Navigating by Different Stars
Right now, talented people are sitting in meetings, following processes, and hitting targets whilst feeling increasingly certain they're heading towards the wrong destination. The compass is spinning, the horizon has disappeared, and the very skills that got them here seem useless for what's coming next.
Navigating in a storm is difficult. Horizons disappear, landmarks are intermittent, and the sheer discomfort of being thrown about makes concentration difficult. Today, we can hand the task over to technology, but only as long as we trust it, are confident that the destination we set is where we really need to be, and are prepared to be passengers in the process. It’s a big ask.
The ancient Polynesians had a different approach. Rather than set out with maps and compasses, they tuned themselves to stars, swells and seabirds, imagining not that they travelled to the island but that the island travelled to them. Navigation was less about control, more about relationship and being alive to patterns until land revealed itself.
This tension between who we are and who our work asks us to be sits at the heart of both individual fulfilment and organisational innovation. It's why I've been exploring how
might navigate via an ecosystem of relationships rather than rigid control because the future belongs to those who can read different signals and follow different stars.When Goals Become Obstacles
Our modern habit is different: we set goals, plot milestones, measure progress and worship metrics. Useful when the waters are calm, but brittle in the chaos of uncertainty. In Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, Kenneth Stanley and Joel Lehman argue much the same. They show that real breakthroughs don't come from rigid goals but from exploring the "adjacent possible," following curiosity and noticing signals that would be invisible if we stayed locked on a target. Greatness emerges not from a straight line but from the side roads, accidents and discoveries that appear when we remain open.
Our business culture's worship of goals and metrics might have worked when change was gradual, but we've moved from 'gradually' to 'suddenly.' The shift from community-based work to corporate to multinational has accelerated into something more fundamental. As this week's Economist documents (£), we're becoming gig workers in organisations that themselves are floundering. It feels increasingly as though we are being swept overboard from ships that have lost their way.
So how do we get our bearings?
Learning from the Polynesians
I think we can learn from the ancient Polynesian people. We tune ourselves to what is going on around us and allow what is looking for us to find us, rather than search for an illusory island of safety.
This isn't passive waiting, it's active attunement. The Polynesian navigator didn't simply hope to stumble upon land. They developed an intimate relationship with their environment, reading the subtle changes in wave patterns that indicated distant shores, feeling the rhythm of swells as they bounced off unseen islands, watching for the particular flight patterns of seabirds that nest on land but fish at sea. They understood that islands create their own weather systems, their own signatures in the water and sky.
Most remarkably, they held a different relationship with ideas of journey and destination. Rather than imagining themselves moving through space towards a fixed point, they conceived of the island as moving towards them. In this way of thinking, they remained at the centre of their universe, constantly recalibrating their position not by measuring distance travelled but by staying alive to the signals that would tell them when their destination was drawing near. The island revealed itself to those who knew how to listen.
What I notice about the people I talk to is how little of them the organisations they work for actually want. Whilst they demand all, and more, of a tiny element of who they are, they are tightly boundaried by their role. Limits defined by best practices from years ago, even though those boundaries no longer accurately reflect the realities of the work. I see creative, thoughtful, vibrant people hemmed in by how they are measured, when they have capabilities and potential left untapped that could make such a difference.
My friend Dan Knight uses children's stories as powerful metaphors when discussing business strategy. This situation reminds me of 'The Animals of Farthing Wood' by Colin Dann. When their woodland home is destroyed, the animals face a stark choice: stay and perish or set out into the unknown. They choose the latter, bound by a pact that even predator and prey will not harm one another until they reach safety. The journey is harsh, and some fall along the way. Yet the pact holds, and the survivors reach White Deer Park. They journeyed not towards a destination, but towards an idea, trusting that following a remembered vision was better than clinging to the ruins of home.
Technology as Scalpel or Bulldozer
Technology can be used as a scalpel or a bulldozer. In the hands of developers pursuing scale, it is too often a bulldozer, looking to 'create and sell' ideas that they will be far away from when the cracks appear. Alternatively, in the hands of those with a commitment to craft, it is a scalpel that enables us to follow and refine ideas with a fraction of the resources we would once have required.
Getting our bearings requires us to remember and recognise all the qualities we, and those around us, possess that are not valued by those pursuing efficiency and productivity. Those qualities are the raw materials of the adjacent possible, both within and more likely outside the organisation.
"The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself." — Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From
Our shadow futures are not on any map. We cannot find them; they can only find us. We cannot get our bearings on the unknown, but we can help the unknown get its bearings on us.
Being Found
Entering the modern workplace requires leaving most of our talents outside the door, knowing that the small part of us that is required will end the day exhausted. If we are to be found, we need the rest of who we are to light a beacon.
In lighting a beacon, AI can be our worst enemy or our greatest friend. If we use it to polish our CVs, write our posts, and become a demon on LinkedIn, it is our greatest enemy because everyone else is doing the same. We end up as part of a campfire of artificially fluent mediocrity.
If, on the other hand, we use it to gather the kindling of our originality, the beacon will be seen from a distance by those we don't know yet, who need us for something we will probably be surprised by.
