Design the intervention to change itself.
Adaptivity is the inherent ability of an intervention to modify itself in response to learning, systemic pressure and opportunities as the landscape changes.
OBSERVE
ADJUST
Adaptivity has to be designed into the intervention.
Click each dimension to see what it requires operationally.
Every cycle should change the next one.
When the foment does not hold
Discard or redesign, update the maps and start again with a better reading of resistance or harm.
When the response is promising
Reinforce what appears to be working, but keep sensing for distributional effects and changing conditions.
Distribute action. Curate learning.
Semi-autonomous teams can work different practices and interaction spaces, including actors beyond the landscape’s geographic edge. The mosaic is held together by shared sensing and cross-learning, not by making every team identical.
Distribution multiplies opportunities for emergence and reduces exposure to one failure. Without a learning function, however, it simply produces fragmented projects.
Learning needs clear decision rights, resources and a safe operating space.
Clarify which changes can be made within delegated authority, which require approval, and how activities, budgets, indicators, team roles or propositions can be revised through agreed governance and change-control arrangements.
Hold time and resources in reserve for emerging opportunities, unexpected pressure and redesign.
Use narrative and qualitative evidence alongside planned indicators, and attend to absence and weak signals.
Create a deliberative team space in which junior, local and dissenting interpretations can alter the shared read.
Record what was believed, what happened, what changed and why. This turns adaptation into accountable learning.
Schedule moments when accumulated evidence can correct the Alternative Heading rather than only the route towards it.
Continue through connected concepts
Use bounded propositions to generate information through action.
→Connect system response to accountable evidence and decisions.
→Build the relational vehicle capable of learning and changing.
→Correct the bearing when accumulated evidence says it is wrong.
→Read the full Adaptivity chapter.
The full reading edition carries the complete argument, examples, references and methodological detail behind this page.
