Strategy Meets Reality Podcast

Wayfinding in Complexity: Elsa Henderson on Strategy, Capacity, and Practical Wisdom

Season 1 Episode 22

Most strategy frameworks promise clarity—but what happens when there is no map?

In this episode of Strategy Meets Reality, Mike Jones is joined by Elsa Henderson—consultant, facilitator, and PhD researcher on “wayfinding” in complexity. Drawing on her work with impact networks and her doctoral research into real-world leadership practice, Elsa explores what it means to make decisions, build strategy, and lead effectively when the future is unclear.

They unpack why traditional navigation fails in dynamic environments, why capacity matters more than capability, and how the aesthetics of leadership—the felt experience—shape what we notice, trust, and act on. It’s a rich, grounded conversation for leaders rethinking how strategy and sensemaking really work in practice.

🔍 In this episode:

  • What wayfinding means—and why it matters in strategy
  • The difference between capability and capacity in leadership
  • Why frameworks are only useful if you can adapt them
  • Practical wisdom and anticipatory capacity in action
  • The emotional and aesthetic dimension of leadership decisions
  • Rethinking time, identity, and feedback in organisational change

🎧 Keywords: Wayfinding, Strategy, Capacity, Complexity, Anticipatory Capacity, Practical Wisdom, Leadership, Dynamic Environments, Change, Sensemaking, Aesthetics, Tacit Knowledge, Adaptation

📬 Connect with Elsa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elsa-henderson-48b720132/

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💬 Connect with host Mike Jones → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-h-jones/

Elsa Henderson (00:00)
We learn as we go. any path that we've had to carve for ourselves, whether it's like a physical path or a path through a conversation, that is finding our way. That's wayfinding,

we will have a felt sense of leaders, whether it's...

positive or negative that actually drives decisions often more than the rational logic.

Mike Jones (00:18)
Hmm.

Elsa Henderson (00:23)
wayfinding is when you don't have a map and you're

learning as you go and there's this need for kind of what we've been speaking to the adaptation and a different kind of perceptual agility

Mike Jones (01:05)
Welcome back to the strategy meets reality podcast. I'm delighted today to be joined by Elsa Henderson who joins us all the way from Canada. It's great to have you on the show

Elsa Henderson (01:16)
Thank you, it's great to be here.

Mike Jones (01:18)
Yeah, even though must put, you're not Canadian, no, but you're...

Elsa Henderson (01:21)
No, I'm from the US,

but I'm in the process of immigrating here. Yeah.

Mike Jones (01:25)
I

hope that's not due to a recent electoral result.

Elsa Henderson (01:31)
It was, it actually happened before and then it was set into motion and then the elections happened and yeah, I felt very fortunate to have made that move, but very close. mean, we're just, I'm on Vancouver Island in Victoria, so it's the capital of British Columbia and we're just right across from the Seattle area. So it's really just a border in the water.

Mike Jones (01:53)
just for our listeners do you mind giving a bit of background about yourself and a bit of context about what you've been up to lately

Elsa Henderson (02:00)
Yes, so I mean, just thinking back, I have been really interested in groups for many years. I have a master's in psychology and I was initially really interested in conflict facilitation, but...

That led me into working as a consultant and a facilitator with Impact Networks. So basically I was interested in how do you bring people together and have conversations where conflict can be transformed, conflict can be processed, and some kind of change can happen. I thought that work was noble and novel and I got my degree in something called process-oriented psychology that was really about going right into

conflict rather than trying to control it so to speak. And I guess in that modality, I'm going to bring this up because I think it links to my PhD research which I'll speak about in a moment. In that modality there's a focus on following the process which is basically a way of following the flow of experience and there's a whole framework for that that gives you enough kind of scaffolding and frameworks.

while also helping you kind of adapt with what's happening in real time.

And I think there's something there in terms of, know, there's language around like, you know, what's the primary identity or process of a group or a person? What's the emerging identity? Where's the edge? Like always looking for that edge. And so it's a dynamic framework. And I was really drawn to that when I was younger. And so I studied that and then I was feeling like, okay, you know, we're bringing these groups together, but is there really change happening? Is, you know, what's the impact? And around that time I learned about impact networks and that you could bring stakeholders to

Mike Jones (03:18)
Mmm.

Elsa Henderson (03:47)
together to collaborate around a shared purpose. know, often these stakeholders are from different organizations and institutions. You know, maybe it's something around developmental finance or refugee rights and migrant rights with people from different bodies within the UN and different NGOs so that these people could coordinate and collaborate around this purpose and take action to learn together and then take action. And what drew me to that approach

Mike Jones (04:00)
Yeah, yeah.

Elsa Henderson (04:15)
which is that there was a way to measure the impact. And so it felt a little more tangible. So was in that world for several years. I'm still kind of in that world through my work at Circle Generation, which I co-founded with two colleagues last year. But prior to Circle Generation, I was in the Converge network for several years. And more recently, the past few, I've been close to where you are-ish, same land mass. ⁓

Mike Jones (04:18)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah. Yes.

Elsa Henderson (04:41)
doing my

PhD at the Bristol Business School. So happy to chat more about that, but that's kind of the trajectory of my work. I've always been interested in people and working with their experience and helping them do more together than they could alone.

Mike Jones (04:58)
Yes, I think I'd love to pick up on your PhD but before we get to that point I like that idea about the scaffolding, says there's enough coherence structure but not so much that it prevents people from understanding and being aware of what's going on to be able to adapt.

Elsa Henderson (05:17)
Absolutely, that's been,

yeah, I feel like that's been on my mind. It's been one of those kind of questions that was important to me. Maybe I drifted away from it or maybe it went more to the background. But I think even just with the name of this podcast, it like captures the nexus of that of, okay, we have these frameworks, but how are they actually in practice? How adaptable are they and how much do they mirror our direct experience?

Mike Jones (05:39)
Hmm.

Elsa Henderson (05:44)
And I think there's just been like a craving for frameworks or models that help people when they're in the heat of the moment or when they're in the thick of uncertainty to help them find their way.

