Wayfinding IS an Adaptive Toolkit for Organizational Change

From artificial intelligence to synthetic biology to political realignment we are in an age of evolutionary change. In the coming years, humanity is likely to redefine the nature of work, community, governance and, even, what it means to be human itself. In an evolutionary age, a society must ensure that working adults can learn continuously in order to preserve economic competitiveness, social cohesion and a robust democracy. 

Building the human capital of adult Americans with busy work, family and community lives has always been challenging and requires a cooperative effort between individuals, educators, employers, policymakers and many more stakeholders. At this evolutionary moment, to upskill and reskill millions of Americans will require more than partnerships between colleges and employers, new credentials and blending classroom and workplace learning. All these are necessary but insufficient.

All this important work is insufficient because, in an evolutionary age, more than new programs and partnerships, we need individuals, organizations and systems ready to organically evolve and create new learning pathways for working adults. To meet the challenge of upskilling and reskilling working adults, we need the stakeholders listed above to nurture, orient in and navigate through learning ecosystems with resilient, adaptive and emergent qualities capable of continuously creating new learning pathways for working adults.

Learning ecosystems are defined as a community of individuals and organizations interacting with one another and their environment to pursue some form of competence or performance enhancement – exhibit interactivity, agency, structure, unpredictability and serendipity over time. As a result, stakeholders don’t so much manage an ecosystem as they nurture assets and partnerships, orient themselves in changing conditions based on mission and values, and navigate stakeholder relationships and resource aggregation to create new learning pathways to credentials of value. Consequently, the capability to nurture, map, orient and navigate learning ecosystems, in real time, is becoming a key competitive advantage for organizations, systems, regions and nations as we move deeper into the evolutionary age. This capability requires a wayfinding mindset and tools. 

Wayfinding, a term TSG has adapted from the way early seafaring travelers found their way to a destination, is using models and tools that help leaders and organizations nurture, orient within and navigate through a learning ecosystem to catalyze stakeholder action that creates new learning pathways to credentials of value for working adults. In an evolutionary age, these tools merge strategy and execution into one emergent journey that allows organizations to redesign and reinvent themselves along the way. We invent our tools and our tools invent us, indeed.

Wayfinding consists in three core tools: Emergent Strategy for Organizational Change, Stories to Action and Catalytic/Experiential Learning.