WILD Paper2026
What The System Cannot See: How Human Capability is Formed And Why The Next Phase of the Young People and Work Review Must Learn to See it
Crick, Ferrier, Crichton-Allan & Huang · WILD Learning Sciences CIC
Every complex system depends on human infrastructure– the one part of the system no one measures.
26 years
peer-reviewed research
100,000+
individuals measured
RMSEA 0.035
model fit
190+
organisations
A research and advisory body for human infrastructure.
Human infrastructure: the capacity of the people in a system, together, to absorb what it asks of them and keep delivering as conditions change.
WILD produces the authority - rigorous and evidenced - to change how governments, regulators and major programmes build it.
managed with discipline
heavily invested in
Human infrastructure
no owner, no instrument
Three things make WILD different
01
A research body, first
We lead with a published record, not a service offer.
02
Measured to engineering standard
The human infrastructure that determines whether a programme delivers deserves the same rigour as physical and cyber systems. WILD measures it with a validated instrument.
03
One capacity, three levels
The same human capacity runs from the individual through the team to the whole system – it isn't a layer inside the system, it's what makes the system deliver. WILD measures, designs for and develops it at all three levels and reads them together.
Featured research
View all →WILD Paper2026
The Reckoning That Never Comes: Why Formation, Not Another Framework, Is What Breaks the Pattern of British Institutional Failure
Victoria Ferrier · WILD Learning Sciences CIC
Peer-reviewed2021
Framing Professional Learning Analytics as Reframing Oneself
Buckingham-Shum, Littlejohn, Kitto & Crick · IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies
Peer-reviewed2020
Becoming a Resilient Organisation: Integrating People and Practice in Infrastructure Services
Crick & Bentley · International Journal of Sustainable Engineering
Peer-reviewed2016
Learning Journeys And Infrastructure Services: A Game Changer For Effectiveness
Crick, Huang, Godfrey, Taylor & Carhart · University of Bristol / University of Technology, Sydney
Peer-reviewed2015
Developing Resilient Agency in Learning: The Internal Structure of Learning Power
Deakin Crick, Huang, Ahmed Shafi & Goldspink · British Journal of Educational Studies, 63(2), 121–160
The Science
Big programmes rarely fail on the engineering - they fail when the people can't carry the load. WILD shows you whether they can, and exactly where they can't.
Where capacity becomes change.
Between the person and the whole system sits the work of transformation. Iris makes the gap visible. Closing it is a discipline of its own - and one that succeeds or fails on conditions most programmes never name.
WILD does the closing through improvement science: the evidence-led method for system change proven over decades in healthcare and education, in the Carnegie networked-improvement tradition of Anthony Bryk. We apply it; we don't claim it. What is ours is the integration - and the discipline of reading whether the conditions for change are actually in place.
Iris reads whether a system can keep delivering.
Iris is WILD's method for reading a large, purposive endeavour - an infrastructure programme, a utility, a government initiative - as a hierarchy that descends from its purpose. Read downward, it asks whether the system is doing what it exists to do; read upward, whether the people in it have the experience, competence and adaptive capacity to keep delivering.
What has to be true for capacity to become change.
Three conditions have to be present. Where they are, developed capacity converts into system change. Where any one is missing, it doesn't - and a programme can invest heavily in its people and still watch nothing move.
Capacity, developed - not just measured. CLARA reads adaptive capacity; the Learning Journey develops it, through a disciplined cycle of purpose, plan, action and review. Measurement without development is a diagnosis no one acts on.
Authority, responsibility and accountability, held in one place. Development only moves the system when the people doing it also hold the authority to act, carry the responsibility, and answer for the result - in the same domain. Where these are split - authority without the power to change anything, accountability without authority - the capacity is real and the system still won't move. This is the condition programmes most often don't attend to, and the one they are least able to see.
A story people inhabit. Change holds when the people inside it own the account of why it matters and recognise it as theirs. An imposed story does not hold, however well-resourced. And because it is lived, the story can be read - it is evidence, not decoration.
The Italian flag gives leadership calibrated confidence in place of false certainty: green for supporting evidence, red for challenging, white for genuine uncertainty - the not-knowing leaders most need to see, and most often ignore. The white is the directive part: it shows where more evidence would actually change the picture, and so where to point attention and resource - and where further effort would buy nothing.
CLARA measures eight dimensions of human adaptive capacity.
CLARA - Crick Learning for Resilient Agency - is a psychometrically validated diagnostic built on Professor Ruth Deakin Crick's twenty-six years of research. It does not measure what a person did; it measures the capacity they hold to respond wisely to conditions that have not yet arrived - a reading of the future, not a report on the past.
RMSEA 0.035
model fit
Peer-reviewed
published record
8 dimensions
of adaptive capacity
6 languages
cross-validated
CuriosityCollaborationCreativityBelongingSense-makingOpenness to changeHope & optimismMindful agency
Where we work
Infrastructure & utilities
Measuring human resilience across major programmes, supply chains and the communities they serve.
Government & policy
Evidence that shifts how governments think about adaptive capacity and resilient systems.
Organisations
Leadership, culture and teams that can learn and adapt under sustained pressure.
Education & communities
Learning and professional development that builds the adaptive capacity to navigate complexity.
Cited in policy and infrastructure. Proven in delivery.
Cabinet Office, advisoryInstitution of Civil EngineersUKCRICProject 13 enterprise deliveryCentre for Whole of Society ResilienceThe Built Environment Connective
Hunter Water, New South Wales
34%
Leakage down
15%
Reduction in consumption, over 3 years
The largest year-on-year drop of any urban utility in the country, against a comparable utility elsewhere in Australia that saw consumption rise over the same period. (National Performance Report 2019–20: Urban Water Utilities)
Governance
WILD Learning Sciences CIC holds the intellectual property and research base under statutory asset lock.
People
Founder & Research Director
Prof. Ruth Deakin Crick
Built the twenty-six-year body of research behind CLARA. Co-founder Centre for Whole of Society Resilience.
Chief Executive
Victoria Ferrier
Leads WILD's strategy and its commercial and institutional partnerships. Experience across global corporates, investment-backed firms and mission-led organisations.
Chair
Dr Jim Bentley
Thirty years of global leadership in water and infrastructure. Led Hunter Water's transformation into a learning-driven organisation.
Data Scientist
Dr Shaofu Huang
Leads WILD's analytics work and runs the Learning Journey App in production. Comes from a background in social science research and behavioural modelling.
Director
Neil Cullen
Experienced software developer and leader of education technology firms.
Director
Dr Steven Barr
Chartered engineer with over 35 years of experience in systems architecting and designing, making and the agile implementation of high-tech products and services in manufacturing and the built environment.