Mike Jones (05:59)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. it's, think previously we've had a lot of processes and models that are quite prescriptive, that didn't give people the freedom. I think people are realizing that those are not that effective in adaption. So, but we still need something. Otherwise we could quite easily go into chaos. So it's trying to find that,

Elsa Henderson (06:13)
Yeah.

Okay.

Mike Jones (06:28)
enough so that we can adapt and still sense make but without going into that entropy that that chaos.

Elsa Henderson (06:35)
Yeah.

Absolutely. I've been chatting with colleagues about this and I wrote an article last month with a colleague basically just acknowledging that the work we did in the Converge Network, part of its success was that we came up with these frameworks and these frameworks are outlined in a book called Impact Networks that my colleague David Erlichman wrote. So there are these frameworks that helped people cultivate these collaborations and kind of know how to bring

people together, how to coordinate learning and action, but over time we really found that it wasn't just the frameworks, it was the way we engaged the frameworks. And it's been interesting kind of reading about people in other disciplines, like in chefs or musicians, where there's this kind of practicing of a piece of music or of making a dish again and again and again, so that then it becomes almost automatic.

Mike Jones (07:13)
Yeah, yeah.

Elsa Henderson (07:33)
And it's been curious with the kind of consulting work and the facilitation. I feel like there's an element of that, of practicing something enough that it's kind of internalized, not so that you're restricted by it, but that's so that you can kind of draw upon it as needed in the moment, rather than like looking at a script and trying to follow it, you know, line by line. It's just something I've been thinking about, yeah.

Mike Jones (07:33)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's the whole thing we think about. It's not the plan, it's the planning in a sense that it's that we practice about it. I'm from the military, so we practice and practice. And then when we go for our planning, we really put it apart. We always explore what happens if this goes on here, what if this happens here? And it's not there to come up with a definitive answer.

Elsa Henderson (08:01)
Yes.

Mike Jones (08:17)
but it's to do a lot of the cognitive stuff. So when something does happen, we suddenly don't have to have this massive cognitive draw to think, okay, what's going on? Because it's so internalized, we can adapt pretty quickly.

Elsa Henderson (08:30)
Absolutely, I think there's so much to that. Just what happens in those conversations and running scenarios through. I'm even thinking about thinking through the worst case scenario. I know that that's stoic practice in a way of going there mentally, but how...

Even if it's for facilitating a high stakes convening to kind of run that through, then you've traversed that path and you've explored it so that in the moment, like you said, I love the way you articulated that. It's not this like leap and drain when you're hit with it.

Mike Jones (09:01)
Yeah, yeah. This is my child. I'm halfway through writing it. think it's one of those, I have loads of articles that are just sort of mulling in the background. And one of them is, I've seen this reliance on AI to give strategy and...

Yeah,

an emotive thing. It's a cognitive thing. It's a sort of behavioral thing that it's the process of developing the strategy gives you that awareness and stuff and gives you that buying, gives you that emotion to do something. If we shortcut it, we lose the very essence of what makes us adaptable, what makes us want to do something in that moment. Yeah, so I think people are forgetting that for the trying to just get to answers.

Elsa Henderson (09:49)
Yeah, and there's when you're speaking to that, it's making me think about how in just trying to reach for an answer that

something is lost in terms of how it's internalized and the people who are gonna be kind of leading the strategy and in that if it's not within them and it's like also really appreciate that you pointed out kind of how the logic can be outdated that that you know AI can be drawing upon and how that's there's all these assumptions baked into it but there's also something about if it's generated by

Mike Jones (10:08)
Mmm.

Elsa Henderson (10:25)
you know, AI, I don't know if people are really going to have it in themselves so that if something unexpected happens, it's going back to the adaptability, how well they'll be able to pivot.

Mike Jones (10:30)
Hmm.

Yeah,

Elsa Henderson (10:37)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (10:36)
yeah, I love that idea of

being internal. Like you said earlier, it's internalized in you. It was internalized in you. You know, it's you, you get to sense it. You get to know it, you can explain it, can, yeah, you can adapt. I think that's really good. Cool. So think about on your, so your PhD. So I'm glad to hear that you're...

Elsa Henderson (10:46)
Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Mike Jones (10:58)
Your what they call it not your Kate your defense. That's it your defense your defense went well. Yeah. Yeah

Elsa Henderson (11:02)
My defense, yeah. Yeah, it went really,

yeah. Yeah, I think there's actually an element of what you were just speaking to in the defense process, but maybe it would, I'm wondering if I should just say a bit about my PhD and the focus before I get in. Okay. So I'll share a bit about what led me to the PhD, and then I will say what the topic is. So in my work as a consultant, I noticed that,

Mike Jones (11:14)
Yes, please. Yeah, please. Yeah, yeah.

Elsa Henderson (11:29)
Some of my colleagues and the leaders I worked with were able to engage in complex situations. So I'm talking about meetings where there were many stakeholders, where there were tensions and power dynamics, when there were contrasting views, like not even shared language. I think that that's kind of like a common theme is we can be.

Mike Jones (11:50)
Yeah,

yeah.

Elsa Henderson (11:51)
speaking

about something like developmental finance, but there might not even be a shared understanding of what that means. So some of my colleagues in these situations would be able to move through them and facilitate them with a lot of ease. And other people would just kind of stumble and try to reach for a script or a map to move through the situation. And I got curious about what it was that enabled my colleagues to engage in those situations.

And when I asked them, they would say, ⁓ I don't know, I just did it. Or I'm not sure, it just kinda happened. And I was very dissatisfied with those answers. So as this was happening, I was also noticing in my own experience that there were some situations where professionally and personally, again, complex situations, morally challenging situations where in some moments I would feel really overwhelmed and unable to really...

engage and kind of get into the situation in order to impact it. Whereas in other moments I would be able to engage effectively. And there was this kind of shift that happened in the way I was engaging that I didn't fully understand, but the best way I could describe it at the time was that I had more capacity. So I got very curious about that. And originally I was interested in how organizational practitioners, which is a way of saying,

Mike Jones (13:04)
Hmm.

