Becoming ‘Wayfinders’: Building Capabilities in Liminal Times — Part 1
Platforms for the emergence of new narratives
Context
Organizations have evolved from the assembly lines of the Industrial Era to Platform Capitalism of digital businesses like Uber, Airbnb, and many others. This has led to a vast gig economy — once glorified as promoting entrepreneurship and agency of the individual — that has become predatory and precarious while giving rise to surveillance capitalism where every move of the worker is tracked, consumer data gathered and sold, and every action productized to its limit. The workers “are exploited by companies that seek to become more competitive by keeping their labour costs artificially low and looking continually to lower them still further. … As far as the gig economy is concerned, self-employment has become the only show in town for firms seeking to cut their labour costs.”
I am not going into the details of the gig economy which will require another series by itself. My intention is to touch upon the seeming evolution of organizations from brick and mortar buildings to digital apps, from nine to five hours to work anytime-anywhere, from physical presence to zoom meetings, and now from humans as resources to humans as possibly redundant as generative A.I. steps in. However, the underlying narrative hasn’t shifted though the external form has kept shapeshifting.
The promise of technology that once assured days of leisure, democratization of information, and seamless connection appears to be lost in the dark belly of the beast — the strident siren call of never-ending profit for a handful. This necrocapitalism is killing the planet. Organizations that could have evolved to become places of potential and promise for the wellbeing of all are mired in the murky depths of spiraling meaninglessness.
I call this the Great Derangement.*(inspired by Amitav Ghosh’s novel of the same name)
This Great Derangement of organizations in the name of efficiency, scale, and profit is destroying societies, communities, countries, and our planet. This obsession with GDP has brought us to the verge of the Sixth Mass Extinction; organizations have lost touch with reality, and live in a Wall Street-created shareholders’ fantasy.
Their extreme wealth and privilege served only to make them obsessed with insulating themselves from the very real and present danger of climate change, rising sea levels, mass migration, global pandemics, nativist panic, and resource depletion. For them, the future of technology is about only one thing: escape from the rest of us. ~Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
We are at a unique juncture in our civilizational trajectory — on the one hand, we face imminent planetary-level collapse; on the other, the apparent promise of generative A.I. and approaching Singularity. “Mr. Altman signed an open letter last month released by the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit organization, saying that “mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority” that is right up there with ‘pandemics and nuclear war.’”
Organizations exist today against this backdrop of ecological crises intersecting with the unknown powers of generative A.I.
It is in this fluid and fluctuating space of liminality that organizations can make an evolutionary leap into their next stage of development as harbingers of planetary healing, resilient citizenship, and democratic values. Organizations are uniquely placed to lead the way, irrespective of the sectors they operate in. However, making this evolutionary leap requires certain preparations akin to readying the soil before planting the season’s crops. The harvest is commensurate with the preparation.
This is the time for Wayfinders to arise — from within the current system but in defiance to it. It’s not an armed rebellion. It’s a shifting of mindsets and heart-sets, a weaving together of unseen and unheard stories, a combination of collective sensemaking and facilitative leadership, and a reclaiming of the lost skills of imagination, intuition, and inspiration.
Facilitation, or facilitative leadership is the dynamic and effective ability to move a process along in the most inclusive, focused, energized and alive way possible. ~Facilitating Sensemaking in Uncertain Times
Organizations on this path begin to function as platforms and ecosystems of “communities of interconnected nodes”. To develop these capabilities is the core work of Wayfinders. They will literally be building the capacities of future citizenship, reviving democracy, and enabling collective sensemaking.
The Future is not Human-Centered.
The Inhuman Ones by Henry Miller
Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me.
Today I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles.
I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity — I belong to the earth! I say that lying on my pillow and I can feel the horns sprouting from my temples.
