Now It Is Your Turn for Some Practice!

Think about something that is bothering you professionally or personally and try expressing three or four issues related to the concern. Scatter the statements around the page. When doing so, try to meet the requirements set out above—namely, give each statement an action orientation by starting with a verb and include only one idea in each statement. Number each statement as you write it. Numbering the statement will help when making links and navigating the map later. Following these guidelines will give you a good sense of what needs to change.

Fran’s Vignette

We authors use mapping all the time. For example, Fran, one of the workbook authors, had just started a new job as dean of research and development for a business school faculty and was keen to use the mapping processes to help her. On the basis of a number of conversations with the previous dean and her new boss, and also with other senior staff on the faculty, she realized that there were a large number of issues and considerations she needed to understand. She also knew that she then would need to start building a commitment among the staff to a new, as yet unarticulated, strategy. Specifically, it became clear that one of her most important tasks was to develop a new strategy for research and development for the business school.

One of the apparent emerging issues focused on ensuring that the school improve its position in the research rankings (a common consideration for many business schools in order to stay attractive to faculty and students) (see Figure 3.5). She believed that managing this issue was one way of helping differentiate the school from others in the area. She was acutely aware that student numbers (including doctoral students) were declining due to global economic conditions. Thus she felt that the faculty would benefit from a concentration on research grants (both from public research agencies and from industry) rather than straight consultancy, as winning grants would both help improve the rankings and would pull in more funds. She also wondered whether improved rankings would also attract more doctoral research students.

However, she was aware that a number of staff saw their focus as teaching, as they were dedicated and inspired instructors and reckoned they had little time to devote to research. Also, the school would need to ensure that if staff were to be successful in getting grants, then staff would need to have sufficient time to produce high-quality publications. Of course, if more time were devoted to research, then time would be distracted from working with doctoral students, since there were only so many hours in a day.

In thinking through these issues, she realized that she wasn’t sure a key school administrator was of the same view, since he believed that increasing online instruction was an important way forward. He thought that by providing virtual lectures, for example, they could reach a wider audience. Others in the business school saw that better tapping of the executive education market would be a good way to resolve some of the financial pressures.

While Fran appreciated all of these viewpoints, she worried that there was a danger of not taking a long-term view and considering how the school could sustain its competitive advantage. For example, using online classes might not be a winner, since lots of other schools were considering the same activity. She also wondered how long it would be before they had saturated the executive education market. And then there was the issue of retaining the really dedicated researchers she had in the school. If they felt marginalized, they might leave.

There were just so many things to think about! How could she get her head around the situation? How could she think about the long term but also take care of the immediate pressing issues? She needed to get all of these issues out of her head so she could stand back, see how they fit together, and have a go at figuring out how they might be resolved. She also felt that if she got them out, she could help some of her colleagues appreciate why she was so concerned about the future of the school. She could also then not only build a shared understanding of the interactions between the issues, but also help herself and others explore a way forward. She also knew that her colleagues would come up with some additional issues that she had missed.

She had a full pad of removable self-stick notes (sticky notes), so she started writing the issues down—putting each issue on a single sticky note and positioning it on her office whiteboard. Before long she had twenty-five sticky notes stuck up! What is more, she realized that even more issues could be added. Even so, she felt better as a result of getting the issues out in front of her. Doing so was cathartic. She could now begin to stand back and look at the situation more thoughtfully.

At that moment Alison, Fran’s deputy, knocked on the door for a chat. Fran invited her in and immediately noticed her curiosity about what was on the whiteboard. Fran began to explain what she had been doing. Very quickly Alison grabbed the sticky note pad and started adding issues. The whiteboard began to fill up (see Figure 3.6).

They both began to feel quite excited about what was emerging, as they could begin to see some possible synergies between their points of view, although they were also struggling with what should be included in a joint view and what shouldn’t. Fran wanted to stick to what she saw as strategic issues, but Alison wanted some of the operational issues to be included as well, since they provided valuable context. Besides, she argued, they had an impact on the long-term future—an argument Fran readily accepted! After all, there has to be a strong connection between strategy and operations, or else the strategy is relatively useless. They agreed to use different colored pens to denote which issues were strategic and which were operational. They also found themselves rewriting a few of the issues to help each other make more sense of the statement. They ended up with statements that were between four and eight words long and often explicitly action-oriented.

After about twenty more minutes they felt that they had a good overview of the situation—at least as they saw it—and wanted to get department heads involved. Doing so would help Fran and Alison see what they had missed, and they would also build more of a shared understanding across the whole team. They both felt much better now, since at the very least they understood and appreciated one another’s point of view. They also had a sense of how to make progress. A good hour’s work!