Elsa Henderson (13:12)
social entrepreneurs, managers, consultants, people who are working with the practice of organization in a business context, how they navigated situations of dynamic complexity. But then I got into the literature and I learned that navigating is when you know where you're going before you depart and when you have a map, whereas wayfinding is when you don't have a map and you're

learning as you go and there's this need for kind of what we've been speaking to the adaptation and a different kind of perceptual agility

or some people call it a radical empiricism which is like a fancy fancy term right yeah so that so that's when I said okay this is about wayfinding and in dynamic complexity and then

Mike Jones (13:49)
Yeah, that's fancy. Yeah.

Elsa Henderson (14:01)
I got into the study, it was a phenomenological study, so rather than trying to prove a hypothesis, I was really interested in discovering practitioners' relationship to their own direct experience and kind of how they saw the world. So trying to get into their heads, so to speak, but beyond just getting into their heads.

kind of acknowledging some of the work that's been done on extended cognition that our mind might not just be in our head, really trying to get into their way of engaging with reality. So in the interviews, I was trying to kind of get into that more tacit dimension to understand how they were making sense in those complex and morally challenging situations. And that's what I got into and explored.

Mike Jones (14:48)
I like it. Definitely you mentioned again that capacity, they had that capacity to adapt and understand. And I think about organizations and leaders and challenging their capacity because we've got all this information, we've got all this need to be on things that do we really make space that capacity to then wayfine, to understand and adapt?

Elsa Henderson (14:55)
Yes.

Yes.

Mike Jones (15:18)
to what's going on, to really sense what's going on.

Elsa Henderson (15:20)
Yes, I mean, some people maybe are better at doing it than others, but I even noticed in myself how there's this kind of ingrained tendency to feel like I need to have a map before I do something rather than being with a situation that's unfolding in real time.

You know, it's interesting kind of exploring this, that it does come down to these different worldviews of how we engage with reality itself. Like, do we see reality as inherently in flux and changing, or do we see it as like, that there's a kind of ⁓ enduring static truth that we can relate to as we're, you know, engaging in strategy, engaging in decision making, so that it's, you you peel back the onion deep enough and there's our assumptions about reality itself.

Mike Jones (16:08)
Yeah, smile at them because I know there's someone I know that meticulously plans for everything. Yeah, plans and they want to have everything just scheduled out. And I even have clients come to me and like before I'm going to do something, they have you got a schedule, know, times that are going on? And I'm like, well, what do you want?

and they're looking at me surprised and they're like, don't you plan? I said, well, I plan up to the point of what I want to get out of it. How I get there is remaining very flexible because I could plan all I want, but you could have someone in that room that's going to throw something up that's really important. And I don't want to stifle that through the fact that I've got strict things that I want to do in quick steps.

Elsa Henderson (16:47)
Yes.

Mike Jones (16:57)
and timings.

Elsa Henderson (16:59)
It's

so true. mean, I'm thinking about, you know, planning agendas, planning for two-day convenings, and there's this tension, right, of how much...

Do we structure the time so people feel? I feel like there's something about planning and some people having a sense of value related to that. They're gonna get something out of the time as opposed to leaving pockets open for things to arise that they could have never anticipated. that tension, I think both are important and different. Navigation is needed sometimes. If we're gonna go on a trip, we need to have a map for where we're going unless we wanna have a meandering journey.

Mike Jones (17:23)
Mmm.

Elsa Henderson (17:36)
journey. And it was interesting in this study as well with some of the participants who had had very complex upbringings. Their approach was to plan.

was to plan. It wasn't that everybody identified as, ⁓ know, wayfinding is my primary approach. Many participants were very comfortable in complexity because they had grown up navigating different cultures or, you know, had gone through very complex and uncertain times as a young person or just were facing that in their work on a daily basis. But for a few people, you know, they really aimed for certainty. It was their approach

Mike Jones (17:48)
⁓ right.

Elsa Henderson (18:16)
to managing the complexity and the inherent kind of potential for anxiety that can come with it. So some people are planners, I suppose.

Mike Jones (18:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you've seen it. So how would you describe wayfinding to someone?

Elsa Henderson (18:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, so at a very high level, I would say it's how we chart a course using experiential and environmental cues. So bits of information from our environment and from our experiences with other people and also through our own, you know, our own body. People talk about a gut sense or they say they had a hunch. So I'd say that's kind of the broad, the broad definition. But the other piece that's interesting, you know,

Mike Jones (18:56)
Mm.

Elsa Henderson (19:04)
just to acknowledge that we engage in wayfinding on a daily basis. And I think designers speak about this and urban planners in terms of how they design roads or even a building so that it creates a pathway that we can wayfind through as a user or an occupant in that space. it's used in those domains.

It's used in strategy literature, kind of in the ways we've been speaking about, but there's another dimension in that this whole idea of wayfinding is going back thousands and thousands of years to indigenous cultures around the world. And ⁓ Wade Davis, who he was at UBC in Vancouver, he wrote a book called Wayfinders, and he kind of brought the term forward, at least into my awareness when I was younger, in terms of speaking about how I think

Mike Jones (19:39)
Okay

Elsa Henderson (19:54)
Indonesian wave finders really used their environment to navigate these really complex currents in the sea and how by being in relationship with their environment in an immediate way, they were able to chart these courses that other people using a map were kind of baffled by. So it's going back to a way of how we relate to our environments and how we move through the world.

Mike Jones (20:03)
Yeah.

Mmm. Yeah, yeah.

Elsa Henderson (20:21)
and in a broad sense.

Mike Jones (20:21)
Yeah.

Yes, I like that in a sense that they're taking time to look around and understand what's actually happening rather than relying on the map. And we always say the map is not the terrain.

Elsa Henderson (20:33)
Yes.

Absolutely. Yeah,

yeah. And the other piece around it is I think the kind of, you know, if there's the map and there's the terrain, there's also the understanding of where we've come from.

where we are right now and where we're going towards. there's an incredible scholar named Shelly Spiller and she's in New Zealand and she's grounded in the Maori tradition. She has ancestry there. So she's speaking about wayfinding from a Maori perspective, but she really highlights how.

you know, for some of us from other cultures, when we try to way find, we kind of see ourselves at the center and we focus on where we are right now and where we're trying to go. Whereas in other cultures, they pay attention to where they've come from, also in terms of the physical place they came from, but the kind of cultural values and wisdom they can draw upon also to help them get where they're going. And so I think there's this kind of other...

