Reflections 23rd November

Moving off the Beaten Path

There is an old comfort in believing that organisations, by virtue of their scale and resources, can learn faster and more reliably than individuals. They have strategy teams, budgets, technology, consultants on speed dial, and an organisational memory that spans decades.

Individuals, by contrast, are assumed to be smaller and more fragile, with limited access to resources. Learning has always been one of the areas where big institutions were thought to hold an unshakeable advantage.

I think that advantage is rapidly disappearing. In fact, I think we are now crossing a line where the most motivated individuals are learning and adapting at a pace that even the best organisations cannot match. The gap is no longer a minor irritation. It is reaching an inflection point. It has become structural, it is widening, and it is beginning to reshape where we place our allegiance.

In this post I want to offer a diagnosis of this growing asymmetry, why I think it matters, and what kind of communities of practice might emerge as a result.

It rests on three linked ideas.

First, that organisational learning is constrained by powerful countervailing forces that regulate behaviour and limit the implementation of new ideas.

Second, that motivated individuals now increasingly learn through open networks that are more adaptive, more porous, and faster than any formal organisational structure.

Third, that this divergence creates the conditions for a quiet form of insurgency. Not a revolt in the political sense, but something more subtle. A reorientation of loyalty and learning away from institutions and towards distributed, high trust communities of practice that operate outside the walls of traditional organisational and educational structures. These communities are beginning to create new forms of leadership.

This is not an argument about technology alone. It is about the deeper architecture of learning. It is about what happens when institutions that depend on predictability encounter individuals who thrive on change, when organisations become too slow to keep up, and individuals become too fast to contain.

It is, in short, about the changing nature of the work that matters.

---

---

Organisations Learn Slowly Because They Have To

We design organisations to manage complexity at scale by reducing variation. We standardise processes, codify expectations, define roles, and enforce the boundaries within which people should operate. Most of the time this is not only sensible, it is necessary. Large groups cannot function if everyone experiments at will.

This constraint sits at the heart of how behaviour spreads in social networks. Large organisations change slowly because the existing norms push back. Damon Centola calls them countervailing forces. These are the routines, expectations, and shared assumptions that maintain the stability of the group. They make sure that change only happens when enough people believe the new behaviour is safe, useful, and socially accepted.

Inside established organisations these countervailing forces are strong. They keep behaviour aligned and risk contained. They ensure that people do not wander too far from the accepted, safe, shared purpose that does not frighten shareholders. They maintain the cohesion that allows the organisation to function as a governed collective rather than a set of loosely connected individuals.

These forces also slow adaptation. Even when someone has a new idea or insight, they wait to see if anyone else is willing to move. They watch for cues, test for permission, and look for evidence that they will not be defenestrated by those who may feel threatened. The more radical the idea, the stronger the pressure to conform. This is why innovation inside organisations often moves in slow waves rather than sudden leaps. People need multiple signals from trusted peers before they volunteer their ideas.

In this sense, organisations learn slowly because they are designed to learn slowly. The architecture is how they maintain safety and coherence. It is an understandable strategy.

Until the world changes more quickly than the organisation can tolerate.

Nobody got fired for buying IBM. Until its complacency nearly killed it.

Individuals Learn Fast Because They Can

Motivated individuals, by contrast, operate with far fewer constraints. They can pick up new ideas at speed, experiment without permission, and change direction instantly when something no longer fits. They learn in a direct loop. They read, try, fail, adjust, and continue.

The cost of being wrong is low. The opportunity to explore is high.

Most importantly, individuals now learn in a global network of weak ties. These are the open communities of practice, peer groups, online forums, and practitioner clusters that span organisations, professions, and geographies. They operate with minimal hierarchy and rarely rely on organisational status to validate participation. The currencies are curiosity and contribution.

These open networks work at a different tempo. They diffuse knowledge quickly, reward exploration over conformity, and encourage people to stretch beyond the confines of their role. They are wide bridge networks in Centola’s sense. New behaviours travel rapidly because people see others adopting them successfully with little risk, even as their own positions in conservative environments become precarious when cost cutting is favoured over courage.

There is another reason individuals are accelerating. The tools have changed. Generative AI, modular learning platforms, and the frictionless flow of knowledge mean a single person can access resources that once required a training budget, a specialist team, or an entire department. A curious individual today has more capability within reach than the average organisation had twenty years ago.

