The Wayfinder Approach
If you’re responsible for selling - a product, service or a policy - you might be familiar with the trope about offering “pain killers” not “vitamins”. The expression goes that in business, you have to sell something that fixes the crushing pain your customers are feeling right now. No one - in business at least - cares enough to invest in vitamins.
In a world of interdependence and complexity, simple and fast-acting solutions are appealing. The problem is painkillers don’t solve the underlying systems and stressors that predisposed you to a headache in the first place. And next time you get a headache, you’ll need more pain killers.
How might we go not just one better - but skip the vitamins altogether and develop solutions that promote wellbeing and resilience? How might we make these regenerative solutions irresistible to the people whose adoption matters?
It can be overwhelming, futile even, to try to tackle complexity and presume the ability to solve converging problems with linear, siloed thinking. The way forward is to take stock of the system within which you are trying to effect change, and find one opportunity to reorganise its parts. This is systems innovation. How might it be applied to built environment design?
Maybe it’s providing access to people who can’t drive, yet live in an urban context that prioritises streets for cars over people.
Maybe it’s developing business models for technology and appliances that don’t rely on wasteful designed obsolescence.
I’ve been pondering this for a while and testing it out in workshops and business cases. After years of working on transport and mobility projects at different points in the value chain, I’ve learned that “doing things differently” first requires a deep respect of the status quo - a recognition of the payoffs it brings and an understanding of the deeply wired dependence of systems and processes on things being the way they are. “Doing things differently” means committing to learning. The way forward is unknown.
In transport planning, wayfinding signage helps people navigate to the nearest landmark along paths and built-up areas .
"Wayfinding means making the best guess you can about which direction to try (not which destination to arrive at), the venturing forward for a bit, then stopping and taking note of where you are and what you can see from this new vantage point."
Source: Designing your new work life, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Many ancient cultures, too, share the practice of highly localised systems of knowledge that helped them navigate on land and sea and preserve the ecosystems they interacted with.
Source: The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World by Wade Davis.
Wayfinder Labs applies wayfinding to the tasking of making the regenerative infrastructures and services we need irresistible. I’ve operationalised five ingredients in my way of working which help me begin to unlock better choices. I call it the Wayfinder Approach.
The Wayfinder Approach (Licensed under Creative Commons [CCBy-SA-40])
What you see is the result or the impact. It is also the start - since a compelling vision is the organising principle and motivator of your efforts. It’s adoption hinges on the spread of this vision through storytelling. Underneath the surface is a targeted intervention, or leverage. Finding leverage is the outcome of cocreating a solution with the people who will use - testing and validating ideas through experimentation. Relationships underpin the process; finding leverage relies on understanding and trust.
Relationships
First, we must recognise that we are all on the path, figuring out the way forward. Designers, apprentices, leaders, policy-makers, elected officials, residents, children and volunteers. We are all citizens. We all have localised expertise; and we all bring different lenses to the design conversation. Relationships are the foundation of systemic change.
Generating the motivation for change is only possible if the artificial barriers that too often creep into design are overcome.
First there is the barrier that exists between designers and users; officials and public.
Second is the barrier between fields, such as health and transport.
Respect is earned when we are in community with each other - when we listen and understand. Only by engaging from equal positions of power - as people - can we build the kind of understanding that garners trust. Once this is earned, we may contemplate the ‘how’ - the means by which we bridge the gap from the well-worn path to something better, albeit unknown.
Experimentation
To venture forward into the unknown, we must let experiments guide us. We must recognise assumptions and ask questions or develop prototypes that test them. Our first solutions are almost certainly wrong - or perhaps they don’t work for everyone - but if we share them we can get the valuable insight needed to make them better before we venture further forward. By trusting the expertise of the collective, we build even greater trust and start to cultivate a shared story of change.
Leverage
At a certain point, we will start to find leverage - an opportunity to play to our unique skills and values and offer something valuable to others in a way they are grateful to engage with it. Leverage is focused. It is a deliberate action with relatively low friction that sets long-term change in motion. Nevertheless, to stay the course we must continue to check and adjust our course. We must commit to continuous improvement.
Storytelling
The journey from the well-worn path to the regenerative future we envision is hard to imagine. When all our conditioning, all the structures we are surrounded by and all the messages we receive daily reinforce the status quo, it is hard to envisage how we might thrive if the familiar is taken away. It is not enough to present a solution, we must provide a portal to the imagined future so that others can share its allure.
“…[story is] a foundational narrative that shapes every aspect of our world. Everything we build, literally and metaphorically, from the physical infrastructure of our society to our institutions and all the products of culture, have their roots in the story and reflect its logic back to us. The story surrounds us on a daily basis, providing near constant conditioning.”
Source: Citizens. (p. 120) by Jon Alexander
Impact
Following this process might unlock the kind of change you set out to achieve in the first place, with a few detours along the way.
Now it’s your turn. What is your change mission?