Mike Jones (21:34)
you

Elsa Henderson (21:36)
People speak about wayfinding as kind of weaving a path forward and you're drawing upon threads of your ancestry or your history or what you know, what's arising in the present and kind of possible future. So there's an element of time in how we chart our path that I think is another way to think about it.

Mike Jones (21:56)
Mm.

Yeah, I don't know who told me this and I can't remember. So if you're listening, apologies with this, but someone's telling me around Native Americans, there's a tribe, when they make a decision, they don't just make a decision about now and the present. They think about generations back and then so many generations forward about how this decision will play out. obviously when they're looking back about the decision, they're thinking about what

Elsa Henderson (22:18)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (22:25)
what stuff has come from the past that would inform that decision or maybe constrain the decision going forward. then thinking ahead is thinking, well, they don't want this decision to constrain possible futures.

Elsa Henderson (22:38)
Yes, that's so, really appreciate that you bring that up. I'm thinking that there's, you know, I'm in Canada as a person from the US, but with the Anishinaabe, the peoples of the Anishinaabe, they speak about something similar and they describe having a long view, like it's a different kind of view and way of looking. And in the Maori tradition, they speak about the eternal present, which has an element of what you were just.

highlighting in that they see the now as always being kind of influenced by aspects of the past and the future. That it's not just like the now isn't just a contained bubble, right? It's always being, there's always this interplay. yeah, that's, mean, yeah, there's different ways to define wayfinding and at the like most simple level, it's how we chart our course using environmental cues. And it's really interesting in this day and age where we're

Mike Jones (23:13)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elsa Henderson (23:33)
we have access to so much information, like you were highlighting earlier. So how do we find our way when there's all this information that we're encountering that's beyond our local domain, that is accessible at faster speeds than ever before? How do we discern what cues to pay attention to, to chart our course or to make our strategy?

Mike Jones (23:37)
Mmm, yeah, yeah.

Yes, and that's, because I remember thinking back, had, Kajotowicz talked about frictions, and one of the frictions he talked about is limited information. But if you think about now, we still do have limited information, there's always darkness, but we've got also too much information. And there's also, I think previously, the information that we got,

Elsa Henderson (24:16)
Yes.

Mike Jones (24:23)
you had a level of trust with it. And I know, especially in America, there was this inherent trust that we had with information until sort of the Vietnam War. And then I think that's when Americans started then thinking that trust with the...

sort of the government and information that came out centrally lost it. And think we, and that sort of spread around the rest of the Western world. And now it's, and it's interesting about how, how we take that information in the cues. How do we protect our cognition? How do we have that security of our cognition, of our orientation to make sense of what's going on to be able to way find? I think that's a really interesting thing.

Elsa Henderson (25:03)
Yes,

yes, that feels critical, that piece of it, just in terms of, you know, what...

Mike Jones (25:08)
Mm.

Elsa Henderson (25:11)
supports us to find our way and I just in my study because I don't think I mentioned this I was focused on the capabilities that supported practitioners to way find in dynamic complexity. So that's kind of like that was the research question but there's something with what you were just saying around like you know I don't know if it's a kind of protection or you know what mental space or kind of quality of presence I'm just riffing on what you said kind of enables us to engage

Mike Jones (25:23)
Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Elsa Henderson (25:40)
and in wayfinding in these volatile environments.

Mike Jones (25:44)
Yeah, because we end up being in sort of echo chambers and I suppose the technology then further replicates that information that you looked at. And it's hard to be objective because you want objective information but you only get in one source of information or one sort of size of it and it becomes quite difficult.

Elsa Henderson (25:50)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, I've got to break out of those echo chambers and listen to different kinds of news stations or somehow, you know, and then it's a lot to make sense of.

Mike Jones (26:13)
Yeah, But yeah,

it's even in organizations because leaders, they get in the echo chamber of just the board and the immediate people around them rather than going, well, yes, I trust what you're telling me, but that's your perspective. And how they then break away from that chamber to go to the edges of organization or to different organizations, to suppliers, to customers, to get that

Elsa Henderson (26:30)
Yes.

Mike Jones (26:41)
that information so they can sort of orientate it and synthesize to make sense of what's going on. So you said capabilities, what other capabilities sort of came up in your study that was useful for leaders? Or people?

Elsa Henderson (26:47)
critical. Yeah.

Yeah, just in terms

of capabilities, so just to kind of, you know, speak to what I mean by capabilities.

In this study, I was referring to how people draw upon their competence and what they know in novel and familiar situations. Because it was interesting, people use the term capacity and capability, and sometimes they use them synonymously. But capability, as I understand it, more of an, there's a kind of responsive dimension of how you act or how you respond in the moment, whereas capacity is kind of like your band.

Mike Jones (27:11)
⁓ okay, yeah.

Yes.

Elsa Henderson (27:34)
or your ability to hold and be with something, kind of like we speak about the room having a certain capacity for the amount of people it can host at a given time without being maxed out. So I just think that's interesting to look at those. So in the study, I did the interviews, I had focus groups which were rooted in a methodology called cooperative inquiry, which is basically convening practitioners as co-researchers, because I didn't want to have

Mike Jones (27:43)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elsa Henderson (28:03)
kind of an extractive approach to just gathering data from people and not having it be useful to them. So it was more collaborative in the approach. anyways, what came through the interviews and the focus groups is that there are these kind of themes in terms of what people were speaking about and those became capabilities of sorts. I suppose, you know, a lot of

Mike Jones (28:08)
Mm.

Elsa Henderson (28:24)
The way I'm understanding the capabilities in the study, and I'll say some of them in a moment, is that it's less about what people do specifically, and in a way it's more about what they pay attention to.

Mike Jones (28:37)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. That's good.

Elsa Henderson (28:39)
Because

I didn't, you know, there's the kind of like having a list of capabilities you need to perform that then I think can override what the person knows from their own experience. So I was hesitant to do that. So, I mean, I think there's great literature on dynamic capabilities and things like that, but.

