Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Working Conversations podcast, where we talk all things leadership, business communication, and the future of work. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

Think back to a time when you saw someone else seize an opportunity that you missed. Maybe they launched a product at the right time, or they pivoted their career after a new technology arrived, and you might have thought, oh, why didn't I see that coming? Why didn't I jump onto that opportunity? Well, here's the truth. Most of us aren't trained to look for what's newly possible after a change occurs. We either focus on what we've always done or we feel overwhelmed by all of the unknowns. But there's a better way, a way to think about it called the adjacent possible that helps you scan the landscape for new opportunities as they emerge.

In this episode, we're going to unpack the fascinating idea of the adjacent possible, where it comes from, why it matters, and most importantly, how you can use it to become better at anticipating what's next in your work and your life. Let's put a very practical example to this so that you can really understand the magnitude of what's possible when viewing events through the lens of the adjacent possible. So picture this. It's the 1400s, and Gutenberg invents the printing press. Now, right there in and of itself, that is a magnificent and amazing invention. But it's not just about the printing press. It's about what becomes possible as a result of the printing press. Suddenly, books can be mass produced.

Remember, prior to the printing press, people had to hand copy books in order to have multiple copies of them. Now, here's the kicker. The real breakthrough in Gutenberg's printing press isn't just the machine. It's what the machine made possible. That's the adjacent possible. What becomes available to us, what becomes possible after something changes, Whether it's a positive change like a new technology like the printing press, whether it's a negative change like the COVID 19 pandemic. Now back to Gutenberg. Once books became cheaper and more available because of mass production, then what became possible next? Mass literacy.

You see, before the printing press, people who knew how to read were select individuals. They were by and large part of the clergy or part of the upper class. But most people did not know how to read prior to the printing press. There just wasn't material available to read, so it wasn't a skill that was readily useful. But again, once books became cheap and available, then mass literacy emerged. That was not possible. Before, there were lots of books available and lots of other reading material available. So mass literacy then in turn led to the spread of new political ideas, new scientific discoveries, religious reformations, and eventually new centuries later, like literally hundreds of years later.

The Internet age, when you track it from what became possible as a result of the printing press. I mean, we wouldn't have words on the screen now if we didn't first have words on the page. You see where this is going? And no one standing next to Gutenberg could have predicted TikTok influencers or Wikipedia pages. But here's the thing. Each new change unlocked adjacent possibilities that weren't available before. And that is exactly what we're talking about today. Okay, so let's back this up a little bit and explain where this all came from. So the phrase adjacent possible comes from the work of Stuart Kaufman.

Now, Kaufman is a theoretical biologist and a complexity scientist. He studies the really, really complicated things. And Kaufman was trying to explain how biological evolution unfolds. So his key insight, at any moment, a living system like a single cell or an organism has certain next steps that become possible, but only because of what's already in place. So think of it like once early life forms developed a primitive ability to do something like process oxygen, they didn't just get better at breathing, they opened the door to entirely new life forms and environmental adaptations. Each innovation expanded the space of what was possible.

Next. Fascinating, fascinating. Steven Johnson, the author of Where Good Ideas Come from, which incidentally is where I first heard about the adjacent possible. Steven Johnson popularized Kaufman's idea for a wider audience, arguing that the adjacent possible explains not just biology and highly scientific concepts, but also creativity, innovation and progress in general. It's the idea that when one thing changes, it entirely reshapes the landscape, sometimes in a tiny little miniscule way, but it reshapes the landscape of what's possible.

Next, here's where it gets really interesting for us. This isn't just a concept for scientists or historians. It's a practical tool that we can all use to anticipate the future, especially in today's fast changing workplaces. Now let's turn this around and look at how the adjacent possible applies to the world of work. Now, when I first teach leaders how to anticipate the future, usually in my keynote called Expect the Unexpected, one of the first things that I emphasize is you cannot predict the future.

Let me say that again for emphasis. You cannot predict the future. None of us have an accurate crystal ball that we can look into and see exactly what's going to happen next. What we can do, however, is we can map out a range of plausible futures based on what's happening right now. And that is exactly where the adjacent possible becomes incredibly powerful. It's a lens that helps you spot new possibilities that are created by recent changes, even if you can't see exactly what's going to happen, and even if you can't see or predict all of the downstream effects of what's going to change based on a change that recently happened. So here are a few examples AI tools and you've heard me talk about artificial intelligence lots of times on this podcast before a few years ago we developed large language models like ChatGPT. That one innovation opened the adjacent space of AI generated design, AI tutoring, legal brief drafting, automated customer support.

