Think like a NOMAD
Questions are the fuel that feeds your intuition
When you prioritize learning and curiosity satisfaction over climbing any specific ladder you often end up with a career that looks….unfocused. It certainly isn’t a line Waze would draw on map and call “the most direct route.”
But if you follow it carefully—if you trust what it’s pulling you toward—you start to realize it isn’t random.
It’s a different kind of path.
The kind that follows signals.
The kind that traces problems back to their roots.
The kind that seeks out the source, not the symptoms.
Like the nomads I introduced in my last post,
I wasn’t moving for the sake of moving.
I was sensing.
I was following the fractures that others overlooked.
I was going to the source so I could bring something real back.
Something useful.
Something needed.
It might not be the line Waze would draw.
But it’s the line that mattered.
From the outside, my pivot into data analytics, process analysis, and business systems work looked random.
Why would someone who built a career in HR suddenly veer into spreadsheets, flowcharts, and software backends?
But it wasn’t random.
It was the result of observation.
I noticed that the dashboards we used didn’t tell us what we needed to know.
I noticed that the technology meant to support people often made our work harder, not easier.
I noticed the cracks.
And I realized there was a missing bridge—a missing translation between what people needed and what the technology assumed.
So I moved.
Not because I had every answer.
Not because I had the full map drawn.
Because I could feel where something important was being lost.
And I trusted that feeling enough to follow it.
I didn’t set out to become a data analyst.
I set out to become a translator.
Someone who could connect the human side of work with the technical systems shaping it.
Someone who could notice where the systems failed to meet the people they were supposed to serve.
I didn’t have a detailed map when I started moving.
I just had a direction.
A feeling.
A need I couldn’t unsee once I noticed it.
Training the Mind to Feel the Shift
My very favorite Foundation Principle from my time at The Container Store (before they got watered down into their current vanilla corporate iteration) was “Intuition does not come to an untrained mind.”
It sounds simple.
But it explains almost everything about how real discernment works.
We don’t know what we don’t know.
(Thank you, Luft and Ingham for your Johari window framework!)
And the only way to shrink that blindspot is to explore.
But exploration isn’t chaos.
You don’t grab at random.
You don’t wander aimlessly.
We don’t wake up knowing how to find the cracks.
We don’t just “trust our gut” and stumble into brilliance.
We train ourselves.
We listen.
We move toward what hums, even if we don't have a name for it yet.
We follow the signals that feel too quiet, too soft, too uncertain to count as “proof”—but that still pull at us.
We learn to sense before we understand.
You pay attention to the tensions, the cracks, the places that feel quietly off.
You follow the questions that feel a little dangerous to ask. We learn to recognize the fractures before they widen into collapse.
And eventually, intuition stops feeling like guesswork.
It starts feeling like a compass.
And slowly, patiently, you build a mind that doesn’t just think it senses.
Then you don’t just wait for the future to reveal itself.
You learn to feel when it’s already starting to change.
Learning to Move with Meaning
This is what separates those who drift from those who navigate.
The future won’t belong to the ones who stand still waiting for clear answers.
The future won't belong to the ones who move the fastest.
The future won't belong to the ones who master a single system so well they can’t imagine anything outside of it.
It will belong to the ones who can sense where the old patterns are breaking,
where new possibilities are emerging,
and who are willing to move before the path is fully drawn.
It will belong to the ones who can feel when meaning is shifting.
Who know how to follow it.
Who know how to bring something real back from the journey.
That’s the heart of the NOMAD mindset.
It’s not about wandering or random movement.
It’s about sensing, listening, collecting.
It’s about moving with MEANING.
The NOMAD Compass
When GPS tries to send you down a road that’s closed, when the old maps crumble and are missing the information you need, you don’t need better directions. You need a better way of sensing, of increasing and accessing what you know. Last week I talked about how mastery is no longer the most valuable skill.
This is a bit deeper dive into the way of sensing I introduced:
N – Notice assumptions
O – Observe reality
M – Make friends
A – Ask to validate
D – Dip in
The NOMAD Compass isn’t a checklist. It’s not about finding faster shortcuts.
It’s a way of training your mind, and your intuition, to see what others miss.
It’s how you start finding new ground before the rest of the world realizes the old ground is giving way.
It’s a way of learning to navigate uncertainty with curiosity, courage, and care.
A way of learning to build when the next version of the world is still drawing itself.
N - Notice Assumptions
What frameworks guide your thinking?
What feels so natural no one even thinks to question it? Or better, where do people get scorned for asking questions?
What boundaries and limitations do you believe because they’re familiar, not because they’re true? What would it take for the thing you believe to NOT be true?
Where does curiosity feel a little foolish—or even dangerous? If a question feels stupid, dangerous, or disloyal to ask, you’re near something important.
Those are the first clues that something important is hiding.