Mike Jones (28:45)
Yeah

Elsa Henderson (28:55)
You know, was people's ability to work with gaps in information came up as a capability. So like what you were speaking to is friction of not having enough information, that there were scenarios where there wasn't a complete data set for a leader or they were missing information, but they had to kind of be able to work with those gaps and still find their way.

Mike Jones (29:02)
Hmm.

Elsa Henderson (29:19)
⁓ Also, they're just having that sense that something's missing or something's not quite right, like areas of misalignment in a situation with stakeholders feeling like something was a little off. Their ability to pick up on that was a capability that helped them find their way. That's an example of one of them that I thought was really interesting.

Mike Jones (29:32)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, and I think that's one that if you're about if we go too rigid and we're trying to just plan meticulously, that's where I think you lose that intuition because you're worried about, you know, are we on time? Are we achieving what we want to? And you're not then sitting back to look for not just what people are saying, how they're saying it, not what they're saying, you know.

Elsa Henderson (29:50)
Yeah.

Yes.

Mike Jones (30:10)
not what they're saying, what aren't they saying, even down to their body language when they're saying things, they're all really important, they all tell a story, but you've got to be intuitive to it because it gives so much depth to the situation.

Elsa Henderson (30:15)
Yes.

That's a, yeah, really appreciate that you're saying that, Mike, because that was kind of the tension in trying to create a conceptual framework is that, you know, each of the kind of so-called themes that are mapped across the framework are trying to invite people into that different quality of awareness or attention. So, you know, noticing the gaps.

sensing what's not quite right, you know, to use your language, maybe it's at a more intuitive level. Also in terms of their relationship to place, so their experience of their immediate environment and kind of their identity in that environment, how that is informing the possibilities they're seeing. So I think there's probably some like, we spoke about Oodaloo last time we had a chat, I think there's some synergies there, kind of like digging into their orientation. And then also what they're

Mike Jones (31:09)
Yeah.

Elsa Henderson (31:13)
what they're recognizing. So sometimes something will resonate with a practitioner or they'll go, yes, that feels true or there's something there and their ability to work with those cues. And some people speak about it as intuition, but I got really into this idea of aesthetics. Have you heard about aesthetics?

Mike Jones (31:33)
Okay.

No, I'm intrigued.

Elsa Henderson (31:36)
So it's kind of talking about, yes, I know people will

think about, like aesthetics has to do with something being beautiful, but there's all this literature on aesthetics as kind of the sensory or felt dimension of specifically in leadership. So we will have a felt sense of leaders, whether it's...

Mike Jones (31:44)
Yeah.

Elsa Henderson (32:00)
positive or negative that actually drives decisions often more than the rational logic.

Mike Jones (32:02)
Hmm.

Elsa Henderson (32:08)
And I mean, we see this at play in political campaigns and in the media, that there's often this kind of promise of something that's very appealing and a way that it's presented that influences people because it hits on the kind of felt experience of what they're longing for or their values. that's kind of a...

I've been reading more about that one of my examiners, Donna Ladkin, is deep in that world and has written incredible work, like looking at scenarios with Trump and Obama and Hillary Clinton and other kind of leaders and kind of unpacking them to show what was at play at that more tacit level. in what we were just speaking about, I think...

Mike Jones (32:45)
Yeah.

Elsa Henderson (32:51)
there is that tacit felt dimension that is kind of at play when we're finding our way or we're engaging in strategy that's also influencing what we're paying attention to.

Mike Jones (33:02)
Yes, I think that's really crucial. I love that idea because it screams to me about the populism and how they're sometimes fear but they're tapping into the inner desires which I suppose is what we're trying to do, we want to give people what they want but also then it prevents us from making decisions that are probably right for the whole that aren't popular.

Elsa Henderson (33:08)
Yes.

Yes.

Mike Jones (33:27)
And yeah, and I think that's like when you think about strategy in that sense, aesthetics, there's a lot of conversations about stuff we want to do, but we get distracted about stuff that we feel that we have to do because of the context we're in. You know, we must talk about this, well, we must have this in strategy because that's what people are expecting rather than thinking, well, what do we really need to look at? What else could you be looking at?

What's different? Yeah, I know. That's the right thing.

Elsa Henderson (33:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

It's curious how can both be taken into account, you know, or how do we, if there is this very appealing narrative that we kind of want to believe or we feel like it's gonna fix something, you know, if it's a strategy and we're relieved by that. I guess when you were speaking, was thinking back to earlier when we speaking about AI coming up with a strategy and how there can be this, you know, again, the word relief when we have a solution.

but how kind of outsourcing it or just having it be relieving may be a bit of a trap for us kind of thinking through what may be missing or what is actually needed, like that other layer you just highlighted.

Mike Jones (34:44)
Yes. I think that's always, always going to be a challenge, it? cause I say this because when we're doing strategy work with, with clients, there's almost this, I call it branding or marketing that corrupts, strategy work.

Elsa Henderson (34:59)
Interesting.

Mike Jones (35:03)
because there's the strategy that we need to do when we think about, but then there's this all expectation of this branding that comes out afterwards that we have to sell to people. And I'm thinking, well, that's not really the strategy, but there is this thing that they want this branding.

Elsa Henderson (35:14)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (35:20)
to go out because they have to make it look nice and you know normally it looks like a Greek villa with know vision on the top with the house and prior uses the pillars and then yeah, behavior is normally the floor for some reason. There we go.

Elsa Henderson (35:34)
That's interesting. So how do you work with that, that kind of expectation of people want, what people want to see at the end and where you sense the work needs to go?

Mike Jones (35:46)
Sometimes we're very tough, you know, I'm only 20, but I look a lot older because I have to fight this tension all the time. There's a lot of hair pulling from it. So I try and navigate it that way. I'm quite direct sometimes. I'll just be like, come on, let's not play these games, but we'll do something. We'll try and make something look nice for them afterwards.

But then it's a substance and I keep saying to him, it's like, there's always elements of it. And it's even in strategy, there always is a choice around deception. What we put out and what we actually do, that's a choice as well about, know, do we need to, do we need to be a bit deceptive around this? Cause we don't want certain people to know what we're truly doing.

