Hello.

My name is Ian McClelland. Adjacent Possibilities is a newsletter about falling public trust in institutions, and what we can do about it. On a deeper level, this is a newsletter about the patterns and regularities of complex systems, the dynamics of cultural and technological change, and the corresponding challenges for public and nonprofit management.

I studied for a masters in Globalisation and Development in the mid 2000s, not long after the “Battle of Seattle” anti-globalisation protests put cracks in the facade of the post-Cold War consensus. My first career job at Oxfam coincided with the 2007-2008 financial crash when those cracks turned into fissures. In the UK, a decade of austerity and the upheaval of Brexit led to increased internal division.

The crumbling of the international order, combined with political polarisation, further fuelled by the rise of social media and rapid technological change, has eroded the legitimacy of international organisations and domestic public bodies. In the aid sector, this has coincided with a fraying of the political consensus around official development assistance, and a collapse in spending.

Throughout this period, my work has mostly focused on supporting social innovation and community-led development, two themes which speak to the possibility of building more resilient, equitable futures from the ground up. I left full-time employment in 2024, and since then I have been conducting research, evaluating programmes, developing toolkits, and providing strategic advice as a consultant.

I started this newsletter to explore the sciences of complexity and cultural evolution, and their relevance and application to the challenges of public and nonprofit management. I want to understand why things feel stuck, and how they might be unstuck, so that we might restore a sense of collective agency and public trust in institutions. If you would like to explore these ideas with me, please sign up below. 👇