Fran was also aware that she might need to involve others beyond department heads in her deliberations, not just for content reasons but also for political ones. She wanted to make sure that the outcome would be something that all were comfortable with and willing to implement. Careful stakeholder management was critical.

Fran next needed to work out how to manage and make sense of the issues. . . .

When working with a group it is important to ensure all feel and are able to participate. A well-crafted invitation bringing the group together helps. Once the group is assembled, regularly encouraging participants to contribute their views is therefore important. Making contributions will help each participant feel he or she is part of the process and likely will build emotional as well as cognitive commitment to, and support for, any strategies that are developed.

More immediately, however, participation will help develop a wider appreciation of the situation and a more robust view as people contribute actions, and their explanations and consequences are captured. Of course, participation can be encouraged as part of a commitment to a more engaged and inclusive workplace or broader democracy by a public and nonprofit organization. When there is not such a general commitment, participation can be quite useful for the very instrumental reason of increasing the probability of implementation of strategy.

Following is another example of an issue dump, this time involving a health care organization.

Health Care Vignette

The senior management team of a health provider (part of a larger managed health care system) was reviewing their strategy after having received two fairly negative external reports. The team started by generating issues on sticky notes and attaching them to a flip-chart-sheet-covered wall. This allowed participants to vent some of their frustrations, but more importantly helped them get an appreciation of the myriad issues facing the team. Getting clear about the issues would also help the team determine which ones to address first.

Relatively early in this process, one of the participants put up an issue stating “we need to improve our HR (human resources) services.” The HR representative immediately felt under attack. She appreciated that there were gaps in the service and the speed of response wasn’t that great, but the demands on her small group were significant and there simply weren’t any additional resources available. The others didn’t understand the difficulties she was facing! The HR representative stopped writing up issues and began to withdraw from the process.

The senior manager on the team noticed the HR representative’s withdrawal and slowly was able to draw her back into the group. He asked her to write up a number of issues that she thought explained the poor service, such as “lack of adequately trained staff,” “too few staff,” and “all departments wanting answers at the last minute rather than giving the HR department enough time to provide a thoughtful answer.” As the HR representative put them up on the board, two things happened. First, she felt better because she could explain why the services weren’t great, and second, other participants began to appreciate her situation and how difficult it was. There were comments such as, “Oh, I didn’t realize that you were struggling with lack of staff” and “Yes, we are rather last minute, aren’t we?”

The team now needed to see what they could do with the issues. . . .

Two important lessons may be drawn from this short vignette. First, to keep the strategy conversation open and engaging, encourage those contributing the statements to avoid prescriptive words as much as possible, This will reduce the chances that someone will feel attacked and become defensive. Encourage participants to avoid using the words need, ought, and should. Instead, ask participants to phrase the issues so that they are possible or proposed actions. Phrasing issues as actions can engender a more creative, open, and accepting spirit.

Second, encouraging others to respond with explanations and other perspectives, rather than just disagreeing, often softens what can feel like harsh or uninformed views. Using a “round robin” contribution process can help, since this will ensure that all are given a fair voice without continual interruptions.

Beyond the reasons here, continually provide reassurances and encouragement to the participants and prompt them to make further contributions that both support and contradict issues. This will stimulate a more comprehensive issue-capture process. Make sure there is both time and opportunity to place apparent criticism in a wider context. It is important to keep participants involved and the process open because the real issues facing a group are often sharp, critical, and even threatening, and without thoughtful facilitation they often simply get washed over by politeness or worry about the consequences of raising them.

Fran’s Vignette Continued

Recall that Fran and Alison had captured their issues on a whiteboard and Fran next needed to work out how to manage and make sense of the issues.

Later on in the day, while reviewing the picture on the wall, Fran realized that there were a number of clusters representing different themes within the material that she and Alison had identified. For example, there was a cluster of material around gaining grant funding and another around ensuring teaching quality remained high. She began to move her sticky notes around to reflect these common themes. Some of the clusters were quite large and others were quite small. Did this mean that she hadn’t considered the smaller clusters enough? Should there be more statements in these clusters? Should she add more?

She needed to play with the clusters and get a feel for the different strategic themes that were emerging. . . .

Now It Is Your Turn for Some Practice!

Practice what Fran did. Think about what’s on your mind. What issues have you been thinking about? Build upon your earlier issue dump and capture more ideas.