“I belong to the earth.” This clarion call coming from one of the most profound writers reach out to us across time and space, urging us to re-imagine our ‘humanity’. Miller denounces the very notion of ‘humanity’ as it has evolved under modernity/coloniality. This creaking machinery is now falling apart. And it’s time to sink into the cracks and crevices appearing in this narrative.
The cracks hold the seeds of the future. The earth is reverberating with messages in the form of fires, floods, and furies. All certainties are ripped off, facades revealed, and illusions shattered. Progress has bumped into generative A.I. and appear to have died out. A.I. is set to replace humans, and perhaps all that is humane. Who knows!
The old hegemonic narrative has now run its course. The earth’s clarion call is loud and clear; we ignore it at our peril. If organizations must exist, they have to undergo radical transformation and become containers for the emergence of new narratives — those hidden in the cracks and intersections of myriad ontologies, diverse epistemologies, and varied cosmologies that have long been deliberately ignored, delegitimized, and suppressed.
In this liminal space of flux and ambiguity, in this juncture between collapse and creation lie new stories and opportunities for novel practices to emerge. And the seeds of the future of organizations, and organizations of the future. Collapse precedes rebirth. This collapse is filled with stories — of griefs, trials, tribulations, and also triumph. Shoots of the new are set to arise from the humus of the old.
I believe organizations have a profound and inviolable responsibility to be life-affirming. Organizations of the future must necessarily be pluriversal and de-colonial.
I am steering clear of any kind of ‘isms’ as a solution to modernity/coloniality/capitalism. ‘Isms’ tend to polarize, create binaries, and lead to Otherisation, no matter how benign their inception. It’s time, I believe, to transcend all reductionist divisiveness and move towards inclusive, interconnected, and interwoven futures. Wayfinders, therefore, must avoid the pitfalls of mechanistic and linear logic, a penchant for solution-ism, and universalization; instead, stay with the uncertainties and chaos of liminality till future possibilities emerge from the compost of collapse.
As queer Black feminist Audre Lorde reminds us, “any future vision which can encompass all of us, by definition, must be complex and expanding, not easy to achieve.”
The Future cannot be trapped by Risk.
HYPOTHESIS: Risk increasingly feels like an outdated frame to scaffold innovation and the future. ~Indy Johar
Today’s organizations — built around profit, productivity, and predictability — are essentially risk-averse. Their entire management revolves around risk-prediction, risk management, and risk mitigation. This risk-centric view rooted in the fear of loss, limits the possibilities of imagination and confines organizations to binary choices of risky versus safe. Since organizations almost always choose the path of predictability and safety, the status quo remains securely in place.
The irony lies in the fact that embracing safety as modus operandi eventually erodes an organization’s ability to be responsive, responsible, and resilient. The bid to remain safe destabilizes an organization in the long run, undermines its capacities for innovation, and finally leads to its own stagnation and eventual demise.
Organizations built around predictability, rationality, linear cause and effect paradigms, and overarching control are going to struggle to be with uncertainty. This will manifest in an ever-increasing bid for control through automation, surveillance mechanisms, obsession with data, and now generative A.I. This final bid to replace humans with A.I. is necrocapitalism’s desperate attempt to remain in control in a world of flux and dissolving edges. The center can no longer hold. Organizations are going to find themselves in a death-trap of their own making as the last vestiges of control slip from their desperate grasp.
Those in power know this, and have already planned their exit strategies.
Therefore, organizations have to untangle themselves from the toxic trap of profit, productivity, and power and undertake the journey of becoming Wayfinders, or sink into oblivion. This is not a wild prediction. It’s really obvious. A glance at S&P’s corporate longevity forecast shows the decline of traditional organizational longevity, and the changing landscape of businesses.
