Meeting Needs or Manufacturing Desire? - What Business Taught Me About the Void We Keep Feeding

The Analyst’s Awakening

I’ve spent decades immersed in the world of business—analyzing systems, optimizing performance, and designing solutions. I’ve also spent just as long walking the path of healing and remembering, asking deeper questions about what truly matters. Lately, these two worlds have begun to collide in the most uncomfortable and illuminating ways.

Exploiting the Gap

Business analysis is, at its core, the study of need. We are trained to uncover the “real” requirements, not just the surface-level wants. We dig for root causes. We map out pain points. We strive to understand what’s not working and offer better ways forward. But somewhere along the way, I began to realize—business as usual isn’t actually meeting needs. In fact, much of modern commerce is built on exploiting them.

We’ve created entire industries designed not to nourish, but to hook. To prey on loneliness, fear, shame, status anxiety, and exhaustion. Instead of healing the root, we dangle the illusion of fulfillment—through a new purchase, a better version of ourselves, a promise that if we just get this, we’ll finally be enough.

A Culture of Disconnection

Dr. Gabor Maté, in The Myth of Normal, writes with searing clarity about how our modern world—though materially abundant—is emotionally, spiritually, and relationally impoverished. We are disconnected from ourselves, from each other, and from the natural world. And into that emptiness steps a well-oiled machine: advertising, social media, product cycles, hustle culture, the endless scroll of “more.”

Our True Needs

But what are our true needs?

Safety. Connection. Belonging. Purpose. Rest. Expression. Joy. Touch. Contribution. Autonomy. These are the universal human needs that make life worth living. Needs that cannot be fulfilled by what’s sold to us in brightly colored boxes or clever digital funnels.

The System Isn’t Broken—It’s Designed This Way

And yet, the system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly as designed. Capitalism thrives on dissatisfaction. If we were well, if our needs were truly met, if we felt whole—we would not be ideal consumers. And so, the carrot keeps moving. We are nudged to “self-improve” not from self-love, but from a belief that we are fundamentally flawed.

Even well-meaning businesses fall into this trap. I’ve seen it firsthand—brilliant solutions watered down to appeal to the broadest market, messaging tweaked not for impact, but for revenue. I’ve been part of programs that taught people to listen for client pain not to help, but to close the sale. We call it “needs analysis”—but how often do we really stop and ask: Whose needs are being met here? And at what cost?

A Reckoning and a Return

This blog is not a condemnation of business. It’s a reckoning. It’s an invitation to stop pretending that our well-being can be outsourced. That another app, another retreat, another “fix” will fill the aching void within us.

It’s also a call to those of us building things—to do it differently.

To root our products and services in care, not manipulation.

To prioritize healing over scale.

To remember that every offering is relational, not just transactional.

The Real Gap

For those of us who’ve built careers out of identifying gaps—we now need to look at the gaping one inside ourselves. The one no amount of achievement, productivity, or shopping can fill. The one that whispers, not for more, but for meaning.

And here’s the radical truth: meeting human needs isn’t rocket science. It’s presence. It’s honesty. It’s slowing down enough to feel. It’s a willingness to confront how far we’ve drifted from what truly matters—and to find our way home.

Reclaiming the Compass

Business can be a vehicle for healing. But only if we first reclaim the compass. Only if we stop asking what sells, and start asking what serves.

I write this as someone still unraveling the knots. Still catching the ways I’ve been complicit. Still remembering, day by day, what it feels like to be human—beneath the roles, beyond the systems, and before the marketplace laid claim to my worth.

May we all return to the real work: meeting needs by remembering what they are.