Once you have generated all of the issues that come to mind, see if there are any emergent clusters and move the sticky notes so that they clearly reveal these clusters.

Health Care Vignette Continued

Recall that the team had surfaced a number of issues and was beginning to understand one another’s perspectives better—they had clustered the material and were exploring the clusters in more detail.

The health services team was reviewing the cluster relating to staffing. One of the issues within the cluster was the lack of appropriate training (the patient demographics had changed, resulting in nurses having to deal with challenging patient cases). They noticed that this issue linked both positively and negatively to the issue relating to ensuring high-quality patient care—thus illustrating a dilemma. If they sent staff on training courses, then ultimately they would have better-quality staff and ensure patient care. Unfortunately, in the short term they would be short of staff (because the courses weren’t offered very often and also were in another location, so staff would have to spend several days at a time out of the service), resulting in poor, rather than good, patient care. They therefore needed to manage the training carefully! This observation gave rise to a number of suggestions for potential actions—such as, for example, taking on some short-term contract workers—which helped elaborate the map further in an attempt to resolve the dilemma.

The group began to realize that they needed to capture some of the links between the issues. . . .

Health Care Vignette Continued

The health care group members were exploring some of the dilemmas emerging from a review of their clusters.

They were becoming more engaged with the process and enjoying linking the material. As the conversation about positioning the statements on the wall unfolded, it revealed some interesting differences in viewpoint about some of the links.

For example, members of the group gently challenged proposed links by asking for further clarification regarding their rationale. The ensuing explanations not only generated further issues (as a chain of argument was elaborated), but also prompted others to provide their alternative points of view, which were also added to the developing map. For example, when discussing how get more beds linked to provide better patient care, an additional issue—determine best pathway for the patient—was added. This was because the statement’s contributor believed just getting beds wasn’t enough, since in many cases have patients stay at home would be better. What the health services unit needed to do was think about patient pathways. This triggered another group member to note that if that was the case, then that would help clarify who we need to work with as the patient pathways would certainly involve getting contributions from other specialists such as dieticians, physical therapists, and so on.

After about an hour and a half of work linking and reorganizing their material, the health services management team went for a coffee break. They felt good about what had been achieved. However, while considering their progress and what had emerged over coffee, one member of the group observed, while looking at the map, that in the process of linking they seemed to be repeating themselves, which he thought might explain why the map seemed to look unnecessarily messy. For example, he noticed that there was a chain of argument linking an issue both directly and indirectly to another issue and wondered if both chains of argument were needed. In other words, was one chain redundant because it was a summary of the more detailed links (see Figure 3.15)?

Two other members of the group caught on immediately. As one of them noted, “We have identify appropriate patient pathways linking to clarify when patients need to be in care rather than in their homes, which supports ensure appropriate care accommodation and thus improve patient care (in essence A → B → C → D), but we also have identify appropriate patient pathways linking directly to improve patient care (A → D) and identify appropriate patient pathways linking into ensure appropriate care accommodation (A → C).” He questioned whether they needed these extra links. His comment got a lot of responses. One of his colleagues said, “Well, identify appropriate patient pathways does help us improve patient care as it will ensure a consistent and effective provision of care.” Then he laughed at how he had inadvertently illustrated the essence of the query and noted that this extra statement had already been captured (A → E → C). However, another colleague noted, “We don’t need the link between identify appropriate patient pathways and ensure appropriate care accommodation—that is covered through the link to clarify when patients need to be in care rather than in their homes—we should take that out” (see Figure 3.16).

The health services group now wanted to think about what these clusters suggested for their strategy—how did they relate to the goals. . . .

It is worth noting that the tidying up of links needs to be done carefully as there is a balance to be had between refining the structure to allow for managers to be able to distinguish interesting insights from the map’s structure with pruning too radically and losing richness and ownership. Remember there is always the balance between procedural justice (including the views of all) and procedural rationality (developing a tight structure).

Now It Is Your Turn for Some Practice!

Transit Vignette

A city-owned transit organization’s management team was reviewing their issue map, and they were somewhat astounded to see that one of the biggest causal clusters was related to communication. It had thirty-five issues! They recognized that communication was a key strategic issue, but the sheer volume of material connected together around this topic was quite a surprise. They hadn’t thought it was such a big deal.

How were they to manage this issue? As they began to review the issue’s contents, they realized there seemed to be sub-clusters relating to audiences. For example, there was a causal bundle of issues relating to communications within the organization itself, as well as another causal bundle of issues relating to communications with other transport providers (for example, other bus companies, taxi companies, and so on). And then there was another bundle of issues relating to communicating with the public. Suddenly they began to realize why some of the previous initiatives relating to communications hadn’t been too successful—they were assuming one approach to communication would suit all purposes!

