And an end to all this frustration.
I created a series of visual frameworks built on a set of 11 pieces of logic within which to think ‘outside the box’ and cause consensus and under- standing within it.
The primary objective of Contextual Mapping© and Progressive Framework Methodology©is to get the organization leaders and partners, of whatever denomination, into the most important and meaningful conversation possible. By reframing conventional goals, imperatives and means within a common visual and verbal language, organizations can avoid and resolve any linguistic misunderstanding and friction that come with most highly agenda-ed discussions.
The aims of such an intervention are straightforward:
1. Complete understanding and a team-wide belief in the capability to deliver the objectives, co-created and refined throughout each iteration.
2. A framework upon which to build assets. From the insights collected, build a set of hypotheses from which to increase chances of success and mitigate risk.
3. A common and committed set of tasks throughout the teams all understood by the people who have to help to deliver them.
4. Increased richness in the quality of the solution through broader analysis of the ‘whole’.
5. Consistent planning and programme management across and supported by the whole enterprise or social system based on proven techniques of value management.
6. Deep diving into the causes of the problems and removing the temp- tations of superficiality and effects of problems.
7. Remove the risk of solutions looking for problems and fitting the situ- ation to convenient ‘closed solutions’.
8. A common language that increases efficiency of operation and can be sustained and developed very fast and over long periods of time. 9. Disclose fully the differences between divisions or individuals in a
respectful, innovative and valuable way.
10. Spot early weaknesses in the current infrastructure thereby avoiding and preventing problems rather than waiting for the dysfunction and disconnections to cause larger problems.
Figure 8.2 The outcomes are digitally stored for ongoing hypothesis and inferences to be worked through by the teams
Figure 8.3 Clarity and focus emerge once the development map is created after the initial intervention and resulting synthesis are done
11. Embrace creativity across the entire business system.
12. Assess all of the opportunities and properly understand the stress points across the whole enterprise and system.
13. Begin to identify the real values and strengths and drive for coherence amongst the team to create a shared focus around strategy, tactics, implementation and direction.
14. Build powerful relationships at senior level to overcome political and systemic imbalance.
15. Show how innovative, properly thought through and integrated thinking is achievable through engineering a common frame for agreement and purpose.
Through our own organization’s approach using our techniques and frameworks the aim is to create a new world beyond branding. We deliver ‘constructive interruption’, which accelerates organizational self-transfor- mation. By fusing a visual vocabulary with a universal business equation our aim is to crystallize and carry meaning and motivation right across an organization. To that extent, our interventions and their effects are ‘of the brand’, but they also ‘are the brand’. Brand, after all, is the totality of orga- nizational meaning.
By intervening in the status quo to reframe, reconfigure and remould the totality of an organization’s purpose within the minds of its leaders (and partners), we aim to build a broader and deeper constituency of purpose around the brand. We ‘co-create’ pictures that frame the energy of organizations and make things happen.
‘You are what you edit’: the power of positive context
Almost all the issues we face in our work with clients across the world and all of the misunderstandings that we have discussed here seem to me ulti- mately related to context, whether personal or organizational. We therefore now desperately need new and more innovative approaches to tackle both of these together. Content and content management just doesn’t seem to help. It just doesn’t figure. Why, when there is so much data and information knowledge and reference material so liberally available, does decision making not improve? Why are consumers no better served? Or at least no more fulfilled? Why are decisions made in
isolation of the whole argument or all the facts? Why are so many people in the businesses so demoralized and so desperate for things to change?
I don’t really understand it. People from every walk of life and every discipline, people I respect so much and with so much experience, seem so prone to make decisions based on their own best practice. I believe it’s probably worst practice when it lacks proper context.
My definition of context may well suit my argument and I make no apologies for that but I believe it mounts up to having the best view of all your surroundings. I believe it amounts to being in receipt of all the facts about the whole case or the whole. It’s expected for advisers to have a vision. They are the ‘experts’; they should know what they are talking about; they do it every day, have a specialist skill. They have their lingo, their terms, their jargon; they have an industry language and by and large they all speak it very well.
We’ve described here how the inhabitants of boards and owners of systems badly lack this common language and they have no shared framework. Would-be purveyors of ‘beyond branding’ techniques must now start by putting themselves in the mind of our mythical organization leader who is so confused or, if not, is so wilfully complacent.