Leaders across philanthropy, policy, and community systems are increasingly talking about “signals.”

“We’re seeing signals in the system.”
“We’re tracking signals.”
“There are early signals of change.”

It can start to sound like everyone knows exactly what that means. But if you pause and ask for a definition, the explanation often gets fuzzy. The idea comes from futurism and foresight practices. These fields focus on understanding how systems change and how organizations can prepare for what may come next. At its simplest, a signal is a small sign of change. It might be:

  • an unusual data point;
  • a new behavior or practice;
  • a policy conversation gaining traction;
  • a shift in funding priorities; or
  • a new community response that wasn’t happening before.

On their own, signals can seem minor or disconnected. But when several signals begin to point in the same direction, they can reveal patterns about where systems may be headed. Foresight practitioners pay attention to signals not to predict the future with certainty, but to expand what leaders believe may be possible and prepare organizations for it.

Signals in Action: The Care Economy
Consider what has been happening in the childcare and early childhood workforce. For years, childcare challenges were often framed primarily as an individual family issue, with parents trying to balance work and caregiving responsibilities. But over the past decade, a series of signals began to appear across communities:

  • early childhood educators leaving the field due to low wages and burnout;
  • families struggling to find affordable, quality childcare;
  • employers recognizing that childcare shortages affect workforce participation;
  • community organizations building new support networks for caregivers; and
  • policymakers beginning to discuss childcare as part of economic infrastructure.

Individually, these developments might have looked like separate problems. Together, they signal something larger: strain in the systems that support caregiving, workforce participation, and family well-being.

During the pandemic, those signals converged into a clearer policy and action window. Childcare was suddenly recognized not only as a family issue, but as essential infrastructure for communities and local economies. Signals did not create that shift on their own. But they helped reveal where pressures were building and where new possibilities for system change were emerging. For organizations working in early childhood, family resilience, and workforce development, those signals helped identify when to apply the right tactics and levers to move systems toward more equitable outcomes.

When signals like these are tracked alongside system capacities, levers and tactics, and emerging policy opportunities, they help organizations recognize when the conditions for meaningful change are beginning to align.

Why Leaders Are Rethinking How They Understand Uncertainty
For years, many organizations described their operating environments as volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. That framing helped leaders recognize that the world was changing quickly. It encouraged organizations to set ambitious goals, gather strong information, and move forward even when the path was not perfectly clear. For a long time, that mindset served many organizations well. But the systems we operate in today are behaving differently. Increasingly, futurists describe our environment as one where systems that appear stable can fracture quickly, where anxiety shapes decisionmaking, where small actions can create ripple effects far beyond what anyone expected, and where complexity sometimes outpaces our ability to fully explain what is happening.

This shift matters because it changes how leaders interpret information and make strategic decisions
Instead of assuming that better analysis will eventually produce predictable answers, leaders must also learn to read how ecosystems are evolving in real time. This means strategy now is less about controlling outcomes and more about understanding dynamics as they unfold.

Shocks cascade faster. Conditions shift quickly. Cause-and-effect relationships are harder to trace. But this does NOT mean history no longer matters. In fact, history becomes even more important. Patterns in how societies respond to crisis, how communities organize in moments of disruption, and how systems react when long-standing inequities are challenged all provide essential context. Historical experience helps us interpret signals, especially when anxiety is high and dominant systems are being pushed to change the status quo. Foresight does not discard the past. Instead, it asks us to combine historical awareness with real-time reading of the system.

When the Systems Change, the Data Changes Too
In the past, strategy typically relied heavily on data such as historical trend lines, performance metrics, and forecasting models. Those tools still matter. But now, they are no longer enough on their own. Organizations must also pay attention to signals or early indicators that something in the system may be shifting. Signals can include:

  • unexpected community responses;
  • changes in policy attention;
  • new alliances or networks forming;
  • narrative shifts in public discourse; or
  • unusual data points that don’t fit established patterns.

Signals expand the range of information organizations use to make decisions. Instead of asking only: What do the numbers say? Leaders must also consider: What patterns are emerging that we don’t fully understand yet? What outliers might indicate deeper change? Where might opportunities for transformation be forming? Strategy today becomes less about predicting the future and more about interpreting the system as it changes.

Reading Systems in Your Ecosystem
Signals become most useful when they are tracked intentionally as part of a broader system view. Organizations often need to observe multiple layers at once:

Signals > Early indicators that something in the environment may be shifting
Capacities > Relationships, networks, resources, and knowledge that strengthen the system’s ability to respond
Levers and Tactics > Strategic actions that influence behaviors, policies, or institutional practices
Opportunity Windows > Moments when conditions align for policy, funding, or collective action that can move the system forward

Together, these elements help organizations recognize traction or leverage points — where applying the right tactic at the right moment can generate meaningful system change.
This type of system awareness allows organizations to move from simply reacting to change toward actively shaping what becomes possible.

Strategy Requires Both Analysis and Judgment
Even when leaders pay attention to signals, strategy is not purely analytical. Leaders often face real tensions between opportunity and responsibility. Organizations may need to consider:

  • whether expanding into a new issue area will stretch resources too thin;
  • how to balance emerging community needs with existing commitments;
  • what relationships and roles are necessary to influence broader systems; and/or
  • how shifts in policy, funding, or public sentiment may reshape the landscape.

Signals help clarify what is happening in the system. But values, relationships, and judgment still guide how organizations respond.

Turning Signals into Action: Where Do You Start?
For organizations working toward equity and community well-being, signals offer something powerful: a way to notice dynamic change before it fully arrives. That awareness can help leaders adjust strategies earlier, identify emerging community needs, test new approaches, and build resilience in uncertain environments. But noticing signals is only the first step. What makes them useful is how organizations learn from them.

One practical way to begin is by developing a learning agenda — a small set of guiding questions that help teams interpret what they are seeing in the system. A learning agenda might include questions such as:

  • What signals are we seeing in our ecosystem that could shape our work over the next few years?
  • What capacities or relationships need strengthening to respond to these shifts?
  • What tactics or levers might create progress if the right opportunity window appears?
  • What outcomes or milestones would tell us we are moving in the right direction?

These questions help organizations move from simply collecting data to actively reading the system. They create space to pause, reflect, and test new strategies while conditions are still unfolding. Because in times like these, strategy is no longer just about planning the next step. It is about building the capacity to notice, learn, and adjust — again and again — as the system continues to change.

Selected References

Amber Trout, Ph.D.

About The Author

Amber Trout, PhD, Managing Director, has extensive organizational and leadership development, change management, and capacity building experience in the nonprofit, federal, and philanthropic sectors. Her strengths lie in her expertise in facilitating and organizing racial equity and organizational change efforts to promote systemwide transformation at leadership, organization, and community levels. Amber has overseen dozens of studies and the day-to-day implementation of several capacity building evaluations in the equitable housing, economic security, and civic engagement space. She specializes in mapping pathways and determining metrics with an equity lens and then designing strategies and training partners to implement those pathways.