Who's Steering?
Where are you drifting, and where do you actually want to steer?
🧭 Welcome to Weekly Wandering, a short digest where I share a few signals, ideas, and articles at the intersection of innovation, change, and technology. Each week, I curate a handful of perspectives to explore one question and help make sense of the forces reshaping organizations and the work of those trying to build the future more thoughtfully.
A Prompt for the Week 💭
Where are you drifting, and where do you actually want to steer?
The acceleration era has a default setting: drift. This week's reads share a quiet insistence that the future isn't something that happens out of nowhere; it is up to us to steer it where we want it to go. It depends on what we stand for, what we allow ourselves to imagine, how we define our role, and how we evolve our decision-making frameworks. We have the agency to shape desirable futures, but it requires more courage, clarity, and vision than most organizations are currently building for.
A great conversation between the technology ethicist Tristan Harris, co-Founder of Center for Humane Technology, and leading ecologist Nate Hagens. Expanding on the themes covered in the new documentary The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, where Tristan is featured, he invites us to look at AI risks clearly without surrendering to despair. Dramatic economic and psychological consequences are already unfolding, but looking into governance, design, and individual action, he makes the case that it's still possible to regain the power to steer toward safer technological futures.
📌 Tobias Revell: Design Futures in Infrastructure
This presentation for the OECD by Tobias Revell, Associate & Design Futures Lead at Arup Foresight, demonstrates how imagination, evidence, and rigour can work together to inform strategy. Presenting concrete case studies from flood resilience to health and major global events, he showcases how futures work can engage stakeholders, explore alternative pathways, and support better decision-making.
📌 Becoming an AI Augmented Enterprise - Roger L. Martin
In one of his recent posts, Professor Roger Martin, a strategy advisor and renowned co-author of the seminal book Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works, draws a sharp distinction between AI enterprises (companies whose product is AI) and AI-augmented enterprises (everyone else). His central argument is that most companies should focus on using AI to enhance their existing strategic choices, rather than chasing AI-driven substitution. A good read for any leaders looking for a thorough framework to embed AI throughout their strategy and value chain.
Even when enterprises make the right choices about where AI should augment the enterprise and invest in augmenting their people, many initiatives stall because the surrounding management systems remain unchanged. AI tools alone do not transform an organization; they must be embedded in systems that allow people to rely on them and incorporate them into everyday work.
📌 Research Launch: Design 2035 | IDI Institute of Designers in Ireland
This research maps the future of design across enterprise, public services, education, and government in Ireland, but its conclusions extend beyond its geography. The core argument is both an opportunity and a warning: design has an outsized role to play in navigating what comes next, but that role is not guaranteed. It has to be claimed. The practitioners who will matter are the ones who have expanded how they see themselves — systems thinkers, strategic advisors, ethical actors, cross-sector collaborators. An accessible report calling for professional reinvention, arriving at exactly the right moment.
Design is no longer only about craft or aesthetics. Its power lies in acting as a powerful tool in the innovation toolkit, supporting C-suite change to imagine the possible. Designers help organisations plan, innovate, and deliver impact that matters—from public services to sustainable business models. Great design has always involved thinking ahead, but today, strategy is central to the designer’s role. The ability to apply design thinking and foresight delivers real strategic value across industries. In a world transformed by AI and rapid change, design will be a core enabler of the futures we want to create.
🎁 BONUS: How to Design a Company That AI Can’t Outpace - SXSW
Another good find among this year's talks at SXSW. Using concepts from Systems Thinking, Ian Beacraft from Signal and Cipher invites us to change our minds about building AI-native organizations. We need to embrace the "organizational architect" mindset and shift our focus from doing the work to designing the work.
Thanks for reading. See you next week for another wandering through ideas shaping change, innovation, and technology.
