In preparing for my walk, I mapped the route all the way from Melbourne to Sydney and planned where I would stop and when. As it turned out, factors like the wind and rain, and even my mood (who knew?) didn’t care about my well-intentioned plans.

Planning beyond a few days ahead became pointless, and every so often I found myself at a coffee shop with maps spread out on the table and my walking paraphernalia scattered around me. It was only a matter of time before a conversation started.

“Oh, yeah… you should be fine”, I was told by helpful locals after showing them my route to the next town. At other times they would draw a line on my map and in a tone of sharing a secret tell me about a shortcut: “You will see a little dirt road (before / after) a (big tree / intersection), turn there.” The wisdom of the locals took me along routes that I didn’t know existed.

If I was ever to get to the figurative destination that my signposts were leading, it was clear I would benefit from this type of wisdom. To capture it, I asked people who are dispersed around the world to share their local knowledge in the fields of design, management, and technology.

You can meet our 22 Signpost locals in Appendix B: Meet the locals.

These chats were incredibly useful as well as marked a crucial point in time when I would let my iguana loose to roam in the wild, to be challenged, and continue to evolve in other ‘islands’.

This process also allowed me to experience firsthand how machines are likely to support, rather than substitute for humans in the future. Where algorithms behind search engines were exceptional in finding relevant research on the many topics covered by the signposts (the known trails), the humans I interviewed, our locals, were extremely helpful in identifying opportunities to extend paths. A good example of combining the processing and storage systems of a machine with the human cognitive capability to solve fuzzy and uncertain problems [79].

To avoid overwhelming our locals with all the signposts, I chose to probe into only seven, the ones that I thought were the most representative. These were:

  • Signpost 1: Exchanging ideas too early and too often hinders their diversity and potential to innovate.

  • Signpost 2: The workplace should promote absurdity.

  • Signpost 4: Adversities are worth keeping, even introduced, in the workplace to promote innovation.

  • Signpost 6: Boredom can become a useful thinking tool.

  • Signpost 11: The process of designing a workplace can get in the way of creating an environment which meets its purpose.

  • Signpost 25: Work and tasks are different yet interconnected.

  • Signpost 30: The pursuit of efficiencies might strip work of its meaning.

These were so elusive that I not only asked for directions to get there, but also if it was a good idea to follow them at all. The locals helped me calibrate the selected signposts by indicating the direction they would take compared to the direction the signpost pointed. I gave them four options, Fig. 30.1.

Fig. 30.1
figure 1

Calibration of the signpost scale

Full size image

If they said:

  1. 1)

    Go there: meant they agreed with the premise of the signpost and felt it worthwhile to continue exploring in that direction.

  2. 2)

    Head that way, but not there: something along the lines of “yes, but…”, an agreement with an objection that results in a different destination.

  3. 3)

    Ignore it: the premise is irrelevant, or should not be thought about in that way.

  4. 4)

    Go in the opposite direction: disagreement with the premise and a suggestion to go the opposite way.