Elsa Henderson (36:21)
Yes.

That's, yeah, the word maneuvering's coming to mind and just the kind of political and I guess moral dimension of it all. Yeah, yeah. And maybe the strategic approach of needing to carve a path forward and maybe other people not. I mean, I see this in work I've done with networks where funders will want to hear.

Mike Jones (36:42)
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Elsa Henderson (37:01)
about certain outcomes and they'll want to see certain objectives met. But when you bring together a group of stakeholders from different organizations, you don't really know what collaborations are going to arise. You don't know what insights are going to arise and how you, you know, kind of protect the space for those emergent activities to come through while also meeting the requirements of the funder so that the initiative can continue.

Mike Jones (37:17)
Mmm.

Elsa Henderson (37:31)
you. It's like feels like a kind of tightrope walking sometimes. Yeah.

Mike Jones (37:35)
Yes, and that's where it

comes in. think, know, that aesthetics really articulates that challenge that there always is something that we have to produce to, I'd say, appease someone. But I suppose it's because we're in this, we're still in this orthodoxy where, you know, we talk about wayfinding, about adaption, but sometimes that's not palatable for people.

Elsa Henderson (37:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Jones (38:01)
because they don't

believe in this maneuver like, know, this is intent that we want and you know, this is where we're going, the directionality we're facing, but we still got to adapt and sense and understand and pivot as we go through, as we learn new information. But trying to sell that to a board that want, you know, they want a financial projection and they want all this projection.

Elsa Henderson (38:21)
Yeah.

Yes.

Mike Jones (38:29)
and it all has to be accurate. And you're thinking, how can it be accurate? I'm still astounded now because I'm thinking I came from the military into civilian organisations. I'm like, how do these people believe this? It's just like, this is fairy tale, but they seem to believe it. And I'm like, wow, okay, this is interesting.

Elsa Henderson (38:47)
Very interesting. Yeah, I guess, you know, cause sometimes I even have those moments where I think, you know, if I was just thinking that I'm wayfinding through everything all the time, life would just feel like this fast moving river where maybe there aren't rocks to cling to. I mean, on the one hand, it's comforting cause it normalizes. I think as a stance, it normalizes.

Mike Jones (38:49)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah

Elsa Henderson (39:12)
complexity as a kind of inherent aspect of life. Like some aspects of life are just kind of unpredictable and multifaceted and in continual flux. And there are some dimensions of, I think, engaging with an organization that can be more like navigation. And so just to...

Mike Jones (39:32)
Yeah.

Elsa Henderson (39:34)
to think of them as, I don't know, tools or objects that you can pick up when you need them. But I think there's a trap in getting too stuck in one or the other. And it seems that the navigation is a much more, as an approach to strategy, saying, okay, we have this plan, this is where we're going, it is certain, we're gonna get there. Yeah, I heard about that a lot more than wayfinding. Yeah.

Mike Jones (39:53)
Hehehehehe

Yeah, yeah.

And there will be stuff, but I think that's where sometimes it can be overwhelming. It's like transformations. Now we're going for a big transformation, but when you really look at it, you're not going for a big transformation. There are these elements of your organization that are changing, but these elements of your organization aren't changing. Yeah. And I think it's maybe thinking about when we're doing this, we know certain things to be true.

Elsa Henderson (40:18)
Absolutely.

Mike Jones (40:26)
So they are true and there's certain things that we don't know to be true. And that's where we think in, need to take a more adaptive space for, we need to make sure that we were in that planning phase of getting diverse perspective and challenging what assumptions we're holding and what would we do under certain scenarios and what could be the possible futures. I think maybe make it feel less chaotic.

Elsa Henderson (40:50)
think that's really critical and it's reminding me just that.

You know, I think about Ralph Stacey and I'm pretty sure we had a chat about Ralph Stacey's work a little bit, just this idea that even in the midst of flux, are aspects of continuity, not in terms of sameness, but kind of themes that will repeat or certain qualities that will endure. And just like you're saying, that ability to have contact with those while you're engaging in change, I think it makes it more tolerable for people.

Mike Jones (41:04)
Mmm.

Yeah, definitely when they're clinging on to some sort of semiance of normal or status quo to make them feel less overwhelmed. I think it's good to show, know, break it down a bit more for them to show that it's not all going to be chaos.

Elsa Henderson (41:22)
Yeah.

Yes. ⁓

Yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking about for some reason, like relationships are coming to mind. Like I think just having relationships and conversations as a continuous theme in times of...

change, both, you know, even just us having a chat about, okay, these are the things we're noticing, it kind of helps create a kind of grounding in a world where a lot is changing. And I'm thinking about how in my study, but also in the work I do, helping people connect while change is happening can seem so helpful as a kind of

sense making process, but also space that feels continuous where there's a, it's like a touch point.

Mike Jones (42:23)
Yeah.

Elsa Henderson (42:24)
having those touch points where people can be engaged as the change is happening. Maybe it's an illusion that we get to have a say in it or that we're participating and it's not just happening to us. I don't know, but I'm just like something about what you were saying just now sparked that for me. I'm thinking about the changes that have happened, you know, during the pandemic and in the past few years and the role that conversations and bringing people together to connect and engage and reflecting on the change.

has had in being supportive.

Mike Jones (42:54)
Yes.

Yeah, I think that's really, really crucial. And it's also that awareness base being intuitive, like we talked about earlier, when changes happen or we're doing strategy and we're executing it, do we have those points to understand what's going on? Because it's said, we talk about wayfinding and strategy, but it seems more like

We have an idea, we throw out the boardroom door. It depends if you've got one of the big five consultancies, then it'd be a beautiful PowerPoint that's been thrown out. And then it's sort of like they're left to just do it and deal with it. And I think it's that relationship, that connection there I think is often missing, not only for comfort and to try and make sense of the shape.

Elsa Henderson (43:23)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (43:44)
to deal with a change, but it's also that makes sense of the change.

Elsa Henderson (43:48)
Yes, absolutely, because the change is gonna look, like when I think about any change in my life or any transformative experience or any kind of strategy I've tried to roll out, it always looks, feels, and sounds different in practice when it's actually coming into reality than it did in concept. And so those feedback loops to reflect on that and to understand how it's actually panning out is so critical.