And if you listened to the episode I did just a couple of Weeks ago, episode 215 on Agentic AI agents that can act on our behalf. But before large language models, these possibilities weren't even on the table. They were just like science fiction. They weren't real. We couldn't even anticipate them. I mean, we could again, think of them like a flying car, like George Jetson on the Jetsons, if you're of a certain age and can remember the Jetsons.

But before those large language models, these ideas, they just weren't even something that we thought were tangible. But because of the adjacent possible, it doesn't take long to move into that space. Okay, let's look at another example. Remote work. Now, I've been studying remote work since the late 1990s, so obviously that was possible, but it wasn't adopted in mass scale. It was the pandemic that forced companies into remote work and almost overnight. But once that remote work model was in place in the larger scale, then hybrid work models became mainstream, even long after the pandemic was over. So the adjacent possible also expanded into global hiring as a result of the pandemic, with people working from anywhere.

It also gave us more and deeper ways of doing asynchronous clients collaboration with different with people in different parts of the world, different time zones, working effectively together and more effectively together because I mean, you've probably heard me made this make this example before. But Microsoft Teams, which at the time of the pandemic was not Microsoft Teams, it was Skype and MS chat, and those two things fused together with some bubble gum and duct tape, eventually became the far more robust platform that we know today as Microsoft Teams, which then was driven by the need to do more asynchronous collaboration because we could have people working from anywhere and we needed people to work from home just to prevent the spread of the pandemic. Okay. It also led to new productivity software, not just Microsoft Teams, but lots and lots of other platforms doing not only remote collaboration, but other kinds of things as well. And even the rise of digital nomads, which you may have heard me talk about here on the podcast as well, that came possible as a result of these other changes that came before it. That is, again, the adjacent possible. Now, you'll notice the pattern. One change doesn't necessarily lead to one outcome.

It opens up a whole plethora, a whole menu of adjacent possibilities, some of which we can see and some of which will emerge only over time, some of which we can see and then fail, and some of which we can see, and they go on to be highly successful. Okay, so let's get more into the concrete nuts and bolts of this. How can you, as a leader or as a professional in your field, use this concept to stay ahead of the change? Well, again, I talk about this extensively in my keynote called Expect the Unexpected. But I want to give you three practical strategies that you can use today that will help you take advantage of the adjacent possible. So the first thing to do is to pause and brainstorm after there's a change. Whenever something shifts, most of us get immediately reactive. So when the next thing shifts in your world, whether it's a new technology, a new competitor, a new government regulation, or the lack of a government regulation, take some time to first pause. Just be centered.

You might use some of the brain wave technologies that I've talked about in past episodes to get your brain into a place where it can be creative and generative. You might take a walk in the woods. There's all kinds of ways for you to just pause and get centered with yourself, and then do some brainstorming. Ask yourself from that place of calm centeredness, not from that place of reaction and emotional response, but from that place of calm centeredness where your deep wisdom lies. Ask yourself what's possible now that wasn't possible before. So again, don't just react to the obvious impact. Look for possibilities that might reshape your work or your industry. And remember, they don't have to be massive and huge.

Sometimes it is the very small and incremental changes that then lead to changes of their own. Because every new change, even if it's tiny and minuscule is going to have its own set of adjacent possibilities, things that are now possible that weren't possible prior to that even small, tiny change. Okay, so that is the first practical application of the adjacent possible. When something changes, pause, get centered, tap into your deep wisdom, and then do some brainstorming.

The second strategy that you can follow to make good use of the adjacent possible is to look across industries. So often the adjacent possible is easier to spot and use by borrowing ideas from other fields. And I'll give you a couple of examples here. One of them is that healthcare systems have adopted mobile app designs inspired by consumer technology.

Financial services have borrowed from social media platforms to improve their own user engagement. I've seen the oil and gas industry borrow from the medical field, looking at how fluids move through our bodies and then using the examples from the natural world to inform how they are going to move oil and gas through the world in a way that is safe and contained. So don't just look inwards, look sideways, look lots of different places. Okay, so that is the second way that you can strategically use the adjacent possible. Right now, when something changes, look across industries. When you are looking for ways to change, look across industries and see if there are some models that you can borrow from other industries that can inform what's happening in your world, in your industry. The third thing you can do is to train your team to think in adjacency.

