The Cultural Signals Canvas: Finding Opportunity in a Shifting Landscape

I first noticed On running shoes at the beginning of COVID. It was around the time I decided I was going to raise chickens, make sourdough, speak fluent Spanish, become a mixologist, learn guitar, and get into shape. It was the getting-in-shape part that led me to On. 

On started in 2010 in Zurich, and by the time I first heard of them, they were already steadily building a successful shoe company inside a crowded market. But, like me, for most people, they weren’t on our radar until sometime around 2020. 

Before the pandemic started, On was in the process of developing their first streetwear sneaker. They'd noticed a slow-building cultural shift: wellness was becoming an identity, performance gear was becoming everyday wear, and comfort was becoming the new luxury. Then COVID hit, and suddenly everyone who could work from home was on Zoom in $100 sweatpants. That very particular moment amplified the movement On noticed, and they moved up the planned launch of their streetwear shoe.

One year after that launch, On’s revenue grew by 70%. Sixteen months later, they IPO'd at roughly $7 billion.

In a Fast Company article On co-founder David Allemann makes the point that “What we’ve seen already in the last few years [is] that fashion, sports, and outdoor gear are converging. Performance used to borrow from fashion. Now it’s been the other way around, and we see that in how outdoor gear has been adopted by fashion brands and how almost every brand now has sneakers, because it’s driven by a generation who is blurring the boundaries between work, home, sports, and play… That shift is accelerating and also very difficult to turn fully back, and people probably don’t want to turn it fully back.”¹

On’s timing was perfect. But it wasn’t accidental. 

MOVEMENTS AND MOMENTS

In my work, I've walked alongside hundreds of nonprofits and social enterprises. And for every On Running that reads the cultural shifts correctly, there's an organization that doesn't. They come to me after an extended period of fatigue with comments like, 

"Our revenue has been dropping."
"The org is built around our founder, but the founder is no longer relevant."
"Our social-impact goods aren't appealing anymore."
"Our donor base is dying — literally."

Most of the time, whatever insight or instinct their model was originally built on is no longer holding up. The cultural context shifted, and they didn't shift with it.

I think there are two big types of cultural shifts that every organization needs to pay attention to: movements and moments².

Movements: slow-building shifts that lead to changed behavior patterns. 

Over time, ideologies evolve, culture shifts, and attitudes change. These shifts create patterns that may take years or decades to establish themselves. But when they do, the new beliefs and values change how people behave, and the pattern becomes fully normalized.

Think about recycling: in the 1970s, it was fringe activist behavior. By the 2000s, people felt guilty throwing away a plastic bottle. That normalization took 30-plus years. The same with seatbelts, they went from an annoying “don't infringe on my rights” requirement in the 80s to automatic behavior today.

Because they tend to bubble up slowly, they can be hard to spot early. However, they take longer to solidify into a cultural norm, so we have more time to notice and respond. 

Moments: temporary cultural responses to a specific event, crisis, or fad

Think about mask-wearing, social distancing, outdoor dining, sourdough starters, and all responses to the pandemic. Some behaviors stuck around (more outdoor dining). But most were temporary reactions to a specific crisis, not fundamental shifts in how we want to live. So these moments might result in changed behavior, but it's often temporary. 

Moments are easier to spot because they're everywhere all at once. The problem is that they carry a lot of noise alongside whatever signal might be buried inside them.

A FRAMEWORK FOR NOTICING CULTURAL SHIFTS

The opportunity is found when a developing movement intersects with a cultural moment. That intersection creates an amplification, causing the trend to accelerate and normalize. 

Back to On, they noticed a developing movement of wellness culture evolving and athleisure normalizing into a form of fashion and everyday wear. Then the pandemic hit, and everyone was at home in comfortable clothes. A unique moment. The moment didn't create the movement; it amplified it.

So how can we make sense of all these movements and moments? Where can we identify where there might be that amplification or an opportunity? There are three big categories of consideration:

Looking — What are we noticing around us? This is about being a student of the world, of culture, of your context. Not passively, but with intentionality.

Connecting — Is what we're seeing pointing to something deeper? This is about asking why we're seeing what we're seeing.

Assessing — If the insight holds, should we respond? This is about naming what's at stake and what's possible.

Each of those bigger categories breaks into specific areas of exploration and questions to wrestle with:

• Observations — What behavior changes are you noticing?
• Moments — What's creating urgency right now?
• Intersections — Where are moments amplifying movements?
• Insights — What do people actually want?
• Impact — What assumptions are breaking down?
• Pause or Go — Is this worth pursuing?
• Assets — What strengths become more valuable in this new context?
• Opportunity — What could you become?

I designed a Cultural Signals Canvas that maps all eight areas of exploration into a single view — a way to systematically look at what's happening around you and connect the dots between observation, insight, and opportunity. 

TWO FUTURES

In 2017, we worked with a national retail bookstore chain. At the time, they operated over a hundred stores spread out across the country with decades of success. But when they called us, they were responding to declining foot traffic, declining revenue, and an inability to attract younger audiences.

They eventually closed all their stores. Could spotting movements earlier have helped them? Were there moments that could have amplified their thinking? 

Around the same time, we were working with a 50-year-old nonprofit who had an overwhelming amount of data showing the slow decline of their donor and membership base. Their audience was, literally, dying and the data showed that they needed to do something before it was too late. 

They realized before it was too late that their offering wasn’t designed for a younger generation’s behaviors and attitudes. They are still around today. 

GET THE CANVAS

The Cultural Signals Canvas is designed for teams of any size, with any budget. Whether you're running a $500K nonprofit or a $500M enterprise, the framework works the same way: look around, connect dots, and assess opportunities.

In addition to the canvas, the download includes:

• Instructions for using the canvas
• Examples of what types of answers might go in each area of the canvas along with an example canvas for the national bookstore chain mentioned above.
• Suggestions for low-fidelty and high-fidelity research methodologies you can use
• A blank worksheet to think through eight areas of exploration in detail

Click here to download the canvas.

1. The On example is taken from Fast Company.

This article and the canvas grew out of ideas first explored in 2020 and posted here.