The group began to break down the big cluster into the small sub-clusters and restructure them with the most superordinate issue statements at the top. They knew they had to be careful because they didn’t want to lose any links. One team member suggested taking a photo. That way they would have a record. This was quickly done. Another member of the team then suggested that if they put up more flip chart paper and moved the sticky notes, they wouldn’t need to rewrite the statements, but they could use a small blank sticky note with just the reference number on it to replace each statement as it was moved from the original map to the redone map. That way they would retain the original map’s network structure.

Another useful aid to understanding and navigating the map is, with the group’s help, to label the new causal clusters (perhaps using a different color sticky note to distinguish it from the other sticky notes). As with some of the issues on the original map, some of the causal clusters will be more central than others, with some clusters being well connected to issues in all, or virtually all, of the other clusters. Other clusters typically will have only a small number of connections to other causal clusters.

Fran’s Vignette Continued

Fran and Alison had generated a lot of issues, and Fran had done some rough clustering and was keen to identify the strategic themes emerging, but she needed to do some tidying first.

She was reviewing her map and moving the issues around to further tidy up the map. After taking a quick photo, she had identified the busiest issue and put it in the middle of a flip-chart-sheet-covered wall space that she had put up alongside the whiteboard. She made careful note of where on the whiteboard the busy issue had come from. She continued to move material across, but found it difficult at times to get the structure into a perfect hierarchy. She tried hard not to have links crossing over one another, but sometimes it simply wasn’t possible. She was beginning to realize why she had found the situation she was facing so complex. Not only were there a lot of issues, but many of the issues had multiple explanations and consequences. The interconnected statements formed a “system” of highly interconnected issues.

When she finally had a tidied structure, she liked the look of it. Its shape and the links indicated interesting properties. Standing back she was amazed to see that a couple of the issues she had thought were really significant actually were pretty inconsequential. They simply didn’t have many links to other important issues. She realized that she had been wasting some of her energy by focusing on some things that just weren’t very big deals. She felt relieved, freed up, and energized by this insight.

Next she had to understand what impact the issues had on the faculty goals, but before doing that she had to find a time for getting all her team together. . . .

Now It Is Your Turn for Some Practice!

As noted, it can be very useful to rearrange the clusters to move away from content-oriented clusters to causal clusters. Now have a go at doing that exercise with your sticky notes.

Finding “Orphans”

Orphan issues are those issues that are not connected to another issue statement. They currently have no in- or out-arrows. Sometimes orphans are genuine—they are isolated issues. More often the connections simply got missed when the group was putting in causal links. Locating orphans usually helps tighten the map’s structure through identification of missing links.

Exploring orphan clusters will lead to similar considerations. Are any of the clusters not connected at all to the other clusters? Again, this might mean that links have not yet been identified. However, it might also mean that the issue cluster is a totally separate issue area and thus is worth considering in its own right. It may well be an issue that will need to become a priority, with some prioritized agreed-upon actions toward the bottom of the cluster hierarchy.

Exploring Goals

As is the case in most strategy work, understanding the organization’s goals (its purposes) is important. Clarifying purpose is important for all organizations or multiorganizational collaborations, whether they are large or small, government department or agency, or a nonprofit organization. Goals are what the strategies aim to achieve, and they provide an overall sense of purpose for the group and organization. Each organization has its own preferred terms identifying purposes—for example, goals, objectives, aims, and so on. Arguing over the fine points of terms is, in our experience, generally a waste of time. It is, however, important to use the terminology that the group is comfortable with while also being clear about what the label means to the group.

A goal or a statement of purpose can be seen as something that is good in its own right. The group would want to aim for it almost regardless of anything else. For Fran, as dean of research, and for her faculty, a goal thus might be to “become recognized as excellent at research,” or for a local community-development team it might be “ensure a safe environment within which to live.”

A good way of teasing out goals or objectives is through exploring why issues are issues. People only identify issues as issues if they either support or undermine their important goals or values. These goals may never have been made explicit. Supporting a goal means the issues highlight opportunities that might contribute toward achieving a goal. Undermining a goal means the issues pose threats that can negatively affect goal achievement, perhaps making the goal difficult or even impossible to achieve.

