Why Invisible Employees Have the Best Ideas

What I learned about leadership and listening as a 22-year-old intern

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The real pulse of a company isn’t found in boardrooms or executive suites — it beats steadily among the people no one’s watching.

The summer I was 22, I was one of those invisible employees, working as an intern at a large consulting firm. I spent my days keeping my head down, doing my best to learn, and absorbing everything around me.

Everything about the company felt like a mystery to me from the start. Information wasn’t just hard to find; it was nearly impossible. During coffee breaks or quick hallway chats, I’d hear employees venting about how their time was wasted redoing other teams' work.

I’d see new hires, like myself, asking for documentation only to hit dead ends. People grumbled about it constantly, yet management didn’t seem to care. It struck me as bizarre, this massive company operating as though each department existed on its own isolated island.

Small Moments, Big Insight

As I got to know the people who’d been with the company the longest, I began to see the true scope of the problem. The same issue came up over and over: no one had access to information that could actually make their jobs…