So I have a whole workshop on this that I can absolutely bring to your organization. But here's what you can do. In the meantime, you can encourage your team not to fixate on the single next big thing. And really, that's what especially what people want to do is they want to spot the next big trend, they want to spot the next big evolution or change. You know, they want to bring the next big iPhone to the world. But when you think about how the iPhone came to be in the world, or how the ipod came to be in the world, there were plenty of MP3 players prior to the ipod. And so when we look at that incremental change, we get eventually some really amazing and cool technologies that do revolutionize the industry. But prior to that, there were incremental changes that were happening.

So again, don't ask your team to develop the next big thing. Instead, make it a habit to get your team thinking, what are the new doors that just opened? What small changes can we put in place? Because this is going to create a culture of adaptive thinking where people stay more alert and Agile to shifts in the marketplace, and they're more able to scan the environment and, and the marketplace for those small opportunities that are going to create and pave the way to new, bigger things over time. But it's going to happen incrementally. So they're going to be able to scan for more opportunities instead of just threats. And the other thing they'll be able to do is when they do see that threat, they will be able to much more easily position it as an opportunity. Because as that threat comes along, now we are confronted with that, now we say, okay, what becomes possible in the face of this? What's available to us now that wasn't before. So that's the third thing that you can do. The third strategic thing you can do with the adjacent possible is train your team to think in adjacency.

And by all means, if you want me to come in and train your team, I would love to. I've got a great workshop on this. Okay, now let's circle back to Gutenberg and the printing press. The invention was transformative in and of itself, yes, of course. But the real power of the printing press was in unlocking a world of possibilities that absolutely no one could have predicted at the time. Mass literacy, new forms of knowledge sharing, political revolutions, scientific revolutions, cultural revolutions, religious revolutions, all followed from that single breakthrough. Now, the lesson for us today and how we can use the adjacent possible. Well, we can't predict the future with any sense of certainty, but we can become better at noticing.

We can become better at noticing through the lens of the adjacent possible. And what do we notice? Well, new doors open when something changes. And this is how we stay adaptable, this is how we stay resilient, and this is how we stay ready for whatever next. Now, going back to that question I asked at the top of the podcast, thinking back about a time when you saw someone else seize an opportunity that you missed, maybe they launched that product right at the right time, right after a big market shift, or maybe they pivoted their career when generative AI or some new technology came along. Well, now you have a better shot at doing that as well. Again, quick recap how you can use the adjacent possible. Pause. Get centered in your wisdom, don't be reactive, but pause after a change and then do some brainstorming.

Second, look across industries, use the metaphors of other industries and the actual applications of other industries to apply back to your own field to see what might be possible that you hadn't yet thought of. And then third, train your team to think in terms of adjacency instead of big breakthroughs. So here's your call to action. Think about one recent change in your work world or your industry. You could even apply this to your personal life. So maybe it's a new tool, a new shift in your team structure, a new organizational design that your company rolled out, or a new customer trend. Or even if you want to apply it to your personal life, someone new that you met recently and then spend just five minutes brainstorming what's now possible that wasn't possible before. If you've heard about me talking, if you've heard me talk about networking, you know that even one new person in your network leads to like all of the people in their network.

So even just making a new friend in your neighborhood leads to a whole bunch of adjacent possibilities that weren't possible before because now you have that person in your network. So that's the adjacent possible in action. And it's one of the best tools that you can use for anticipating the future. All right, Again, I cover this in greater depth in my keynote called Expect the How to See the Future Coming Now. You know, we don't really see the future coming, but we see what's possible as a result of something that's already happened. And then we can start to make our own future possible or make whatever is next possible. This is just one of my favorite concepts of all times and I'm so excited to share it with you on this podcast. And of course, share it in the Expect the Unexpected keynote.

So thanks so much for tuning in to this episode. I will see you next week where we're going to keep exploring what it really takes to thrive in the future of work. So until then, stay curious, stay informed, and stay ahead of the curve. And again, tune in next week and if you learned something or you simply enjoy this content, please subscribe to my channel on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast on your podcast player of platform of choice and follow me over on social media. These are all amazing and easy ways for you to consume this content and support my work. Doesn't even cost you a dime. You'll find links to my social media over on the show notes page janelanderson.com/216 episode 216. So until next time, my friends, keep thriving and keep working toward the future that we all want and deserve.

Until then, be well.