To start identifying goals, identify those issues that are at the top of a “teardrop.” Teardrops are a hierarchically organized network of causally related statements with a single topmost statement, intermediary statements linking into it and a number of statements at the bottom of the network (shaped like a “teardrop”). This is different from clusters, which are either content-oriented clusters (a bundle of material that is in some way tied together through a common content-related theme, or by a dense set of causal links) or causal clusters (a relatively small network of statements and causal links that represent an “island” of linked material with relatively few links to other causal clusters) as they focus on a single point.

These top points are frequently heads—that is, statements with arrows coming into them, but with no arrows coming out. Sequentially look at each of the heads and ask yourself and your group, why is this issue an issue? Why does it matter? What would the consequences be of addressing this issue? Answering these questions either will result in laddering up to a goal or else will surface one or more further issues that then lead to a goal. (Do note, however, that the “goal” may be worded as a negative, for example, “we go bankrupt,” which would count as a negative goal. In addition, since issues are often “problems,” they may detract from goal achievement. In this case, the link would be a negative one leading to the goal, meaning that the issue may lead to not achieving the goal. In the end, of course, you will want to have mostly positive goals to strive for, as well as perhaps some negative ones to avoid. More on these possibilities will be said later.)

Now It Is Your Turn for Some Practice!

Try laddering up to the goals so you understand better why the issues concern you and others and what your goals in practice are (rather than those goals that are just rhetorical). (See Practice 5.)

Health Care Vignette Continued

Following their coffee break—a reward for sorting out a number of the clusters—the health care group got back to sorting their issue map, thinking about what their clusters suggested for their strategy. How did they relate to the goals?

The group noticed that inappropriate working facilities was at the top of a cluster. It had lots of issues linking in, such as insufficient car parking for staff and visitors, lack of beds, poor infrastructure, and so on. To see if it was a goal—something that was good in its own right—they tried converting the language to something more positive and aspirational—for example, develop appropriate working facilities. (The “positive” statement might also be created by adding stop, avoid, or not, if this wording captures a more realistic aspiration.) While the group agreed that they should capture the statement develop appropriate working facilities, they didn’t see that as being a goal. It was more of a means to a goal, which meant that it was a possible strategy or even an operational action.

Following this conversation, they asked themselves what they would achieve by overcoming inappropriate working facilities. Two particular outcomes immediately came to mind: the first was provide high-quality patient care and the second was attract and retain good staff. After some discussion, they agreed that providing quality patient care was a goal and something to aspire to; they were less clear, however, about whether attracting and retaining staff was a goal or just a means to an end. The idea of attracting and retaining staff suggested two strategies, since keeping good staff was different from gaining new ones. Both strategies in turn would help in achieving the patient goal. The resulting structure began to look like the one in Figure 3.20.

The group continued to explore the consequences of inappropriate working conditions before moving on to other “head” issues or issues at the top of a teardrop and laddering up from them. Before long the group had about fifteen candidate goals. They now needed to consider carefully how these goals related to one another.

They also knew that the next step would be to begin to prioritize where to focus their energy, as they would not be able to address all of the issues. . . .

In laddering up, sometimes the consequence of the issue is worded negatively. For example, when exploring the consequences of reduced funding, a city might find itself having to reduce services and thus not be able to achieve the goal of, for example, presenting itself as an attractive tourist destination. The link between the issue relating to reducing services would therefore negatively link to the goal of presenting an attractive tourist destination. However, it is also possible that in laddering up negative goals may emerge. These are ramifications for which converting them into a positive frame would not be seen as a realistic goal. For example, as a result of the issue of too few staff, there is the consequence of stress and burnout in staff. The group might agree that stress and burnout must be avoided at all costs. Converting this negative goal into a positive, namely avoid stress and burnout in staff, is unlikely to gain much attention. However, rewording the statement in this “positive” yet still rather negative way might prompt participants to generate a goal that says provide an enjoyable environment within which to work. The process of considering rewording the negative goal thus facilitates the generation of a new goal.

Once the laddering up from all “heads” of teardrops is complete and draft goals are identified, it is time to begin to explore how the goals relate to one another. It is unlikely at this stage that there are no connections across the multiple “ladders” that have now been created. Spend time considering how goals have an impact on one another.

Now It Is Your Turn for Some Practice!

Build the goals system for the interlinked issues area you have been working on. This will clarify the purposes of the organization.

Anti-Poverty Vignette

The top management team of a nonprofit alliance (a multiorganizational collaboration) focused on reducing poverty had just finished identifying their goals and were reviewing the system of goals they had created. They were surprised, and interested, to see that there were two dominant chains of goals (out of three) (see Figure 3.21).