This turns the old assumption on its head. In earlier decades, people joined institutions to learn. Today, institutions often look outside their own walls to find the learning they need. It is easier to pay eye-watering premiums for start ups than do the work of innovation.

The Gap Is Widening, Not Closing

What matters now is not that individuals learn faster. It is that the differential is growing. Every year, institutional learning is pulled back by governance, by culture, and by the reputational cost of getting things wrong. Every year, individual learning accelerates because the tools and networks become richer and more accessible.

This creates an asymmetry that is not temporary but structural.

Large organisations cannot shed their countervailing forces without losing credibility and coherence. Individuals cannot slow their learning without losing relevance. Both sides are doing what they must. Each is operating according to different rules, but in opposite directions.

As the gap widens, different behaviours create tension. It is a little like a failing relationship. Each side quietly gives up on the other. Systems route around bottlenecks, and motivated talent begins to organise itself differently. The learning that matters moves where the friction is lowest.

This is where the insurgency begins.

Starfish, Spiders, and the Shape of What Comes Next

Ori Brafman’s image of the starfish and the spider helps to illustrate the shift. Spider organisations are hierarchical. They have a head and a body. They move purposefully and scale through control. They are effective when the environment is stable.

Starfish networks are decentralised. They do not have a head in the traditional sense. They grow through replication and shared norms rather than direction. Cut off a leg and it regrows. In some cases it becomes a new creature entirely.

During the industrial age organisations became spiders. Heavy, imposing, tarantula-like. They brought order, efficiency, and resources, and exercised brute power. They were the places where ambitious people went to develop and contribute because there seemed little alternative.

Today, starfish are proliferating. They appear in open source projects, Discord groups, informal advisory networks, learning communities, cohort based courses, and practitioner circles that organise around a shared craft rather than a shared employer. They do not replace organisations, but they provide the learning environment that organisations increasingly struggle to host. They harness the energy, ideas, and curiosity that sit dormant in the inertia of larger institutions.

Why do they grow now? Because they resolve the asymmetry. They provide the speed, trust, and experimentation that motivated individuals need, without the countervailing forces that slow them in formal settings. They are not necessarily rebellious. They are adaptive, emerging wherever organisational architecture cannot accommodate the learning agenda of its most capable members.

I spend my time with people in these spaces and witness their frustration with organisations where fear drives safe decisions that sacrifice the long term in favour of the short term, because those making the decisions will not bear the cost of their short sightedness. The tension is increasingly palpable.

The interesting thing is that these nascent communities are not fringe spaces. They are becoming core to how learning travels across industries. They are places where new ideas form, where practices evolve, where standards emerge, and where the next generation of capability is cultivated.

They thrive in domains where people care deeply about the work itself. Education. Health. Games, which dwarf the rest of the entertainment sector. And many others.

I talk with those who care about what they do about Fingerspitzengefühl, the fingertip feel for what is changing, sensed by those who are paying attention but missed by those focused on the diminishing returns of productivity and efficiency. Those who ignore the signals will find themselves surprised when change moves from gradually to suddenly.

A Third Space for Talent

If the trend continues, I think we will see the rise of a third space for those who care about what they do. Not the organisation, which offers scale and structure in return for compliance, nor the small firm, which offers speed but little resource.

Something in between.

This third space feels like a constellation of small but connected groups, each with a shared identity, aspiration, and ethic. Not formal enough to be owned by organisations, but not informal enough to be ignored. These are communities of practice in the original sense. Places where trust is earned, learning is a collaboration, competence is visible, and reputation is built through contribution.

They are becoming the places where motivated individuals go to learn, create, test ideas, and build capability that does not yet have a home inside their employer. They are the spaces where people keep their edge.

What makes this possible now is the availability of resources that were once reserved for large institutions. Cloud computing, generative AI, shared knowledge bases, open research, and globally connected peer groups mean the resource burden is no longer prohibitive. You do not need a training budget to learn at the frontier. You need a network.

If those who are running themselves ragged trying to manage their organisation’s obsession with AI spent more time outside the walls, they would see what the people they are trying to replace are doing with AI. They would have a very bad day.

These communities sit far beyond the scope of most HR paradigms. They are too dynamic to fit the job architecture, and they break the assumption that development is something the organisation provides. Development is becoming something individuals assemble through a portfolio of communities.

Just as the most powerful military in the world was humbled by small groups it once armed to solve a short term problem, so those relying on technology to reduce costs may find themselves surprised by how the same technology is used by those they are displacing.

