Waysfinding systemic change

Change, transition and transformation have been on my mind (and in my body) lately. It seems to be “in the air”. And the US election result this week will probably amplify this energy.

Everywhere I go, people talk about a sense of unease. Of being unable to find the words to explain what they are sensing. The solid ground beneath our feet seems to have become quicksand.

The word that best fits where we are is “liminality”. That strange in-between place that can feel like a foggy void or a messy, overwhelming tangle.

Zac Stein calls it a “time between worlds”.

Gramsci called it the interregnum. “ … where the old is dying, and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’.

I suppose this is what makes it hard to find words. Our current language belongs to the dying past, and the new language struggles to be born along with whatever the new paradigm is.

A more hopeful description comes from mythologist Michael Meade, who refers to these times as “a collective rite of passage”.

I find it hopeful because a rite of passage implies a phase shift or journey towards maturity, not an imminent collapse.

However we view these times, the ability to navigate transitions is becoming ever more critical. Especially for those in roles that others look to for guidance.

Some transitions are more predictable than others, like an office or house move. Others involve an evolution into the unknown and an accompanying transformation, a dissolving of old identities. These are complex, and they can create a lot of anxiety and grasping for old certainties. It is in contexts like these that we are invited to let go of our maps and once again become wayfinders.

Change, transition & transformation

Before we continue, it might be useful to clarify language, particularly the difference between change and transition. William Bridges defines change as an external event or shift and transition as the internal, psychological process people go through to adapt to that change.

• Change is situational and can happen quickly: a job change, a move, a new role. It’s the outward adjustment required, often involving new procedures, systems, or environments.
• Conversely, transition is the inner process of letting go of the old way of being and adjusting to the new.

While change happens to us, transition is how we make meaning of it and integrate it into our lives.

Some transitions are more or less predictable and linear: like moving house or offices. Others are not predictable or linear and trigger identity shifts; these I call transformations, like navigating midlife, stepping into a leadership role, or being made redundant. Some of these transformative processes can be linked to change events, others kind of creep up on us — they seem to emerge seemingly out of nowhere.

We are entangled with the social systems we are part of.

While we cannot change a system “one person at a time”, we also cannot separate ourselves and others from the systems we are part of. Life is interconnected, trans-contextual, liminal and messy. We must let go of old mental models of linearity and separation to transform our systems into beneficial directions.

Complexity invites us into an “and” space — to bring together the things we’ve split apart and separated in the previous paradigm focused on dualism and reductionism. Individual AND collective; mind AND body. Linear AND non-linear. Fast AND slow. Change AND stability. The list goes on.

“Renewal is possible only by going into and through transition, and transition always has at least as much to do with what we let go of as it has with whatever we end up gaining in its place.”
― William Bridges, The Way Of Transition: Embracing Life’s Most Difficult Moments

The essence of this invitation is to become wayfinders again. Like our ancestors who embraced the unknown as a place of potential and possibility. We must accept that life (and change) is messy, that systems and relationships are often mirrors and invitations to go inward versus judging the resistance or inertia we find “out there”. Sometimes, the inertia in the system reflects our internal ambivalence toward the new.

Change is not our enemy, nor “abnormal”.

Change is always already happening. Sometimes, we just need to get out of the way and flow with the emergence. Robert Chia, one of my favourite thinkers in this space, says:

“Change is a ubiquitous notion that fascinates and frustrates. The starting point for most attempts at theorizing change begins with the philosophical assumption that stability and equilibrium are fundamental features of reality. Organizational change, therefore, is construed as something exceptional requiring active intervention on the part of actors. Change has to be carefully ‘managed’ because it is something made to happen to or within an ‘organization’. This, however, is not the only way of understanding organizational change. From an alternative process-philosophical outlook, all of reality is change so that it is the phenomenon of organization itself that is a remarkable achievement. From this process outlook, ‘organizations’ are nothing more than stabilized patterns of relations forged out of an underlying sea of ceaseless change.

Managing change, then, is more about small, timely and quiet insertions made to release the immanent forces of change always already present in every organizational situation. Change then appears unexceptionally as a naturally occurring phenomenon; it does not attract undue attention and does not generate unnecessary anxieties. Obliqueness of engagement is key to managing sustainable change in a world that is itself ever-changing.”

