn’t the problem they should be solving.

Here’s why this matters so much to me. The work I do gives me purpose, and purpose isn’t a soft idea. It’s one of the strongest predictors of a life well lived. Researchers separate two kinds of happiness: the fleeting kind we get from pleasure, and the deeper kind that comes from meaning and contributing to something larger than ourselves. Psychologists call that second kind eudaimonic well-being, and the evidence is striking. Carol Ryff’s research links a sense of purpose to lower inflammation, better immune function, even slower cellular aging. Elizabeth Dunn’s work at the University of British Columbia found that giving to others makes us happier than spending on ourselves, across cultures and income levels.

Now think about who’s drawn to this work in the first place. These are people who chose purpose. They became coaches and educators and social workers because helping others is where they find meaning. And then we hand them a mountain of paperwork and slowly bury the very thing that brought them there. Freeing them from that isn’t just about saving hours. It’s about giving them back their purpose, and everything the science says comes with it. Enabling others to create more impact is our mission. It’s also where I find my own.

We know this world intimately. Over the past ten years, through We Connect The Dots and Nebula Academy, my team and I have led workforce development initiatives. We’ve lived these constraints firsthand. We understand why they exist, there are legitimate reasons for compliance and oversight. But they can be managed far more efficiently. The constraints don’t have to consume the mission.

That’s exactly what we’re solving. We combine AI and business automation to take the administrative weight off your team. The funding report that used to take three people a week? It assembles itself. The audit trail you scrambled to reconstruct at reporting time? It’s already there, built as the work happens. Compliance stops being a separate job and becomes a byproduct of doing the real work.

Which means your coaches can coach. Your educators can teach. Your social workers can build the relationships that change lives, instead of filling out forms about them. And it changes everything: not just your budget, but what you’re actually able to accomplish for the people you serve.

We’ve spent a decade inside these constraints. Now we’ve built the way out, and we’d love to show you. Come experience it firsthand and see how much time—and how much of your mission—you can reclaim.

Visit our website to find out what your team could do with the time.

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Laurie Carey is the CEO and Chief AI Officer of Nebula Academy, founder of We Connect The Dots, and author of Resilience Is a Muscle. She speaks and writes at the intersection of AI strategy and human resilience.