Wayfinding v Wayshaping
[Dave Snowden]
- Both are necessary
- Wayfinding helps you survive in complexity
- Wayshaping- A Multiscale Framework for Sustainable Habit Change lets you influence the system so that future navigation becomes easier or more aligned with desired sense of direction
| Aspect | Wayfinding | Wayshaping |
|---|---|---|
| Orientation | Navigate existing structures | Alter structures to influence navigation |
| Agency | Individual/organizational adaptation | System-level intervention |
| Focus | Reading cues, reducing uncertainty | Creating conditions, shifting dynamics |
| Metaphor | Traveler with a map | Gardener shaping terrain |
| Risk posture | Responsive, adaptive | Generative, experimental |
| Cynefin link | Useful in complex and complicated domains for sense-making | Useful in complex and chaotic domains for nudging emergence |
| Feature | Wayfinding | Wayshaping |
|---|---|---|
| Concept Type | A strategy or stance for navigating non-linear, unpredictable territories | A multiscale framework for achieving sustainable individual behavior and habit change |
| Primary Goal | Mapping and continuously adapting one's path in a dynamic landscape. It involves finding one's way in unfamiliar territories. | Multilevel and multiscale realignment of the "self-collective". It aims to shape habits in line with intentions |
| Scope | Primarily addresses the coordination challenges arising from non-linearity | Encompasses the theory, processes, and skills needed to manage all three coordination challenges: non-linearity, alignment, and anticipation |
| Underlying Metaphor | Finding one's way by building the map as one moves through the landscape. The principle is: "We know as we go, not before we go" | Shaping habits and the environment through the controlled flow of stresses (scaffolds and shocks) |
Practical applications
- Leader’s role
- Wayfinding leaders → help teams orient in uncertainty (clarifying signals, framing decisions)
- Wayshaping leaders → adjust the human-imposed constraints: regulations, policies, standards, rules, practices to enable desirable behaviours more likely to emerge
- Urban design
- Wayfinding → signage, landmarks, intuitive layouts.
- Wayshaping → designing streetscapes that encourage walking or cycling by making them more attractive than driving
- Strategic focus:
- Wayfinding → scanning markets, interpreting signals
- Wayshaping → lobbying, ecosystem building, or creating new categories that redefine the market
- Organizational Change:
- Wayfinding → helping employees interpret a new reporting structure
- Wayshaping → redesigning the reporting structure itself to encourage cross-functional collaboration
- Policy Context:
- Wayfinding → navigating trade agreements to optimize existing supply chains and compliance
- Wayshaping → building coalitions to renegotiate or create new trade frameworks and routes
- Exaptative Discovery
- Wayfinding → exaptation is what you discover when probing the terrain: latent affordances waiting to be activated
- Wayshaping → how you amplify those affordances to guide emergence of the Adjacent Possible: At any moment the world is capable of extraordinary change, but only certain changes can happen