Developing an Expedition Mindset
An expedition mindset is an approach to problem solving that can be applied to a wide range of workplace challenges. It emphasises planning, rapid prioritisation under pressure, with an emphasis on healthy team culture and wellbeing.
Why expeditions?
Expeditions provide an exemplary environment for personal growth. At a high level they require a well-functioning team to work towards a shared, high impact goal, often within severe constraints.
Expeditions share many similarities with work projects, albeit in a distilled, often-heightened form. These include diverse teams, spanning multiple disciplines, cultures, languages, mental models and ways of working, that need to align on shared goals. We often deal with high pressure situations that may last minutes or days, with high stakes outcomes, which on the expedition may be a matter of life and death.
We operate in an opaque information landscape, that encompasses geo-politics, misinformation, significant lost-in-translation issues, and nefarious intents. We're required to navigate unknown territories, with limited access to support structure, where “new rules” need to be learned and are prone to change. There are numerous stakeholders to manage, logistics that include many moving parts.
Figuring out how to elegantly solve these diverse challenges, often on the fly, is a skill that can apply to all facets of work and life. Once you've figured this out, almost everything else become far more manageable.
Developing an expedition mindset
A successful expedition is dependent on the adoption of an appropriate mindset that encompasses:
- Awareness of team member intents, to be considered for decision making
- Prioritisation and alignment of preferred outcomes,
- Extensive planning, the ability to rapidly “get up to speed” as new information comes to light,
- Risk assessments, updated as new information and situations emerge,
- Contingency planning, with plan a range of plan B’s, and discussions on potential outcomes,
- Flexibility, to adapt to new information and circumstances,
- Transparency, in how decisions are made,
- Self-sufficiency, in a highly resource constrained environment,
- Emphasis on problem solving for practical outcomes,
- Extensive team collaboration, where the shared goal is only achievable if everyone on the team is supported, so they can rise to the occasion.
As you can see, there are many items on this list that you might use on a regular work project.
However, consider the following notionally simple, yet effective example of how the expedition mindset shapes the team culture, building on the tenets of problem solving and transparency.
Early on in the expedition each member of the team is prompted to predict the outcome of everyday events and the degree of certainty they have with their prediction. Examples include predicting the cost of shared supplies, the time it will take to pass through the border, or changes in the weather. Outcomes and lessons learned are socialised within the team. As we start out predictions are often wildly inaccurate, but as this questioning mindset develops we gradually improve.
The purpose of constant prediction-making is to accelerate learning through constant questioning, break down barriers to communication which are often present in cross-cultural (and hierarchical) teams, and to reveal thought processes. This sets the team up to navigate ever more complex and challenging situations.
The Expedition Mindset Course
Studio D is pleased to announce the online Expedition Mindset Course, to share what we’ve learned from numerous expeditions in Afghanistan and beyond, so that it can be applied to a wide range of workplace challenges.
The impetus for this course is born from systematic reflection of the MAP expeditions, conversations with past attendees, and reflecting on the wider applicability of lessons learned. The course takes attendees through the planning of our summer 2025 expedition.
Spaces are limited.
Sign-up to the course here.