When it comes to being found, we need to design our beacon and the message it is sending. There are numerous options, including art, craft, indie productions, YouTube, and a variety that is almost endless. What matters most is what we communicate, and why it matters to us. What are we trying to offer, to whom, and what do we hope it might bring about?
The Practice of Writing
For me, and many others, it is writing - here on Substack, Medium, Ghost or our own server. It differs from social media and its close relations, such as LinkedIn. Social media is a flamethrower fuelled by the desire for attention. Substack and its peers are more akin to communities seeking dialogue. Social media offers disconnected snippets, whilst writing on these platforms creates a narrative that communicates who we are, what we think, and why we feel that way. It is an invitation to dialogue, not a trebuchet for hurling memes.
I need to write to clarify my thoughts. Ideas and arguments rarely emerge neatly formed; they appear in pieces like emptying a big, complicated jigsaw puzzle. Writing is a way of solving the puzzle they create, a way of understanding what it is I want to offer, and making it visible; my small beacon.
In many ways, it is like 'calling the island to me' - a way of stepping off the path of what I have been told matters, to what I believe matters, and why.
For me, it is agency: finding it, honing it and using it in a world that so often asks us to be someone else in pursuit of the interests of those we do not know.
The Craft-Scale Cycle
Becoming ourselves is an iterative process of experimenting with what we think, testing it with others we respect, delivering and refining it. The closer we get to it, the smaller the community where we feel we belong becomes, but the brighter the beacon burns, and the more visible we become.
Mastery is a niche. Scale rewards conformity, not specificity. The skills that reward us in large organisations are rarely the ones we can leverage on our own or in small groups. The capabilities that illuminate us can be smothered by efficiency and productivity.
Progress doesn't run in a straight line from invention to empire; it moves in cycles. At the edges, craft thrives in niches - artisans, trespassers, tinkerers and small collectives experimenting in ways scale never could. As their work matures, it gets codified, absorbed, and industrialised. However, scale comes at a cost: what was once distinctive becomes generic, and efficiency squeezes out vitality. Inevitably, renewal begins. At the margins, new craft rises again. The cycle repeats: craft sparks, scale harvests, craft returns.
When scale reaches its limits, the cycle doesn't simply stall; it darkens. What was once vital turns flat, industries ossify, and sameness spreads like an ash cloud. Alchemists called this stage nigredo - the blackening, where matter must first decay before anything new can form. We see it now in media flooded with generic AI-generated articles, in design swamped by template imagery, in education hollowed out by assessments gamed by machines. Yet nigredo was never the end; it was preparation. Out of the blackening came albedo, the whitening, a first glimpse of clarity and renewal.
The Athanor: A Space for Transformation
We can apply the concept of alchemy to identify the space we need to develop the niches where we can grow, rather than merely comply. Specifically, we can draw on the metaphor of the athanor.
The athanor, the furnace of the alchemists, was never about speed or spectacle. It was built to hold a steady flame, a quiet fire that could burn for weeks without faltering. In it, substances softened, mingled, and slowly became something new. For the alchemist, the athanor was as much a mirror of the soul as a piece of equipment: a reminder that true transformation comes not from flashes of brilliance but from constancy, patience, and faith in unseen processes.
The athanor sits on the boundary between what is disappearing and what is emerging. It is a temporary, yet necessary space where new artisans can develop their best work, away from the demands of scale and efficiency.
Creating the Space
At the beginning of October, I will create such a space: a small community where people can work together to refine the skills needed for the emerging world of work. Not another course or cohort, but an athanor community where transformation can happen through steady practice rather than dramatic intervention.
It is for those who sense they're sailing towards the wrong destination, who have capabilities left untapped by their current roles, and who want to light a beacon rather than polish a CV. It will be a place to practise the art of being found, to experiment with ideas that matter, and to develop the kind of specificity that creates genuine opportunity.
Because in the end, we cannot control where the winds will take us. But we can learn to read them differently, to tune ourselves to different signals, and to trust that when we become truly ourselves, the right opportunities have a way of finding us.
I love the idea of the athanor, a space for becoming. More about personal transition than trying to change an organisation. Observing and course correcting rather than blasting down the motorway in our busyness. Can I borrow your athanor metaphor, it works so well for something that’s calling me?
We don’t understand what planning really is. I saw the problem as soon as I began my consulting practice thirty years ago. Planning is really about creating the circumstances where we don’t have to change. Most of our metaphors of change are intended to convince us that we are changing when we are not. How do I know this? No one changes the structure of their organization. They add layers to convince themselves that they will be more efficient and adaptable … so they can remain the same. The deeper problem is that that there are people changing structures, but at a global level that will essentially transfer control of your organization to some global entity that doesn’t care about your plans for the next fiscal year. We have been far-too small minded, and protective of what we have to believe that we don’t live alone on an island but in a deeply and intimately connected universe. In a world that claims to embrace consciousness, we are not very aware of reality. This isn’t a cognitive problem. It is a behavioral one. What we do matters more than what we think. Planning is thinking. Changing is doing.