As more and more of us feel the incongruence between our current systems (which we are co-creating) and what the world needs, new knowledge is emerging.

I came across this list of themes in a LinkedIn post by Helen Bevan. They are the result of work she and Goran Henriks have been doing with hundreds of leaders to understand the factors potentially enabling systemic change.

Image from the linked LinkedIn post

Helen and Goran are still working on a formal paper describing these themes, but I found some of these descriptions resonant with elements of my WaysFinding approach.

I explore some of these potential resonances below.

WaysFinding is embedded, entangled and embodied.

Waysfinding is an embodied process of continuous action: sensing and responding in a particular context. When we are under pressure to bring about change, or we face the anxiety of “not knowing”, the temptation is to see ourselves as separate, and we try to think or plan our way through.

But we cannot separate ourselves from our contexts. We are not independent agents observing, acting on, and changing the system. We are embedded in the context and co-evolving with processes of transition and transformation already happening at multiple scales.

Wayfinding involves a different relationship with change and a new form of navigation, acknowledging that we’ve gone beyond our existing maps and that reaching specific destinations or outcomes is impossible in an ever-shifting landscape.

WaysFinding invites us to get out of the way and flow with the change already “wanting to happen” versus striving or attempting to create a specific outcome. It invites us into an embodied place of presence, responding to what is emerging in the now.

Theme: Leading people through transitions in situations of uncertainty

Leading others when we don’t know where we are going can provoke a lot of anxiety. Acknowledging that we are in uncharted territory where we can’t “know” often involves letting go of dominant narratives of what it means to be a good leader. For many leaders, this involves an identity transition.

Therefore, people in formal leadership roles face pressure from multiple directions. They are in the confusing liminal phase of shaping a different leadership identity while at the same time facing pressure from people to provide certainty or bring about systems change.

Effectively leading others through transition begins with acknowledging that we are always in transition and that it is normal, albeit uncomfortable.

As we are tangled in richly interconnected relationships with other people, systems, and the natural world, we are impacted by others’ transitions beyond our own.

Mapping these transitions effectively visualises our complexity and explains why many of us feel unsettled. Upon seeing her team’s transition map, a friend who holds a senior position in a large bank commented: No wonder we are all so tired!

The invitation here is for leaders to connect people to bigger, more meaningful questions. To think about what matters and who we might be becoming next. If indeed we are in a collective rite of passage, big and beautiful questions will guide our journey towards maturity.

Theme: Moving towards a shared direction.

I liken the WaysFinding approach to switching on a radar or searchlight to help us orient ourselves in the misty void or messy tangle of liminality. It helps us find a direction that feels alive and to start moving into the unknown.

A shared sense of direction is a vital element of the Waysfinding approach. Direction is broader than a goal but narrower than a vision. A Maori proverb admonishes us to “tie our waka (canoe) to a star, not a glow worm”.

Direction is different from a goal or target. In liminal times, goals are too narrow and specific. If everything is in flux, narrow goals set us up for disappointment or mistakes we can’t recover from.

Maintaining momentum is essential. It’s not only about setting direction; it’s about collectively moving towards it. If you’re not moving, you are not wayfinding. Wayfinding is about embodied interaction with the environment. It is about becoming comfortable to know as you go, not before you go (Tim Ingold). Thinking and planning are helpful, but they are prone to create stuckness in uncertainty. We will never feel we know enough; only by moving and experimenting do we learn to find our way.

This involves embracing emergence and creating the conditions for beneficial emergent change.

Theme: Creating the conditions for emergent change.

In essence, the WaysFinder creates a contained option field that makes embracing emergence, experimenting and trying new things safer. When we are in uncharted territory, it can feel scary and overwhelming with too many options and insufficient containment.

WaysFinding starts with orienting (1), a step that is often neglected but critical when we are in the messy middle or liminal phase of transition.

Where are we now? What is changing, and what is staying the same? Where are we in relation to the shifting environment? What resources do we have available here? What possibilities and risks do we see? This is not a once-and-done orientation a continuous sensing and responding of an ever-shifting context.