Mike Jones (44:07)
Yes.

Yeah. And it, you know, it takes a different approach from organisations to how do we engage beyond a structured meeting? Yeah. How do you just make space for that? You know, even, even the point of people coming back and saying, well, I've, I've heard what you want and this is how I've interpreted it. And, you know, I can, I can see this, but I feel that

Elsa Henderson (44:27)
Yes.

Mike Jones (44:43)
if we do this, we're going to miss this opportunity and have that dialogue. it's, don't think it's, it's not chaos and saying that, you know, the, I suppose it comes back to our very earlier point at the start where we saying we've got a scaffold, but we're adapting to that scaffold. And I suppose that gives that adaptive space.

Elsa Henderson (44:55)
Yeah.

Yes. Yep. Yeah, I'm just thinking about, I mean, the opportunity for...

rolling that out in practice. mean, networks, we are working with that in a certain way, taking a network approach, but for more organizations to take that approach and how the scaffolding can be supported and adapted in a day in the life in an organization. Is it smaller meetings? Is it where people are just touching in? Is it a mechanism where people can share how an aspect of the strategy is impacting their team?

It's really interesting.

Mike Jones (45:33)
Definitely when you think about the capacity, come back to capacity with that point. And you think about, some of my clients, they're in the boards or they're directors. I have a special privilege that I can get in touch with them quite quickly because they're my clients and that's what they want from me. But I imagine that, I know because I've seen most of their calendars, I imagine that to have that

Elsa Henderson (45:38)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (46:00)
space you're looking well I'm gonna have to either be really pally with their PA to try and get them in or I have to wait like two weeks

And you think, I was just questioning if we had that capacity now to have that, you know, impromptu, well not it has to be impromptu, but that space is just like we're doing now, riffing and understanding.

Elsa Henderson (46:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, and hearing time, like you were speaking about capacity and I was hearing just time and calendars and things being planned far in advance and the scarcity of time, which is such a, you know, we're speaking about different ways of relating to time, you know, the kind of thinking back, thinking ahead, imagining how something's going to impact an ecosystem or an organization five years down the road. And then just this reality of a stacked calendar.

Mike Jones (46:40)
Yes.

Yeah.

Elsa Henderson (46:49)
Yeah,

I wonder if there's a way to kind of plan those pockets of time in advance. And then I think about how do we advocate for the value of those pockets of time.

Mike Jones (46:59)
Yeah, yeah, I don't know where the study came from or if it was true, but it could just be a fairy tale. I don't know, but I quite liked it. There was a company, think it was in Switzerland, on the meeting rooms they put, this is pre-COVID, they put scanners. So if you went into the meeting room, you scan your card and it obviously knew how much you were paid.

Elsa Henderson (47:00)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (47:26)
was a study they were doing and they had a meeting at the end of the meeting. It said, this is how much that meeting's cost. Can you justify that cost for what the meeting was? Apparently, and I don't know if it's true, if any listeners know this thing, please get in touch and show me the evidence. But apparently the meetings reduced.

Elsa Henderson (47:37)
my gosh.

Mike Jones (47:49)
by a significant amount over a very short period of time because people become more aware of what they were spending their time on.

Elsa Henderson (47:56)
It makes me curious about other areas in the organization, if there were impacts on people's well-being, if there was more creativity, like how, because I could imagine that going different ways.

Mike Jones (48:05)
Mmm, yeah, yeah.

Yes, it's fascinating. But I think it comes back to this way, wayfinding you talking about and this, this, like that capacity, that idea of capacity is, is really screaming at me. Definitely when we think about, you know, that different perception of time, looking backwards and looking forwards. Do we have the capacity to look forwards truly? And obviously when we talk about wayfinding strategy, it's really important.

Elsa Henderson (48:11)
don't know if that's name.

Yeah.

really important and that kind of there's a phrase I love and it's

anticipatory capacity. that, I feel like that touches on like your, what you're saying, it's from an academic called Ann Cunliffe, a management scholar, but she, know, that ability to sense ahead and kind of anticipate and to engage that as a sensibility of sorts when we're speaking about strategy or we're even in a meeting, just that different form of capacity.

Mike Jones (48:44)
Ooh, like it.

But I like it though, but that anticipatory capacity is almost like, it's like an assurance, isn't it? Because we don't really think about assurance until something happens and then we're glad we got it. But it's like that, anticipatory capacity means that I'm going to anticipate them, bit like I was talking as a soldier, that when something actually goes wrong, I get time back that I don't...

Elsa Henderson (49:16)
Yeah. Yep.

Yeah.

Mike Jones (49:28)
I don't know I'm getting the time back because they appreciate it in the moment because I'm using less cognitive energy and if you think about it in an organization terms, if they had that anticipate capacity and they thought about some of this stuff, either they could have mitigated it or just be cognitively prepared for it, that instead of going into full crisis mode where everything drops and then they're dealing with this stuff and more stuff mounting up behind them, that actually they could...

they could adapt through this quite not seamlessly, you know, more easier.

Elsa Henderson (50:03)
Yeah, more agility, could imagine. Just, yeah, hopefully less phased by it.

Mike Jones (50:08)
Yes, yeah, yeah. And then you think about the wellbeing aspect and stuff and then lead it on to the emotional regulation of leaders and people in the organisation. They can manage that regulation better, which means they can then have more capacity for analytical or creative thinking.

Elsa Henderson (50:29)
Absolutely. Yeah, I'm just thinking about how much time colleagues and I spend in meetings running through scenarios, you even before we're going to work with the group. We speak about it in terms of planning for emergence, which in a way is a kind of paradox, just, you know, that like just running through the potentials and sensing ahead and...

Mike Jones (50:44)
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Elsa Henderson (50:51)
both in terms of what could go wrong and it also feels important to say in terms of what possibilities are there that, you know, if we're in a frame like this and we're only looking at one pathway, we might not see a possibility that's over here on another, on the other side of where we're looking.

