Here's to the wayfinders

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We all have them in our lives. Sometimes we seek them out. Sometimes they poke their noses through the door. Sometimes they’re just there in the corner sipping coffee.

Wayfinders.

The ones that, when you’re scratching your head trying to figure out whether to go hither or yon, pack a daypack or bring the roller case, lock the hubs or put the slicks on, they appear at your side or in your eyeline, and in some way, help you shape your choice. Find a way. Not THE way (for I don’t think that’s a thing, perfect being an asymptote, and obsessing over the concept befuddling too much progress). But a way that might work, might help you, now, with your bundle and your dreams.

Wayfinders present and profer diversely.? Those of your formative years. The ‘rents and the rellies. The teachers and pack leaders. The coach and the counsellor. Into employment, the bosses, the wise colleagues, the mentor, the supplier or client that helped you learn and understand and change direction. Your besties. Your kids. Heaven forbid, influencers. Today, even AI.

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You might pay wayfinders. Professionals for quid pro quo that help you find a palatable way to your desired station or lifestyle or financial position or enterprise harmony. ?The consultants and advisors and subject matter experts whose data- and experience-underpinned tips and finger points give you confidence to adjust your gait, angle your eyes over there, lean into the bluster, and make your way along the path they helped you find.

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But you might also just observe them, in passing, from a distance, and be influenced by their stories, their example, their take on the Universe, and it surreptitiously shifts something in your thinking. Someone you read, someone you follow or watch, whose presentation was right place and time for your ready-head. Ways can be found via the help of others that never know they helped.

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Most pros are in the wayfinding business. The doc helping you find your way to better health. The accountant helping you find your way to a tax-minimised, mortgage-free life. The insurance broker helping you find your way to a better nights sleep, knowing you’ll get paid out when bits of Elon’s skycraft land on your trampoline. The facilitator helping you find your way to a clear, aligned set of paths to hopefully realise your Vision and fulfill your Purpose. Trying to, anyway.

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Maybe they’re in the business of unearthing and offering you the insights needed to find a viable way. ?Maybe they help you effectively communicate with those you’re trying to find a way to connect with. Maybe they arm you with ways to deal with things when the way you’re currently travelling gets too lumpy. Anyone in sales worth their iodised salt is in the business of helping clients find their way to “better for them” (whatever that means) via whatever’s in their satchel. Selling done right is wayfinding scaled. So too leadership.

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Wayfinders can help you with maps, signs, rogaining instructions, crampons, eye drops, inspo, and just a hand up when you stumbled off the track. They might lean on experience, or book learning, a nifty model, or a really deep and insightful study of you and the hill you’re trying to summit.

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Is everyone wanting a decent wayfinder? Not sure. I think some people are actively swimming, and would be very happy, via trusted wayfinder counsel, to know that the direction, form and cadence of their strokes is optimised for the edge of the pool. I also think oodles are treading water, not unhappily, and maybe a blinding epiphany will strike and serve as their next wayfinder moment (but they’re not putting out RFTs right now).

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I think there’s a key with successful wayfinding though. For those seeking the way, and for those that might help them. Well, three keys, maybe.

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The first – understanding what they’re needing or wanting to find a way to or through. A desired destination, or a brand of journey (their call, maybe both). That means knowing the goals and the kind of ride they’re wanting, both them and you. Any ways you try and help them discover or embark upon have to meet that brief, if the way has a hope of enduring beyond the first tremors.

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The second – because it’s their way, that they’ll have to make their way along, it needs to consider their realities, practicalities, nuances and idiosyncracies that make them, them. Forget their shiny ambitions a moment - what can they actually tolerate? ?What, given your assessment of their makeup, might they stumble on, or thrive upon? Where can you see the likely tripwires and logjams they’ll need contingencies for, and what are the points on the path you can see them getting flummoxed by or needing a sugar hit (where a different wayfinder interaction might be needed)? Whether the way is for an individual or a big mob, having the courage and discipline to undertake a cool, firm, confront-the-mirror-early review of their honest ability and appetite for what’s ahead, will undoubtedly help the wayfinding and maintaining. The truth, that they’ll have to handle.

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And the third - the finding bit. Sometimes the way is really bloody obvious. And sometimes it’s hidden like an old golf ball in the rough. Any fool can point to the newly bitumenised interstate two feet to the left and say “take a spin on that”. It’s the work done in the discovery, the modelling, the testing and sizing and iterating, time after frustrating time, that the commitment, care and understanding of your wayfinder mate shines out, and then hopefully sticks.? Ways forward that work aren’t synthetic theoreticals. It’s about finding the real and befitting and actually navigating a path through the sea of choices.

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“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

Douglas Adams

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This short nod to wayfinders – the recruited and the unaware – stems from some reflecting on what, at the core, I actually do for a quid, in the hope I might everbetter it (both the doing, and the quid). 18 years ago, when I hung the “42 MIGHTY Sales Reps” shingle up, the number (my goal for the number of coachees I’d get in 12 months) was a serendipitous homage to Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, and the answer to life, the Universe and everything. The idea of trying to be a good guide – a wayfinder – has been the mean I try returning to when I’ve wandered beyond one standard deviation (frequently).

Strategy Road, the current iteration of my help wagon, isn’t really one road. It’s about helping a client find their road, their way, to where they want to go and what they want to do.

The professionals I’ve surrounded myself with– The Swarm, and others – are there for their demonstrated skills and commitment to helping their clients and colleagues find a way that works for them.

And the most important part of the reflection has been that, despite running a payrolled pitcrew of one, any great ways I've found have invariably been found via the help of a clutch of others, acknowledged and too frequently ignored. Wayfinding takes an emu parade of clever eyes helping you see beyond your own blinkers.

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“Any man that can hitch the length & breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

Douglas Adams

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I’m immensely, if too often silently, grateful to the myriad folk that have helped and continue to help me find, and make, my way along the paths I'm hoofing. The paid-to-be-there, the just-lucky-to-have-in-my-life, and those I learn from and am inspired by even when they don’t know it. Equally, to those that gift me the privilege of standing at the intersection with a compass and a Texta, to help them find a way for them. That, beyond the paycheck, has a feedback loop that improves things and makes the job way better. Thank you.

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Wayfinding is a neat way to make a living, but it isn’t just something you help others with.

It’s the never-ending game of figuring it out for yourself.

Find a way that works for you.

Here’s to those helping you find and make it.

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If your enterprise is in that moment of reflecting on your lot, and finding the next way forward to fulfil your biggest aspirations, I might be able to help.

Get in touch and we’ll figure it out.

[email protected]