We then move on to setting guardrails.

In a Harvard article (1) linked in the same post, the authors write:

“People tend to adapt to prolonged liminality by withdrawing into helplessness or lapsing into cynicism. But that’s a tendency leaders need to fight against, because getting “stuck” in a liminal experience serves nobody well. Although they are often unsettling, these experiences also represent an opportunity to experiment and challenge assumptions that no longer serve us — in liminal times, you usually have more agency than you realize.

As a leader in such periods, your role should be to provide colleagues with guardrails to hold onto as they build confidence in themselves and reassurance about the future.”

We tend to play it safe when we don’t know where the edges are. Knowing where the boundaries are and having guardrails makes it easier for people to venture into the unknown, “push their edges”, and try new things.

The WaysFinder identified two kinds of guardrails.

Limits (3): Sometimes, in deep uncertainty, when we don’t know where we are going, it helps to know where we are NOT going. In any team or organisation, there are things we can’t do, places we can’t go. Articulating these creates a sense of safety. For example, there are laws we must comply with or geographical boundaries we must consider. When we go through the WaysFinding process, articulating limits often brings limiting beliefs to the surface as well — things we think are limits to our ability to explore, but when we question these assumptions, they don’t hold up. This is a very empowering process.

Boundaries (4): We create focus by articulating where we choose not to go and how we choose to show up for the journey, i.e. the values we want to shape our explore space. For example, we might set a boundary here that whatever we do must bring more life to our bodies, families, teams or companies, i.e. it must be regenerative. Or it needs to be inclusive and respectful of diversity. These are things that matter to us and, therefore, shape our choices as we find our way into the unknown.

These guardrails and Direction (2) create a container that enables safe exploration and emergent change. It also enables distributed leadership or autonomy within boundaries, which is linked to Helen’s “Developing leaders everywhere” theme.

Theme: Setting up systems of experimental learning and unlearning systems, “finding the next right thing.”

Once the Waysfinding space has been created, we maintain momentum through small next actions (5) and fast feedback. Like crossing a river by “feeling the stones”, we keep making small experimental moves towards adjacent possibilities.

Multi-level feedback (7) and learning cadences ensure that we keep learning and evolving. If we do this collectively, rituals, cadences and shared heuristics ensure that we stay coherent while collectively advancing into the unknown.

And finally, coming back to the point I started with, we are co-evolving with the systems we are part of, not objective observers or bystanders.

Theme: changing yourself as a resource for change.

The Waysfinder, along with the skills that bring it alive, is a scaffold that enables us to explore and maintain momentum in the unknown as individuals and collectively.

I created this framework about 5 years ago, and what I’ve learnt while applying it with individuals, teams, and companies is this: WaysFinding is an embodied experience. It is not about standing on shore, remaining ind the known and planning to change. It is about individually and collectively venturing out into the unknown with courage and openness.

It is when we venture out, when we leave the safety of the known that we learn that:

• We have to let go of a need for control and “knowing before we go”. WaysFinding is about embracing emergence as we keep taking one more “next best step” into the unknown.
• We must shift from resistance to flow. A key part of the orienting phase is acknowledging reality and learning to surrender and allow. If we resist and deny where we are, it undermines finding our next.
• We are constantly becoming; we are verbs rather than nouns. The destination is not the point; it is who we become on the journey … and who others can become in our presence.
• We are more than “walking and talking heads”; our bodies have wisdom and intuition matters, especially when we go beyond our maps into uncharted territory. It invites us to reconnect to wisdom sources that in the past may have been dismissed as unscientific or “woo woo”.
• As we find our way and show up differently in these systems, the patterns we are part of shift in response.
• We can’t do it alone. Waysfinding invites us back into community and connection.

I am excited about these times we are in, and I am glad to be part of a community of thinkers and practitioners working to shift our approaches to be more coherent with what we are being invited into.

If you want to learn more, click here to download a free downloadable workbook with guiding questions for the first 4 elements of the framework.

References:

1. https://hbr.org/2024/11/how-to-lead-when-the-future-feels-unpredictable
2. William Bridges, The Way Of Transition: Embracing Life’s Most Difficult Moments.