Mike Jones (50:57)


Yeah,

are you all around your team looking at who's attending you like, Dave's coming. ⁓ not Dave. he's a time sponge. He's gonna take some stuff up. How do we lock him in a cupboard? No, is that not what you do Dave?

Elsa Henderson (51:18)
Poor Dave.

my gosh.

no, I'm not. How do we, guess I'm always

curious, like how do we work, you know, with Dave-like people to shift the way they're engaging and just curious sometimes I find in teams people kind of get stuck in role like with, you know, like it's almost like because we anticipate Dave being the time sponge, he almost then becomes the time sponge. Like it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Very interesting team dynamics though, like how you make the most of those meetings going back.

Mike Jones (51:37)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elsa Henderson (51:53)
to your point and how to find, I think there's something with wayfinding as well. It's like that in the last bit of my PhD I got into, you know, this notion of phrenesis or practical wisdom and that kind of know-how that enables us to engage with the unexpected. I think this is coming full loop to what we've been speaking about with the anticipatory capacity, the preparation that then when a challenge comes in the moment, whether it's Dave the time sponge or like something, competitor,

coming out with a new offering that's threatening our main product if we're an organization, that there's a different kind of know-how that we can draw upon because we've prepared, because we've imagined different scenarios and that I think, you know, I like this idea of practical wisdom that it's an ability to work with the situation at hand in a way that is good for the greater whole or that's morally sound and you know, I

Mike Jones (52:31)
Yeah.

Elsa Henderson (52:49)
Aristotle was very interested in that and I do think that that that arises from practice.

Mike Jones (52:57)
Yes. I think, yeah, you imagine the cumicated effect of having that throughout your organization. And people can adapt in the moment more because we've been through that, we're planning and we've practiced it rather than it being a surprise where the organization goes into crisis and goes into crisis, then everything gets centralized, everything gets pushed up.

Elsa Henderson (52:58)
Yeah.

Yes.

Mike Jones (53:23)
And there is a time for that when there are going to be unexpected crises. And yes, we need to get a grip and do it, we don't want that to be the norm. Yeah.

Elsa Henderson (53:33)
No, depleting

as you say, it's a drain, it can be a shock. So yeah, it's...

It's exciting to think about just how organizations can create spaces for that practice spaces. And it's also making me think about education as well, like for managers. And my PhD was kind of in the realm of management learning. So how that can be brought into education and preparing leaders as well. Yeah.

Mike Jones (54:03)
Yes, yeah I think

making things less about what to do, more about how to think about the situations and putting them in situations where they can do it. we talk about, we usually think of outcome-based learning, so it's about scenarios under time pressure, yeah, and just thinking about how they deal with it.

Elsa Henderson (54:21)
Yeah.

absolute that kind of that practice those practices that kind of on your feet how do you respond hear the variables yeah

Mike Jones (54:34)
Yeah. And we're

not expecting the perfect answer. It's more about, you know, what did you, in that moment, what were the assumptions that you were thinking about? What was fact that you were using? It's really just getting them to really understand how they think and how they can adapt in certain situations.

Elsa Henderson (54:52)
That sounds like wayfinding.

Mike Jones (54:55)
Yeah does, yeah. It does. Probably. There you go. All into two.

Elsa Henderson (54:56)
Yeah.

There you go.

Learning as you go, knowing

as you go, and part of that is the kind of as you go piece I consider a loop. Like it's always a feedback loop. You're always in conversation with the situation and the other people around you and your felt experience. That was kind of a revelatory moment I had. It's wayfinding, it's a conversation. It's not just something you're putting onto reality. You're always in dialogue with what's unfolding. Yeah.

Mike Jones (55:11)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. think,

and forgive me if you get me wrong, but it's something that, you know, it's, anyone can do it. You know, it's just about building that confidence and that practice with it.

Elsa Henderson (55:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, we're doing it all

the time, whether we realize it or not. Like we find our way to the office, whether it's at home or outside of our home each day, we find our way in conversations. We learn as we go. any path that we've had to carve for ourselves, whether it's like a physical path or a path through a conversation, that is finding our way. That's wayfinding,

yeah.

Mike Jones (56:07)
awesome.

I really love the conversation tonight, it's been fascinating.

Elsa Henderson (56:11)
it's been,

it's been great, Mike. Thank you so much. Really glad to connect with you and thanks for the opportunity to be here.

Mike Jones (56:15)
That's... That's right.

Oh no, no, it's my pleasure. And quickly before I let you go and enjoy your day or night, I think what time is it? Day, day, it's night time for me. What would you like to leave our listeners to think about from this podcast?

Elsa Henderson (56:26)
Day, yeah.

I guess just, you know, if we ask ourselves...

How do we find our way? Whether it's in a meeting, perhaps you're about to go into a situation that you're a bit hesitant about or if you're nervous, just to ask the question, how do you find your way? How do I find my way? I think there's something just in asking that question where we can return to the agency we have to shape a path that isn't just predetermined and

hopefully feel

connected to a bit more capacity in how we go about engaging with whatever situation we're faced with. Yeah.

Mike Jones (57:14)
Yeah, yeah, I love that.

agencies, I've been playing a lot with recently about how do we get agency to enable action in organisations. So, I'm glad you said that. Yeah.

Elsa Henderson (57:27)
Yes, more

of that, more like, more of, you know, even for myself, just feeling like I'm engaged and shaping things in the course of a day rather than just feeling like the day's happening to me. That shift, yeah.

Mike Jones (57:40)
Yes, yes,

yeah, I like that. Awesome, thank you very much. It'll be an absolute pleasure and I will link your details onto the show so people want to reach out and learn more about wayfinding. That'd be great.

Elsa Henderson (57:44)
Thank you.

Great. Fantastic.

Mike Jones (57:56)
And for the listeners, if you've really enjoyed this show as much as I have, and please like, subscribe and share to your networks, they may get value from this as well. And also once again, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. It's been a pleasure having you on. Cool.

Elsa Henderson (58:09)
Thank you, thank you, Mike. Thank

you, Mike, thanks so much. Have a good evening.

Mike Jones (58:14)
and you. See you soon. Bye.

Elsa Henderson (58:16)
Bye.