The first chain targeted policy makers and comprised goals relating to working collaboratively with other organizations, growing public awareness, and influencing policy makers. The second chain of argument concentrated on goals relating to working with those in poverty and encompassed goals about gaining credibility with this population, giving support, and empowering those in poverty. The team appreciated that two of the alliance’s most important stakeholders had goals addressed toward them.

The third chain, however, was the one that they were most uncomfortable with. This chain focused on gaining funding in order to make sure the alliance survived. While this was of paramount importance, if they were going to be able to stay in business and continue the work, it seemed illegitimate at first to have this as a goal. On reflection, however, they concluded that it was in fact a very real and salient goal and one that they needed to work toward.

Perhaps most significantly, the group realized that their goals demanded totally different skills from staff members. In other words, the skills for influencing policy makers were completely different from the skills needed to work with those in poverty. Appreciating these two almost opposing strands of purpose was a real breakthrough for the group, and would not have surfaced without an exploration of the structure of the goals as a system of interconnected goals. The group did, however, need to discuss whether some goals might be purely for internal purposes and not disseminated to a wider audience.

Once the goals system has been developed from the issues, it is worth considering how it stacks up against existing goals and whether the existing goals should be added or not. In many organizations the goals that are publicly espoused are different from those used in practice, and it is worth exploring the connection between the two views of purpose. This exploration may lead to a shift in what is publicly stated and also what is told to staff. Public and nonprofit organizations typically publish their goals, and presumably they should be consistent with what the staff are working toward. More aspirational goals can also be added to the unfolding picture in a way that takes cognizance of the issues already captured and other goals. Ideally, the resultant goals system will provide a powerful message regarding the organization’s direction, and these goals will often be used as the basis for developing a mission or vision statement.

Fran’s Vignette Continued

Fran had managed to find a time for getting the senior management team together.

In tidying the new issue clusters that were emerging from a lot more statements, and considering the implicit goals, the team had begun to identify a goals system that would provide a focus for direction.

However, rather than getting a buy-in to the emergent goals system, there was resistance! She had thought that all of the senior leadership team saw the goals of the business school as she did. However, when they started laddering up to goals and reviewed the results, some members of the senior leadership team argued against a few of Fran’s proposed goals. They suggested some rewording to change the emphasis, and also suggested other goals. Moreover, they compared what Fran and they had captured with what had previously been presented to staff, on the basis of a previous strategy, and found a couple of anomalies. There were goals that were supposedly the focus of the school but in reality were not influencing practice in any noticeable way.

As they began to play with the goals structure, Fran also realized that there were a number of goals that were generic to all universities or business schools—for example, ensure high-quality learning—that did little to differentiate her school from others. The team began to focus their energies on considering what could be added that might provide differentiation and therefore potentially create a competitive advantage for the school (see Figure 3.22).

Fran also reminded them all of the goals of the university overall, since a new university-wide strategy had just been released. She wanted to make sure that there weren’t any instances in which the university’s direction and the direction of the school were diametrically or even slightly opposed. Thankfully, after reviewing the strategy document, they saw that the university’s strategy was sufficiently broad to allow the goals she and the team had developed to dovetail nicely with the wider organizational aspirations. This complementarity would allow the team to position the school so that it clearly contributed to helping fulfill the university’s aspirations.

Fran and her team now needed to test how the goals were supported by the issues, identify the key priorities, and ensure that the strategy was owned and understood by all. . . .

Identifying Central (Possible Priority) Issues

The map of issues will help in exploring emergent goals and also in developing a draft goals system. It will also give useful clues as to which issues are possible priorities. Most issue maps will contain a larger number of important issues than there is time, funding, personnel, or other needed resources to address effectively. Some means is therefore needed to determine where the most advantageous places are to focus attention and energy.

One way to establish priorities is to look at the structure of the map and identify which are the central issues—those that seem to be most knitted into other issues. Said differently, central issues therefore are those issues that have a high density of links around them. Central issues are usually good starting points for evaluating priorities. Although this characteristic seems to be focused solely on structure and not content, remember that the structure was derived from the content, and so an analysis of structure is also an analysis of content. Also bear in mind that in the process of tidying up the map, you are most likely to have finished with the most central issues in the center of the map in order to avoid unnecessary multiple crossed links.

Health Care Vignette Continued

The team had built and reviewed their goals map; they next needed to determine where to focus energy so as to achieve these goals.