The Quiet Talent Insurgency

This is where the idea of an insurgency becomes useful. The term may be provocative, but the behaviour is subtle. It is not about revolt or disruption. It is about a shift in allegiance.

Individuals who learn faster than their organisation can become bilingual. They speak the language of structure and process because it is how organisations function. They understand that. But their real learning allegiance lies outside the walls. When they want to explore, they go elsewhere. When they want to develop capability, they go to their peers. When they want to understand what is coming, they rely on networks that have their fingers on the pulse.

This is not a threat to organisations that adapt, but it is a change in the flow of learning. It means the organisation is no longer the primary container for capability. It means learning travels across boundaries rather than within them. It means the organisation becomes a client of these external communities rather than their host.

Very few large organisations are doing something genuinely novel. Many are simply excavating the depths of what they already own, or what Cory Doctorow calls enshittification. In 2023 over sixty per cent of gameplay was on titles more than six years old. Seven of the top ten global box office films were sequels, remakes or franchise extensions. A significant proportion of big pharmaceutical revenue came from patent extensions and minor variants. The traditional three or four year degree model is one designed in the nineteenth century.

Across mature sectors the gravitational pull is toward exploitation of incumbency. In each case value extraction has outpaced imaginative creation.

The most talented individuals understand this. They join organisations to earn, but they join communities to learn. They know the organisation cannot always keep up. They do not resist this; they simply establish a parallel path. Over time this parallel path becomes a pattern. Patterns become norms. Norms become the new structure.

And gradually, then suddenly, an insurgency becomes the mainstream.

What Comes Next

The implications are significant. Organisations that assume they can attract and retain talent through traditional pathways will find themselves outpaced by those that understand the new landscape.

People will acquire most of their frontier skills through communities of practice rather than internal training. People will work for organisations, but belong to communities. Their identity will be shaped externally, not internally. Capability will flow through networks, not hierarchies.

Individuals will grow through cycles of contribution, exploration, and renewal that do not map neatly to job grades. The most talented people will favour organisations that respect their external communities.

For individuals the shift is liberating. Learning is no longer dependent on organisational permission or investment. Capability is something you can cultivate yourself. Your value is no longer tied to the internal structures of one employer. It is shaped by your craft, your community, and your contribution.

This means taking responsibility for your own development. When capability lives outside the organisation, the individual becomes the curator of their own growth. The organisation offers opportunity, but the community offers mastery.

This is how many professions once operated. Apprentices learned within guilds. Scholars learned within academies. Scientists learned within scholarly societies. The shift today is not new. It is a return to an older pattern, but at global scale and digital speed.

If this argument holds, then over the next decade we will see a new landscape of learning and capability. Communities of practice will become the engines of frontier learning. Organisations will become platforms rather than hosts. Talent will organise itself around craft rather than employer. The boundary between inside and outside will blur. Learning and capability will travel freely across organisational walls.

The argument matters because we are moving into a period of rapid change. The demands on skilled individuals will increase, and the half life of skills will shorten. Organisations will struggle to maintain the pace. The ability to learn fast, adapt well, and stay ahead will belong to those who operate in the third space.

The differential is not a theoretical concern. It is a practical one. When individuals outpace organisations something has to give. When individuals find places where they can learn at the appropriate speed, they move towards them. When those places become communities of practice, they become the new centres of capability.

This is how change travels.

Towards the Athanor

For me, this emerging landscape is one of the reasons I am bringing together the strands of my work. New Artisans has explored the craft and creativity required to thrive at the edge. Outside the Walls has looked at what leaders and organisations must confront as systems become more volatile. The Athanor brings these together. It is the crucible where craft, learning, and community meet.

One of the biggest practical challenges I see is simply finding the time and space to start. The idea of a talent insurgency is not a call to arms. It is an observation that the centre of gravity for learning is shifting. It is an invitation to those who care about craft, who want to stay ahead, and who recognise that the old contracts are dissolving.

Inside the Athanor the aim is simple. To create a space where learning is fast, craft is honoured, and community is the engine of growth. A place where the countervailing forces are set aside long enough for people to explore what is possible. A place that sits outside the walls, but is open to those willing to step through.

The insurgency is not about rebellion. It is about renewal. I think it is already under way.

Sources

The Starfish and the Spider, Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom

How Behaviour Spreads, Damon Centola