The Progress Economy

The progress economy’s underlying premise: making progress to their more desired state is everything a Progress Seeker wants.

Progress as a verb

At the heart of the progress economy is the observation that individuals and organisations seek to move to a more desired state. And they do so with all aspects of their life.

It’s why we call them Progress Seekers.

Whether it’s acquiring a new language, repairing a car, cooking a romantic dinner, travelling somewhere, analysing data for insights, seeking medical care, hanging up a picture frame, and more; becoming happier, remaining safe; doing so in rush hour or at home; everyone is engaged in the pursuit of progress.

Collins define the verb to progress as:

to move over a period of time to a stronger, more advanced, or more desirable state

Collins

Christensen similarly describes a job to be done as:

the progress they’re trying to make as they strive toward a goal or aspiration within particular circumstances

Christensen

Both definitions resonate with the progress economy. If we fold the notions of “stronger” and “more advanced” into “more desired state,” we get our definition of progress:

progress: moving over time from an origin state to a more desired state

Progress (as a verb) is one of five perspectives on progress in The Progress Economy (we’ll explore Progress as a State Transition lower in this page – the other three are progress as a noun, as a measure and as a state). Two important named states for our discussion are progress sought and progress origin.

Progress journey

We can tie the progress origin, progress sought, and notion of progress as verb, together as a progress journey.

A Seeker’s journey is their act of moving, over time, from their unique progress origin toward their desired progress sought. It’s the action, the verb of functional progress: learning, traveling, hanging the picture. As well as the verb of experiential progress: feeling safe, becoming more autonomous, self-actualising etc; and the verb of progressing with context.

However, this journey can be interpreted differently for each dimension of progress states:

• functional – this usually changes between progress origin and progress sought
• non-functional – may or may not change. You might like to increase your feeling of autonomy, but feeling safe often stays the same across the journey
• contextual – this, by convention, we see as remaining the same for the journey.

The journey tells us the job to be done, enumerates success, and informs us where it starts. It’s helpful to visualise this.

We can draw the progress journey as the following progress diagram, a format we’ll repeatedly use in the progress economy:

Fundamentally, progress seekers look to progress from their current state – their progress origin on the left – to their more desired state of progress sought on the right. That progress journey affects the three dimensions of progress state – functional, non-functional and contextual. Those dimensions are represent as three circles for each state.

There are several practical aspects we should address when exploring progress.

Practicalities of exploring progress making

While the concept of progress is simple, it is also deeply powerful. Its effective application as a tool requires us to consider how progress plays out in real-world. That’s a world where priorities compete, resources are limited, and decisions must be made.

Focussing on aspects in isolation

While a Seeker is seen as pursuing progress in all areas of their life, practical analysis demands focus. We typically isolate and focus on particular aspects of progress at a time to keep the scope manageable and the insight actionable.

However, these isolated progress attempts don’t always operate independently. They can be interlinked, reinforcing or competing with one another. In some cases, progress in one area may unintentionally contradict progress in another.

There’s no fixed rulebook for spotting these interdependencies, but it’s important to stay alert to them. Recognising these overlaps can surface hidden trade-offs and open up more integrated, effective solutions.

A note on (not) making contextual progress

While it’s tempting to consider a Seeker targeting all three dimensions of progress – functional, experiential, and contextual – in a single attempt, we’ve found it more effective to analyse progress by holding the contextual dimension constant. This is, the context at the progress sought is the same as the context at the progress origin.

So what happens when a Seeker wants to change their context? The cleaner move is to treat that as a separate progress attempt, anchored in functional or experiential progress that enables the contextual shift.

Take this example: if someone’s current context is “not knowing how to drive,” that sets a constraint on progress attempts involving travel. To change the context, the Seeker would initiate a new progress attempt where the functional progress sought is “learned to drive.” rather than trying to change the context in the pursuit of some other journey.

Stabilising of contextual progress in an attempt keeps the logic clear, the effort focused, and the modelling more precise.

Constraining progress sought: externalities

Talking of constraining progress, this is a good point to remind ourselves of institutions – the “rules, norms, meanings, symbols, practices, and similar mechanisms that help coordinate behaviour among actors.” – and Institutional actors.

Those actors insert elements into a Seeker’s progress sought to minimise harm to the well-being of the Seeker and society they represent.

An example is useful to explain this. Say a Seeker wants to use a new gas appliance in their home. An externality – in this case often a government or regulator – will require that work to be performed by a certified gas engineer. They do so to safeguard both the Seeker and those in the neighbourhood from faulty installations, potentially resulting in explosions and loss of life.

In the progress economy, we see this as being inserted into a Seeker’s progress sought. That is, “safely” is inserted into experiential progress sought and “performed by a certified gas engineer” into the Seeker’s contextual progress sought.

By inserting it, the institutional actor forces our Seeker to have the capabilities to achieve that progress (even if they, themselves, may not wish to). During a progress attempt, a Seeker may lack those capabilities, and so would need to look for supplementary capabilities to proceed (training, a certified engineer, etc)

Progress as a state transition

An alternate, but equivalent, way of looking at progress as a verb, is to consider it as a state transition between progress origin and progress sought. We show this below:

Such a state transition diagram allows us to visualise other named states, such as progress reached and progress potential at any given time. Along with how any propositions progress offered aligns with progress sought.

It is useful to think this way when looking at chaining propositions together to meet the full scope of a Seeker’s journey. Each proposition has its own assumed origin and progress offered. Where is your proposition? What other propositions help complete the journey? Are there overlaps? Where are the gaps? Where are you best placed to improve progress? And so on.