O - Observe Reality
Not what’s written down.
Not what’s promised.
What actually happens.
Observe where the words and the outcomes quietly drift apart, where the story and the system that supports it don’t match. Create a list of WHY that might be true….not one diagnosis, a series of potentials that could all be true so you can test and validate them. Don't rush to conclusions. Stay open. Stay curious.
This is the change to draw diagrams if you’re feeling visual….how do we say a process works? How does a process actually work? Where do people add work arounds? Where does it flow between people, systems, and functions? Who fixes it if it breaks? Who cares if it breaks? Who uses the outputs? Where does it get the inputs?
The gaps aren't just accidents. They're invitations to understand deeper. And they’re often bridges waiting to happen.
M - Make Friends
Not just contacts.
Not just connections.
Friends.
Not just the easy and obvious friends, the people who sit next to you, do your same job, or work in your same function. Go make friends in the other functions. Understand how marketing looks at a problem, or what IT is excited about building, or what’s on finance’s wish list. Learn what each of those functions knows and understands about your own.
Trust expands your map.
Other people's stories, frustrations, and insights show you what you can't see from where you're standing.
Making friends isn’t just about empathy.
It’s how you see what's coming before the official announcements.
When you're connected to the people building, you hear the hum of change long before it reaches the org chart.
A - Ask to Validate
Test what you think you know, push at potential illusions.
Ask your friends how they experience it. Probe for what you might be missing. Be EASY TO ARGUE WITH.
Be ready to be wrong, be grateful when you are.
Be ready to be surprised.
Every question pulls hidden assumptions into the light. Every time you ask, you’re not just gathering answers and feeding your intuition, you’re co-creating a more complete map.
After all, there’s a reason Waze validates it’s crowd-sourced traffic reports. Maps built in motion, have to be corrected in motion too.
D - Dip In
You don't have to wait until you're certain.
You don't have to wait until you're an expert.
You don't even have to wait until you're officially "invited."
Move.
Engage.
Volunteer for projects that stretch you.
Ask to sit in on meetings outside your usual lane.
Show up for webinars not built for your function, but built for tools that support others.
Understanding the tools that help other functions gives you ideas of what could be possible for your own.
Borrow extensively. In business, it’s called benchmarking, not plagiarism….. and it often looks like genius.
Watch how the work flows outside your silo.
Notice where the processes are smoother—and where they're breaking down.
Notice what solutions feel surprisingly portable.
Every time you dip in, you expand your sense of how the system really works.
Every time you engage, you refine your ability to read what’s shifting before it becomes visible on a dashboard.
You don't need a full plan.
You draw the map by moving.
Trust Your Signals
I'm usually all about the data, so it might sound strange to hear me say this:
Trust your gut.
But those feelings are data.
Tightness.
Curiosity.
Resistance.
They aren’t distractions.
They aren’t detours.
They are directionality.
If a question feels risky, lean closer.
If something feels a little off but you can't name it yet, stay with it.
If a decision feels too neat and clean to be real, start asking better questions.
Your body often knows what your mind hasn’t made sense of yet. It notices thin ice before it’s marked with a sign warning of the danger.
Train yourself to listen. Train yourself to trust. The validation inherent in this model is designed to help you learn to separate noise from data, truth from easy fiction.
Why We Ask Questions That Have No Answers Yet
It might feel pointless.
It might feel foolish.
It’s uncomfortable, and vulnerable, and can often make you feel like the biggest pain in the patootie.
But the questions that don’t have ready answers are often the ones that need to be asked the most.
They live at the edges of what’s known.
They live where the system is too scared—or too brittle—to look.
These questions live at the edges of what’s known. They live at the places where the systems built to be temporary have hardened into habit, where the original questions have been lost to ancient memory.
When you ask—especially when you ask out loud—you aren’t just making yourself vulnerable. You aren’t just chasing clarity for yourself. You aren’t being selfish, or inconsiderate, or obtuse.
You are building something.
You’re creating space for others to join you.
You’re surfacing the hidden cracks and assumptions, the truths that shape everyone’s reality.
You are pulling on threads that could lead somewhere new.
Breakthroughs don't start with certainty.
They start with someone willing to name what others are too afraid to say.
Someone willing to wonder out loud, willing to feel foolish, willing to move before the path is obvious.
Movement with Meaning
Mastery still matters.
Expertise still matters.
But in a world reshaping itself faster than any single system can keep up with, movement—with discernment, with curiosity, with care—matters more.
The future will belong to the ones who can sense where meaning is stirring.
Those who trust what they feel before it becomes obvious to everyone else. The ones who can sense where the fractures are forming, where roads are needed, and where seemingly uncrossable chasms deserve a way across.
You don’t need to wait for the map.
You draw it.
One step, one signal, one brave question…..
one meaningful movement at a time.