Enduring Leadership® • Inclusive thinking • Human-centred AI
Michel A. SalmonCRHA · MBA
Helping people grow and move forward.
My hope has always been that every person I connect with, personally or through my work, is better off for it.
Michel A. Salmon — Founder, Gni LabsWork occupies a large part of our lives. I want it to be a place where people find meaning, grow and experience the satisfaction of contributing.
A little more clarity. A possibility they had not seen. The confidence to take a meaningful next step. That hope connects my life, my leadership work and what I am building through Gni Labs and TeamGni™.
01 A turning point
The discovery that changed my questions
“What energizes this person?”
In October 2017, while building a national sales team in the health sector, I encountered an assessment approach that brought a new question into focus: what energizes this person?
One introverted salesperson was energized by deep, individual connections. A conventional sales “hunter” profile could have led us to overlook him. The community we were building needed those relationships.
This systemic perspective revealed something I had not seen in the assessments I had used. It prompted me to explore how people’s energy, contributions and context interact. That curiosity eventually led me to develop my own framework.
02 People in action
People in action towards a goal
In my approach, a system begins with a person working towards a goal. As others join, their contributions and relationships shape what becomes possible.
I pay attention to what draws us towards certain problems and actions, and what we may avoid. Looking across a team can help us explore where our attention concentrates and what we may be overlooking.
Initiating, building, integrating, aligning and connecting: these are ways of contributing in a changing context. Roles can evolve with people, their complementary contributions and the work to be done.
That is the possibility behind 1 + 1 > 2: creating something greater than the simple sum of our contributions.
03 Enduring Leadership®
Leadership that keeps learning
For me, Enduring Leadership® means sustaining our capacity to learn, adapt and create value together. Inclusion means welcoming perspectives that can challenge our assumptions, including my own.
As circumstances change, we need to check whether the assumptions guiding our decisions still hold. A decision may need to change when its foundations do. That practice matters from an individual’s next step to a team’s shared direction and a board’s deliberations.
Learning through practice
An education earned in the field
My perspective has been shaped by work in research, technology, growing businesses and institutions. At Bell-Northern Research, I worked on career paths that recognized technical contribution alongside management. The growth of BCE Emergis and SSENSE, operational transformation at Wirewerks and collective decision work with the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers brought different lessons about people and systems.
These experiences are my education in the field: learning how intentions become decisions, and how those decisions affect people’s ability to contribute.
04 The work today
The next chapter: Gni Labs and TeamGni
I founded Lumas in 2002. That work continues today through Gni Labs, developing human-centred decision-support technologies.
Through TeamGni™, I am bringing together what I have learned about energy, complementary contributions and action towards a goal. Diagnostic services and facilitated interpretation are available today. The digital platform is in development.
My ambition for AI is practical: help us examine more relationships and perspectives, surface questions and risks, and explore possible courses of action. Like an exoskeleton, it should extend our capacity to understand and act while we retain direction and responsibility.
Patent applications relating to aspects of this work are in preparation.
05 Responsible AI
Human-centred. Ethically guided.
I am a signatory to the Montréal Declaration for a Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence. Its focus on human well-being, autonomy and responsibility connects with the purpose behind my work.
The commitments guiding this work are to preserve people’s ability to question guidance and make choices; examine missing perspectives and potential bias; make limits and uncertainty visible; and treat personal information with care.
Selected writing
Ideas behind the work
An invitation
What are you hoping to make possible?
A meaningful next step, a team learning to work together, a decision that deserves more perspectives—these are conversations I welcome. I also welcome research and development partnerships that advance human-centred, responsible technology.