The things we fear most in organizations — fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances — are the primary sources of creativity. ~Margaret J. Wheatley
For an organization to become a Wayfinder, fear of loss has to be replaced by a vision of the future. The seeds of possibilities lie dormant in all organizations, but remain unrealized as the narrative of profit remain in the driving seat. It is also well worth remembering that organizations and today’s financial accounting frameworks don’t measure real loss, e.g., the loss of vibrant, diverse biospheres. What constitutes loss in this economic narrative is the failure to convert living systems and human potential into capital for accumulation. Hence, within the parameters of this monomyth, all life-affirming decisions that do not support the conversion of thriving ecosystems into GDP is loss, and doing so constitute risk.
Wayfinders are organizations who refuse to abide by the old norms of extraction, expropriation, and exploitation. They realize that we are in the midst of a civilizational transition, and they have a role to play in this emergence of new narratives. And for this, they need to embrace imagination. Imagination, not as mere flights of fancy or daydreams, but as rigorous method and process for collectively envisioning a future that is in alignment with the principles of biocentrism.
Wayfinders respectfully hospice what is no longer life-affirming, integrate the learnings from the past, and transcend the old paradigms. This process of hospicing, integrating, and transcending is crucial to the evolution of an organization’s journey to becoming a Wayfinder.
It is about reclaiming some of the lost and marginalized capacities that humans inherently have. The capacity for imagination, intuition, insight. These inbuilt wisdom have been deliberately disregarded by the current narrative with its focus on materialism, reductionism, rationality, quantification, and linear logic. Imagination is an important way for us to experience novelty and impossibility, which in turn enables us to expand the horizons of what we thought possible.
It is “a practice that starts by reframing the world around us in radically new ways,” Sascha Haselmayer’s explains of social imagination.
The Future is not a Destination.
The urge to move from a here to a there is also counterproductive and symptomatic of the old rationality of progress. There is no ‘there’; it is all here. Every choice, decision, and action in this present moment is a vote for the future we want. Pathways will emerge from a collective acceptance of where we are now, sensing of the underlying patterns, being wholly present to all that is, and deepening of our connections with self and all of life. Wayfinders become platforms for the development of these necessary capacities, and lay the foundations for profoundly different organizations to evolve.
Wayfinders are platforms and containers for the emergence of civilizational narratives and organizational capacities that move beyond human-centered to a life-affirming, decolonial, and pluriversal vision of a world.
Does it sound idealistic? I hope so.
Is it impractical? So was the notion of putting a man on the moon in 1962. Is it impossible? Certainly not. The wisdom and know-how already exist in the margins — in the cosmologies and ontologies of people and communities ignored by mainstream narrative. Is it necessary? I can envision no other way for organizations to survive, let alone thrive. I can imagine no other reason for organizations to exist. Will it be difficult? Hell, yes! But also a profoundly rewarding journey. It will require an integration of head, heart, and hand as well as a remembering of our lost capacities for intuition, imagination, and ‘inspiration’. This little word can be traced back to the Latin inspirare (“to breathe or blow into”), which itself is from the word spirare, meaning “to breathe.”
It is time to breathe life back into ourselves and all that we hold precious.
The looming question is HOW? I propose that organizations can begin to build these core capabilities wherever they are in their journey. These capacities are critical to become resilient, responsive, regenerative. They appear counter-intuitive only because the economic monomyth has distorted the purpose and functionality of organizations to serve a few.
The Future is Pluriversal.
Whose voices are heard? Who gets to imagine? Who are the scribes and the storytellers? Which stories matter? What foundational principles drive the weaving of the narratives? How do we become the humans our world is calling for?
These questions will be of vital importance to organizations on the wayfinding journey. In this context, it is crucial to note that there will no longer be one homogenous narrative driving the show. The hegemony of one narrative will no longer exist. Instead, Wayfinders will have a plethora of narratives connected by some common values.
With this context, I have attempted to create a representation of a possible compass for Wayfinders to follow, use, modify, and recreate. The rest of the article elaborates on this…
The diagram is work-in-progress, and an initial attempt to explain what may seem vague and unfathomable. The diagram tries to represent the flux and fluidity of the liminal space and the elements of the journey. The boundaries are imaginary, always porous, and permeable; in mutual and constant interactions. The journey is not a linear one of progression and arrival; it is one of being and becoming.