The material was now in relatively neat causal clusters, which helped the team explore the structure of the map. However, they were a little surprised by some of the issues’ positions. Issues they had initially thought were really significant were now relatively peripheral, and some things they hadn’t even thought about had emerged as really central. For example, while they had recognized the importance of staff development, it had not really occurred to them how significant it was for staff to be able to work in a truly multidisciplinary manner and that this would influence considerably the better provision of training. They began to feel that they were getting a good handle on the situation and were beginning to identify a range of strategic actions that would help them in achieving their goals.

But there was still some exploration to do of the issue map—were there any other interesting properties of the map to take account of?

Identifying Feedback Loops

Seeing if there are any feedback loops is another important means of identifying priority issues. Feedback loops involve circular causality, which in a map shows up as a circle of arrows. The loop of arrows typically represents either a “vicious” or a “virtuous” circle. For example, the map could reflect that poor commitment of staff means more mistakes are being made, which causes demoralization of staff which in turn feeds poor commitment of staff—a vicious circle. Vicious and virtuous circles all have an even number of minus signs.

Sometimes feedback loops can be counterintuitive, so that without seeing them on a map nobody is aware of their effect on the future of the organization. Loops also can just be hard to see on a big map. When identified, however, loops are always worth exploring. This is because they reflect dynamic behavior. A strategy to stop a vicious circle is usually required; alternatively, a strategy to exploit a virtuous cycle may be needed.

Check first to ensure that all the links in a loop are correct. Check to see that all the links are causal, meaning they are means-end links rather than chronological ones. If the loop remains, then consider the nature of the feedback loop, since this can help in determining what action to take. For example, determine whether the loop is vicious or virtuous (see Figures 3.23a, 3.23b, and 3.23c). In these figures we show visually the behavior of both the vicious and virtuous cycles that can be created from the same feedback loop. Figure 3.23a shows the mapping logic of the feedback loop, and we have attempted to visualize this behavior in Figures 3.23b and 3.23c. In Figure 3.23b we show how this loop behaves as a vicious cycle in which, because of boredom from repetitive activity, good screening staff are resigning. This means the organization is losing the knowledge and experience of the screeners, which means inexperienced screeners are only able to do quite routine screening, rather than pay attention to people who may have a very hostile intent. Unfortunately, routine screening means boredom. Obviously there will be a limit to the continuous operation of the feedback loop, since at some point there will be no experienced screeners!

In Figure 3.23c we show this same feedback loop operating in a virtuous way in which the screener is experienced enough to spot hostile intent, which is not a boring activity, and therefore fewer screeners resign. This means that knowledge grows and there is a higher possibility of identifying hostile intent. Once again there will obviously be a limit to the cycles in which there is stability in the labor force and all screeners are experienced.

Vicious and virtuous circles can involve escalating behavior. This escalation can be in a virtuous manner of continuously improving the situation, or a vicious manner in which the organization is trapped in a downward spiral. Prior to declaring bankruptcy, the city of Detroit, Michigan, provided a good example of a vicious circle. The decline of the auto industry resulted in a lack of jobs, which negatively affected city tax resources, leading to tax increases. A lack of jobs and middle-class flight out of the city for a variety of reasons resulted in poorer residents, fewer taxpayers, less revenues, declining infrastructure and services, more crime, and a huge pension liability without resources to cover it. Declaring bankruptcy was one of the only ways of breaking out of the vicious circle, because it would allow a number of liabilities either to be written off or renegotiated.

Health Care Vignette Continued

The team had reviewed the issues and their impact on the goals and were seeking to gain further insights from their work.

They had noticed that there was a worrying feedback loop that was a vicious circle in which over time the situation would get continuously worse. One of the issues that greatly concerned them was increasing levels of staff disengagement. This in turn was causing increasing tensions between disciplines and thus conflict between services. As a result there were increasing retention concerns exacerbating insufficient staff resources (see Figure 3.24). They urgently needed to do something about this vicious circle—particularly as the loop by its nature dragged in a lot of other issues that were influencing statements in the loop.

As a result of this discussion, and further structural examinations, the team felt their strategy was coming together—now they had to make sure that everyone in the organization was familiar with it. . . .

Reaching Agreement on Goals and Prioritized Issues

Once you have found and dealt with any ”orphans” (issues that are not yet connected to the main body of the material), explored goals (are they good or bad outcomes “in their own right”), identified central issues (those that are intricately interwoven throughout the map), and identified feedback loops (dynamic behavior), review those issues that have emerged as priorities. These are candidates for strategy development. In the anti-poverty alliance vignette, you saw in Figure 3.21 what the group agreed were its goals and prioritized issues. In the case of The Loft, see Figures 2.22, 2.23, and 2.24 for similar maps that provided them an overall sense of purpose and direction (for example, advance the artistic development of writers) and laid the basis for further development and refinement of strategies to achieve the goals and fulfill the mission.

