HR on Hayakawa’s ladder: Why we need to elevate our perspective

Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (1906–1992) was an American linguist and politician of Japanese descent. He served as president of San Francisco State University and as a senator for the state of California, but he’s best known for his work in semantics, particularly exploring the relationship between language and thought.

Among his many ideas, I find the “ladder of abstraction,” introduced in his book Language in Action (1939),especially insightful. It’s a conceptual model illustrating, through the metaphor of a ladder with various rungs, how language and reasoning can move between higher levels of concreteness and greater abstraction. At the bottom of this “ladder” lies the domain of specific language and detailed, tangible descriptions, while the top represents broader concepts and abstract language.

For example, Hayakawa explained that at the lower end of the ladder, we might speak about one of his cows named “Bessie.” In the middle, we’d talk about cows in general, and at the top, we’d discuss livestock farming, agriculture, or the economy as a whole.

Hayakawa argued that the ability to move up and down this ladder of abstraction is essential for effective communication, as it helps us connect concrete details with higher-level ideas and vice versa. Conversely, spending too much time at either extreme—either relying too heavily on abstract concepts or always staying focused on concrete cases and details—can limit our listeners’ understanding of the ideas we want to convey.

Over time, this model has expanded into areas beyond communication, such as creativity and problem-solving. In these contexts, Hayakawa’s ladder can encourage flexible thinking, helping us deliberately move between the “why,” the “what,” and the “how” of the problems we’re trying to solve, change perspectives, and identify the appropriate level from which to analyze the challenges and opportunities we face.

This model can be particularly useful for business leaders in a complex and turbulent environment where they frequently encounter challenges that require more than immediate responses. In this context, the ability to think flexibly—adopting different perspectives and navigating between various levels of abstraction—has become a critical skill for effective decision-making.

Ultimately, it’s about asking ourselves the right questions first, so we can choose better practical solutions. When faced with a specific challenge, problem, or project we aim to undertake, descending Hayakawa’s ladder of abstraction can help us anticipate the web of obstacles we might encounter along the way. To do this, we should first ask ourselves: what is preventing us from doing what we want to do? Then we ask what prevents us from addressing each of these obstacles in turn. Suppose my project is to run a marathon. What prevents me from running that race? Imagine my answer is: “I need to train more.” In this case, the next question would be: “What prevents me from training more?” If the answer is: “I can’t train more because I don’t have time,” the following question would be: “What prevents me from having more time?” and so forth, until we map all the obstacles that might eventually hinder us from achieving our goal.

On the other hand, ascending Hayakawa’s ladder allows us to reflect upon the deeper “whys” behind the tasks or projects we are undertaking, potentially realizing that our initial idea might not be the only possible solution. Returning to our example, if we move up toward higher levels of abstraction, the first question would be: “Why do I want to run a marathon?” Answers might vary considerably. One might be: “Because it improves my résumé.” This response could lead us to consider alternative ways to enhance our résumé besides running a marathon. But it’s beneficial to continue ascending the ladder, seeking deeper underlying motivations. If we now ask ourselves, “Why do I want to improve my résumé?” our response might be: “Because I feel my job is at risk.” From this point, we could continue climbing even further…

The point is, when I observe how HR leaders react to the challenges they encounter at work, I often feel many have a natural preference for the lower rungs of Hayakawa’s ladder, where they seem most comfortable. As a result, once they identify a problem, they quickly move toward developing and implementing concrete solutions rather than first pausing to reflect on the broader context and explore those higher-level “whys” that would allow them to tackle these challenges from a more strategic viewpoint.

For example, in many organizations, HR teams become overwhelmed by repetitive employee inquiries about people management policies, payroll, benefits, and technical support, often resulting in slow responses and employee frustration. Faced with this scenario and influenced by what they hear at events or find online, some HR leaders decide to implement an AI-powered employee chatbot. From there, all the focus shifts to practical details: evaluating possible tools, integrating the chatbot with existing systems, training it with FAQ documents, and defining KPIs focused on the speed and accuracy of responses…

However, an alternative approach would have been to climb Hayakawa’s ladder of abstraction, starting by asking why employees are asking so many questions in the first place. Perhaps employees ask frequently because it’s challenging for them to access the information they need independently. Investigating further, we might find that this difficulty arises because the company’s systems are fragmented, creating a confusing user experience, or perhaps the content provided is written in language that’s hard for the average employee to understand.

By taking this approach, we could address the situation at its root cause: improving the overall employee experience with clear and accessible information. For instance, creating a knowledge base written in simple and friendly language, optimizing the company’s internal portal to facilitate easier searches and navigation, and perhaps reserving the AI chatbot only for more complex queries that can’t easily be resolved through self-service. Or even abandoning the initial chatbot idea altogether, now that employees no longer have as many questions…

There are biases that explain why we tend to quickly focus on execution rather than first pausing to reflect on the broader context. For instance, there’s the action bias, which makes us feel productive when we solve specific problems—even if these solutions lack genuine strategic relevance. Then there’s tactical myopia, which arises from training geared more toward problem-solving than hypothesis formulation, causing us to automatically assume the problem has already been properly defined. Additionally, the very pressure to quickly complete tasks often prevents us from pausing to analyze why we are actually performing them.

Yet, precisely because of these tendencies, I believe Hayakawa’s ladder of abstraction can greatly assist us in addressing our challenges from a higher-level perspective—especially at a time when, as I argue in my recent book “Recursos Humanos: ¿dónde estamos? ¿adónde vamos?” (Libros de Cabecera, 2025), HR professionals, starting with their leaders, need more than ever to pause and think.

If we resist the immediate urge to solve problems, take a step back, and move up the ladder of abstraction, we’ll gain a broader view of the situation and identify patterns and connections we might otherwise overlook. Most importantly, we’ll be more likely to discover new courses of action that add greater value to our organization than those we originally considered.

The solution we truly need might be waiting a few rungs higher than we initially imagined.

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Photo Jilbert Ebrahimi in Unsplash