When I travel internationally, I always find it fascinating to visit the corner office of my client. Inevitably there is a map of the world on the wall, and you can bet that the center of the map is where you are standing. Yes, it’s more than a metaphor – we all really want to be the center of the universe.
Yet there is a significantly more important map than that of geography, and its creation and management is deeply undervalued in many firms. The stakes are high: in getting it right, you can release an unseen workforce both inside and within your partners and suppliers. By creating a very clear vision of where you are going and what needs to be done, you are releasing the power and alignment of your firm.
In this distracted age, clarity is compelling and it’s a secret weapon – and a tool to be used when there is a need for strategic change.
Why Your Organizations Thought Architecture Is so Important
Every firm has two versions of itself:
- The first being the “as is” version that’s on the org charts, product roadmaps and P&L’s. This version is typically built over a band of time and usually represents the last major success or battle the firm has fought. These are powerfully established patterns based on who you needed to be during the firm’s last significant challenge or market shift. Pinned in place by processes, procedures and compensation structures, they represent the “core operating system” for your firm.
- The second is the “as designed” mental map that the leaders have of their group’s role and how it relates to the organization’s changing goals, vision and values.
Spoiler alert: there is always a gap between these two versions. The trick is to get the “as designed” version to lead the firm to the right place.
The first job is to get very clear on the “as is” structure, which is usually deeper and more complex than anticipated. In working with a firm to accelerate its growth, an engagement typically begins by completing 1:1 dialogues with key senior leaders and subject matter experts. At this point, we begin a pen and paper sketch of how the firm’s leaders relate to their outside world and one another, which is updated after every discussion.
By asking clear questions and listening carefully to the way (and the words) they describe their role, as well as the desires of the end customers, internal clients and partners, we can begin to get a sense of the “as is” relationship map that is truly operating in the firm (which provides a very firm foundation for the version we are leading towards). Our task of leadership is to build the clear compelling path that unlocks the ability for the firm to get to its desired future.
Why is This so Important?
Humans are quite simply pattern-making machines. We travel the same route every day, walk the same path to our desk, use the same pen and tend to talk to a set group of people. We use patterns to manage our cognitive loads, which preserves energy for those unique and important tasks and transactions we need to complete.
This makes it very hard to change course from the “as is” to the “as designed” strategic path. We want to hold the new strategy at arm’s length, keeping it “out there” to avoid disrupting our well-worn paths.
Each leader reinforces this unseen “as is” map with how they go about implementing their agenda. Organization members create their maps from the way their leadership interacts, describe the challenges and invest in relationships. Even more important then what is said, is how the leader shows through their actions in communications, collaboration and daily interactions.
People Underestimate the Persistence of Internal Cognitive Maps
You may have had heard the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” which unfortunately is true – especially if you are not careful to align everyone’s cognitive map in parallel with the strategy. As an extreme example from World War II, consider the case of a Japanese soldier who remained in the jungles of the Philippines for 29 years after the cessation of hostilities.
While you may not have any examples quite that out of alignment, I’m quite confident that many of your key support teams are running on outdated versions of their cognitive maps. Why can I assert this? It happens in nearly every firm I’ve worked with. In fact, it’s what makes disruption possible.
How to Flip This Script
Let’s take one powerful change wave as an example: savvy senior leaders are shifting from a top-down world to a set of lateral internal networks as the core path for value development in firms (this is a big idea – see resources here, here and here).
While vertical relationships on the org chart are necessary to create order by flowing accountability and resources in a predictable way, influence is increasingly a lateral path. This is due to the shift from the richest knowledge of what’s happening being at the edge of the firm, rather than the top. This makes senior leaders the platform builders and those on the front lines the fast-acting, strategic implementers. This can only work if there is highly robust two-way communications between peers in the group.
To begin this lateral network force multiplier, I have worked with senior teams, in collaboration with the CTO, to create clarity for firms in two dimensions:
- The first is using their skill in architecture, they help the firm unpack the key drivers and impact of external technical impacts.
- Secondly, they can then help firms set mind map and vocabulary about the role of internal teams to address these changes. The deliverable of this work is a clear map of the prioritized challenges of the firm and how they are addressing them. This maps onto the “as is” and “as designed” structure to provide specific actions that need to be taken.
Once this work is done, the real works begins. New organizational maps are best shared in applied settings, where they can be connected to the real work of the firm, reinforcing how this view is going to lead us toward significant advantage. I have seen firms try to “train” these into place, and this nearly always does not go well – the old maps will persist. Until the new patterns become new cognitive maps, the strategy shift if not complete.
A note of caution – it’s vitally important not to flood the organization with changed maps on a repeated basis. This will produce gridlock and force people back to their comfort zone mindset of the old view of pattern.
How This Creates a Cumulative Positive Effect
People underestimate the quality and quantity of discretionary moments in the lives of their staff, suppliers and customers. When the right next step has been clearly described and the paths paved, aligned action kicks in and builds on itself.
In this day of distraction, design, simplicity and clarity are highly sought after. When the leadership team has done the work to build a solid platform of context and vocabulary for the whole team, cross functional team interaction gets much easier and more fluid. The time to negotiate with one another is reduced, and those discretionary moments can all be aligned.
Final Thoughts
Today we are competing not just for products and service markets, but truly for the attention of our team members, clients and partners. Those that win the emerging battle for attention will move their firm forward and get themselves in a cycle of positive talent attraction.
If you are in a position to create the clarity to release and align growth in your firm, I would love to help you accelerate that work. If you’d like to chat, please give me a call at 847-651-1014 or use this link to set up a 20-minute, (no-strings-attached) consult.