Now It Is Your Turn for Some Practice!

Economic Development Agency Vignette

The top management team of a local economic development agency was reviewing their strategy. They had a clear understanding of the goals, strategies, and actions and were working toward developing some performance indicators. After all, they needed to be able to demonstrate to the government agencies funding them that they were making progress. For each strategy they spent time considering how that particular strategy’s performance could be assessed, taking into account the information available and the appropriateness of the measure. They recognized that there is always a danger of encouraging unhelpful behaviors as a result of forcing quantitative measures only and ignoring important parts of the strategy that can only be “measured” qualitatively. It wasn’t long before they had a large number of performance indicators for each. They then winnowed this list down to around three to four indicators for each strategy, testing each against factors such as the time and effort to collect information.

One of the managers then suggested that it would be good to get a sense of where they currently were. In other words, he wanted to get a benchmark. The others quickly agreed, since they, too, wanted to make sure that the indicators they had devised would work in practice and that data required for the monitoring of the indicator would be available and appropriate.

For each strategy they prepared a flip chart sheet and taped it to a wall. The name of the strategy was written at the top of the sheet, and the performance indicators for that strategy were listed down the left-hand side. To the right of each indicator they then drew a horizontal line that ran to the right-hand edge of the flip chart sheet. The left-hand end of each line was labeled minus-30 percent, while the right-hand end of the line was labeled 100 percent. The reason for the minus-30 percent was because the team wanted to be sure that they hadn’t gone backward in terms of progress (this was for future assessments). Each team member was then given enough colored stick-on dots to assess each strategy’s performance against its particular performance indicators. Each team member positioned his or her dots where they felt they currently were as compared to where they expected to be at the end of six months—100 percent.

A number of the resulting assessments surprised the team. For example, one strategy was develop a highly skilled, appropriate, and flexible workforce, and this strategy had four potential performance indicators assigned. Each of the indicators was directed toward assessing how the organization was performing in relation to developing a highly skilled, appropriate, and flexible workforce, which would, along with other strategies, help them reinvigorate the area. However, rather than all being in agreement about where the organization currently was, there was a wide range of views concerning progress against one of the indicators—increase the number of completed training programs. How could there be such diversity of opinions? (See Figure 3.26.) They began to explore this surprising result.

One team member whose dot was showing −20 percent commented, “We have seen very few folks who both live and work in the area having completed the training programs we run.” This comment elicited an animated response. One person said, “Oh, I was envisaging that the indicator referred to anyone who either lived in or worked in the area we are responsible for.” The team realized that they had not been clear enough in the construction of the indicator—they were not sure exactly which population to focus on. They decided that it could relate to either those living in the area, those working in the area, or both. The performance indicator was reworded.

Now It Is Your Turn for Some Practice!

Think about how you can convert the work undertaken into a strategy document that is accessible to a wider audience. See Practice 8.

Health Care Vignette Continued

Having reviewed their nascent strategy map from a number of angles and been reassured it was now robust and coherent, the team needed to take the next step.

They were keen to ensure that everyone knew what the strategic plan was. Getting everyone together at once would be really difficult, if not impossible. They also thought that just circulating the document would not really get the staff’s attention. The document likely would be left unread and end up in a drawer or in cyberspace somewhere. In addition, the elements of the plan would not be understood. Including graphics and cartoons in the document might build some excitement and also would help capture minds and hearts, but that still would not be enough.

Then one of the team members suggested doing “road shows.” The team could present the strategic plan to fairly small groups in an interactive manner and include an explanation of the process of plan development. This would mean doing a number of presentations, which would take time, but gaining the understanding and commitment of the whole staff would make the effort worth it. Rather than burden the chief executive with the need to do all the presentations, the team decided that all of the management team would take turns. Each road show would be hosted by two members of the management team. This approach would have the additional benefit of showing that all members of the team understood the plan and were committed it. The team would also try to mix the presenters so that those with clinical backgrounds were paired with those without.

The rest of the team started to get excited about the prospect of the road shows. Members started suggesting nice graphics or cartoons that would stick in people’s minds. They also started discussing when and where these road shows might occur. . . .

Now It Is Your Turn for Some Practice!

Think about how you could present the strategic plan to other interested parties and also how you would assess its performance.