Creating Our Future with Organizations by Design

I was in the grocery store earlier today, on a mission to find potato starch. I’d never bought it before, so I had no idea where to look.  As I stood there, scanning the overhead signs for a clue, another shopper sighed beside me and said, “I can’t find my thing either.”  “What are you looking for?” I asked.   “Potato starch, for me.” I added.  “You know, I think it might be down by the flour,” she said. So I wandered down that aisle, scanning the shelves.  I found potato flour, I found cornstarch—but no potato starch. For a moment, I debated buying the potato flour instead, but a quick Google search told me it wasn’t the same thing. I settled on cornstarch and made my way to the checkout line.  All along the way, people had been helping me look. Shoppers, strangers, all chiming in with ideas and encouragement. None of us had found it, but there was this shared sense of determination, a collective effort in something as small as tracking down an ingr...