However, it does have some intangible philosophy as the foundational element. Without clear underpinnings of certain core values, it is easy to fall back into the clutches of old and familiar patterns, no matter how destructive we know them to be. I reiterate that there is no immediate and known destination in this journey. The destination is continually emerging being shaped, reshaped, and co-created by the myriad intersecting narratives, place-based experiments, and positionality of the participants/creators.
Hence, approaching a Wayfinder’s journey with a project plan and timeline will be counter-productive. Nevertheless, certain scaffoldings must be created and held in place for the container to serve as the compass. This diagram is an illustration of how the container (i.e., Wayfinders as platforms) can be shaped. Moreover, the process of undertaking the journey will build the required capacities in the organizations preparing them for a Phase Shift. The very process is thus a critical step in becoming next-stage organizations — life-affirming, pluriversal, and decolonial.
A brief look at the diagram…
The Wayfinders’ journey presumes a willingness and courage to step into the liminal space, enter the edges where worlds collide and merge, and befriend the unknowable space of liminality. These edges are places of radically transformative and innovative forces and processes unfettered by the inertia of the hegemonic status quo. Wayfinders have to move into and move from the edges — scientists call these places ‘ecotones’.
Ecotones “are more than just zones of transition. They are areas of disturbance, catalyzed by the differences in the two ecosystems, and they are often zones of conflict as well. The word’s etymology derives from a combination of two Greek words: eco(logy) and — tone, from tonos or tension; ecologies in tension. Ecotones are not merely the blending of two habitats and their characteristics, but actually a third thing.” ~DESIGN EDUCATION AND INNOVATION ECOTONES
Reading it from outside-in, the first layer represents the intangible values that underpin Wayfinders — all institutions, communities, and collectives walking the path of transformation. I won’t go into details of each qualities here. Just to note: this is not a comprehensive list and neither is it meant to be. I have tried to articulate some qualities, and there are many I have not mentioned. Please feel free to add, expand, and revise to suit your purpose. Just reiterating a few points here that I have written about in my earlier articles as well.
The underlying intangible philosophy informs all the other segments. None of the segments are segregated from each other but inform and underpin the evolution of the processes and methods and also the building of critical capacities.
Pluriverse. Organizations of the future will have to let go of the myth of homogeneity and the imposition of the universal in the name of objectivity on a wildly diverse, vibrant, and fluid planet. Therefore, seeing life only through the hegemonic Eurocentric cosmological lens is bound to be flawed; this flawed view has driven the world for centuries.
It is time to relegate this monomyth arising from an inherently partial understanding to its rightful place as just one of many cosmologies. Wayfinders understand the need to step out of the monomyth and become spaces for epistemologies and ontologies to intersect and merge. They become ecotones, learning to hold the tensions, staying with the paradoxes, and midwifing entirely different narratives.
It is also time to move from extreme individuality to communities and collectives. Communities are about compassion, diversity, holding space in times of trouble, weaving, and standing together.
Reclaiming our true natures and recognizing those of one another requires slow, dedicated practice. It demands attending to our individual and collective wounds, stepping into unusual couplings with strange others including the more-than-human world, keeping our minds and hearts open, and holding deep ambiguity for what may emerge. ~Ambiguous, Unusual Couplings by Jeanine M. Canty
Decolonization. In Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, historian Robin D.G. Kelley asks the question, “But is it possible to reconcile reparations for slavery and structural racism with decolonization?” “Decolonization means ending capitalism and returning the land, not as ‘property’ but as the source of life to be stewarded by its original inhabitants and where animals, plants, and humans can coexist and thrive together.”
