# North Star
A North Star is often intended as a fixed reference point helping the navigation toward a desired destination. The destination is usually set upfront before the beginning of the journey, typically by a 'planner' other than those making the journey, the course is charted using an existing map, and an established route is used whenever possible. This is where a travel agency and a tour operator could help.
Whether it is used as immutable principles, a compass, a destination, or a high-level description of the path, it is often used with a predictive approach.
This approach is effective and efficient when one can count on enough knowledge and certainty. For example for industrialised products and services, and when applying canned solutions and standard recipes.
But this approach has also been adopted extensively outside those conditions, preferring to be wrong but certain over being uncertain, like in the Streetlight effect 
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The streetlight effect's comic strip.
# Flashlight
When dealing with novelty, unknowns and uncertainties, a North Star may be of little help. For example in an Agile, product/service delivery initiative, in an Agile adoption or transformation. This is the territory of pioneers and explorers stepping into uncharted territories. Vasco de Gama could not ask a travel agency to organise his explorations.
This metaphor better resemble an adaptive approach driven by those making the journey. And this new metaphor provokes a conversation to align everyone around the interpretation as an adaptive approach.
Agile thinking and Agile practices have emerged to deal with this type of situation. They allow gradual progress toward an ever-changing sense of direction and a continuously evolving understanding of the destination. Those involved agree on the next small bets and experiments, evaluate the results and the learning, decide whether to renew their commitment to the journey and proceed iteratively.
> ** << Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous I don't know >> ** - Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska
A **flashlight** carried by those travelling to break through the darkness at every step shedding light and pushing away the boundary of the unknown and uncertain, better resembles an adaptive approach.
As Søren Kierkegaard suggested, we manage to live our lives forward, deciding, acting, and doing, without knowing the future. As Agile practitioner Brett Maytom suggested, we "coddiwomple our way through life" that is we “travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination.
Excerpt from Jeff Patton presentation
This concept is expanded in Jeff Patton's presentation Embrace Uncertainty Strategies for on-time delivery in an uncertain world and in his post Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know How to Get It .
Thanks to Kristof Adriaenssens, Mel Kendell, David Williams, Todd Kromann, Michael Küsters, Anthony Little, Murtaza Hussain, Paul Oldfield, and others that participated to the conversation sharing useful insights.