Libraries of books are available on this topic, and there is deep expertise available in this area. In the context of organizations, I will say that decolonization means ‘not being bound to the current hegemonic narrative that promotes extraction, expropriation, exclusion, and extermination’. Ecocide and genocide are a part of this monomyth. For example, tribal people are forcefully evicted from their homeland, ruthlessly killed or rendered homeless, turned into bonded labor or vagrants because colonial-capitalist forces want their land and the wealth it holds. For Wayfinders, decolonization implies disengaging from all that is destructive, oppressive, and extractive.
Wayfinders recognize the tremendous and ongoing impact of centuries of colonization of the Global South and the importance of reparation, collective listening, and learning from the unheard and unacknowledged voices. This will be their most profound edgework enabling them to build the capacities for collective grieving, healing, and regeneration. This shift may seem impossible within the frames of the current narrative which is necessarily limited being founded on a single Eurocentric worldview of domination.
Post-growth. It is impossible to move into a truly post-growth economy without being pluriversal and decolonizing our imaginations, metaphors, and processes. The entire GDP-driven power structure is fundamentally defective and an enabler of extortion and exploitation. Wayfinders need to radically shift in their worldview. Again, this may seem impossible within the current narrative; nonetheless, as evinced by current poly-crises, the time for this shift has come. (*Heat Index At Iran Airport Hits 66 Degrees Celsius As Climate Scientist Warns Earth Will Become “Inferno”).* Again, literature around post-growth abound, so I won’t go into details here.
Interbeing. Thich Nhat Hahn’s term beautifully captures the idea that to exist, we have to ‘interbe’. Our indelible interconnectedness and inter-relatedness is undeniable. And Wayfinders’ imaginings and shared intentions must hold this sense firmly in place.
We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos.
I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me.
That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly,
and my blood is part of the sea.There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute
except my mind, and we shall find that
the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters…My individualism is really an illusion.
~We Ought to Dance with Rapture by D. H. Lawrence
Emergence. A pluriversal organization will experience the power of emergence at every step. As diverse worldviews and ontologies weave together, their synergies will give rise to novel forms, practices, metaphors, and narratives. Holding space for this emergence is the core work of Wayfinders. As more and more of the new narratives emerge and interweave, the old and tired one will be displaced. Wayfinders will necessarily become containers for emergent qualities and capabilities that will best serve in these times of transition.
These qualities cannot be accessed from a place of certainty and homogeneity; hence, it is necessary to step into the liminal space of ‘nowhere-ness’. And to be willing to stay in and become liminal. This process of transition will build capabilities it would be impossible to envision from solid and certain ground. It is grounded in an acceptance that the future will be very different from the mechanistic unfolding hitherto accepted as norm. The synergy between very diverse cosmologies (narratives, ways of being, relating, sensing) will give rise to entirely novel ways of being, relating, sensing, and learning. This is emergence. And Wayfinders become crucibles for such emergence and lay the foundations for pluriversal futures.
Contexts. Context matters; positionality matters; place matters. All epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies are place-based, partial, and representations of certain cultures, relationships, and contexts. Accepting this requires humility, openness, and response-ability. The myth of the universal is just that, a myth. Donna Haraway warned against ‘playing the god trick’ that Eurocentric cosmology has tried to do by imposing it on the rest of the planet as an imperial project of colonization.
Hence, Wayfinders must appreciate the criticality of being contextual and place-based; however, localized, responsive, regenerative actions interconnect and intersect, giving rise to the emergent phenomenon mentioned earlier. This emergent phenomenon rising across the globe has the power to fundamentally shift our civilizational narrative and completely displace the hegemony.
And as Rebecca Solnit wrote in Hope in the Dark, “Inside the word emergency is emerge; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast but danger and possibilities are sisters”.
Sahana Chattopadhyay — a speaker, writer, facilitator, amplifier, and synthesizer. A scribe to an emerging era, making sense from chaos and collapse, holding space for fearless dialogues, and catalyzing transformation towards a pluriversal planet and a regenerative future. (https://linktr.ee/sahana2802)
Website: www.pluriversalplanet.com
