Change Management maps—a map that sets context for changes to come.

In our third post on types of maps we take a look at Change Management maps which help set the context for upcoming implementations of important strategic imperatives set forth by te leaders of an organization, in response usually to a changing industry or marketplace or both. This requires an integrated effort that if not communicated well to employees can be disastrous on rollout, creating even more friction than is usual, which then complicates everything.

Hers the specifics surround this type of map.

WHAT IS A CHANGE MANAGEMENT MAP?

Not many employees embrace change, purely because staying in ones comfort zone feels a lot safer and easier. In order to motivate and sustain a productive work environment, employees need to understand and picture the change process and the benefits thereof.

A Change Management Map will compare contrasting states. This means that a Change Management Map will depict how things are at present and highlight the aspects that are causing the downfall (pain) on one side and on the other side it will show the future state where all the challenges are solved (gain).  Therefore, two opposing views are shown side by side.  The key would be to link the two sides by a ‘bridge’. This represents the journey of change.  When employees can see what lies ahead and the benefits of a new gainful state, they are more inclined to accept the challenge of change.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES AND BUSINESS IMPACT

Learning objectives of this map, as well as the impact that it has on a business, could include: 

• Represent the case for change and benefits.

• Appreciate how things will be different and why it is a good thing.

• Diffuse resistance to change and gain support rather that obstruction.

• Support open conversations about change.

•  Limit the cost of sabotaged efforts.


To see an example of a Brand Engagement map, GoTo:
http://www.learningvisuals.com/Blogart/fuel_efficiency.jpg
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Next article we will take a look at the third kind of learning map, Change Management.
learning maps, the learningmap, learning map, learning visuals
Ne
Bill Hinsch is the original learning map artist in America, and utilizes

 the map as one tool for various visualization methodoigies at 

Learning Visuals, www.learningvisuals.com

Brand Engagement: The Quest For Identification

The second in a series of types of maps, today we cover Brand Engagement.

WHAT IS A BRAND ENGAGEMENT MAP?

Brand engagement grows profitability. An external  brand image is very useful to deliver on customer experiences and exceed expectations. Therefore each employee needs to engage with, and commit to, your brand.

This is an environment map these values will typically be expressed as a list of words. The challenge is to turn these words into competencies that people are prepared to deliver on. The first step is to help people understand that they already have their own values and then introduce and explain that a company and brand has values two. The second step is to identify types of employees and organization and group the job functions into a range of functional categories. For example one would not put drivers in the same group as call center agents. The next step would be to look at each functional group and unpack how they could deliver on the values relative to their role. that focuses on the business brand values.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Again, consider what the business would like to achieve by using this type of map. Some learning objectives could include: 

• Identify brand values
• Link brand values to personal values• • Identify brand elements
• Link brand values to roles and behaviors.

IMPACT TO THE BUSINESS

A Brand Engagement Map will assist the business in achieving:


• Improved brand alignment 
• Improved brand compliance
• Living the brandImproved brand value
• Allowing employees and associates and leaders to "live the brand". 

An example of the last point is Harley-Davidson in Milwaukee Wisconsin.

A stroll through their plant will afford one a view of how each employee embodies the brand. Any one of them could be a lone rider on a hog—and often are.

To see an example of a Brand Engagement map, GoTo:
http://www.learningvisuals.com/Blogart/BrandEngagement_Volvo.png
ne
Next article we will take a look at the third kind of learning map, Change Management.
learning maps, the learningmap, learning map, learning visuals
Ne
Bill Hinsch is the original learning map artist in America, and utilizes

 the map as one tool for various visualization methodoigies at 

Learning Visuals, www.learningvisuals.com

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The 10 types of learning maps

What if you could align your entire organization with one piece of art?

That essentially is what a learning map is. I call them Learning Visuals 
which is my brand of the form.

Let me explain briefly what they are and what they do.

A learning visual or learning map engages employees around the critical 
business issues of their company. The CEO, CLO, HR Leader or any 
division chiefs are usually the buyers.

An engagement usually involves a small learning group that is taken 
through a learning flow, via a large poster sitting on the table, and a
dialogue script with cards, that will address major issues. The visual 
itself is an important part of the engagement. It is very effective 
at giving a representation of where the business sits currently factored 
against its history and where its going in the future. (That's called a 
Big Picture map). It level sets the learning experience so young 
employees or new employees understand the same things as 
veterans of the company who may have been there 20 to 30 years.

The critical thinking is achieved by using cards and exercises that 
are peripheral to the map. The visual, which can be a metaphor, or a strung 
together series of metaphors, tells the story.

Usually an engagement is 60 to 90 minutes long. It may be 
conducted in conference rooms in a rolling implementation 
over time, or a "big bang" implementation where 500 people 
are in a ballroom with 50 tables, ten people to each table.

Sometimes video is combined with the experience, or  breakout sessions.
And in a big bang rollout—the leader often sets up the learning
with a speech. Sometimes there is a lot of surrounding hoopla. Or
the whole thing might be in the context of a conference or an offsite
meeting of the company.

There are other hybrid engagements that include a learning 
map in tandem with other methodologies, such as World Cafe 
dialogue, discussion circles, physical learning through outside activities, etc.

In the series of blogs I will cover the ten types of maps. there 
may be others, but this covers a wide enough gamut for readers 
of this blog, so they may understand the various types of a learning
map or learning visual (by the way there are approx. ten
companies in the world that do learning maps under various names. 
Please contact me and I will give you websites and a profile of each, 
so you can hire the right company for you to do your learning map project 
them to do your learning map project.

My aim is to bring awareness around the methodology, and offer a source 
of information for those that want to utilize this excellent approach.

our first type of map is an Onboarding and Induction application:

1. Onboarding and Induction map

WHAT IS AN ONBOARDING AND INDUCTION MAP?

The success of finding, keeping and growing a strategy is dependent 
on your  employees getting the right start. Understanding their role, the 
contribution that they can make and exploring the synergies between 
divisions is critical to ensuring new recruits hit the ground running in 
their first days.

The aim of this map is to introduce the business (usually for new employees) 
and at the same time allow them to see themselves in the the visual, and their 
important roles in the business.

An Onboarding and Induction Map is typically an environment map.  This map 
could show businesses, business units, departments, functional areas, customer 
types and even competitors in a ‘town’ type setting.  In addition to this structural 
representation of a business, one can introduce characters and roles and show 
them interacting in accordance with the company and the accepted norms of the 
organization or vice versa. The learning experience is about making links and 
seeing how everything fits together. For example, demonstrating the biggest 
buildings as the biggest company or department in the business group, following
 the purchase to payment cycle through the ‘world’ of the client, looking at 
process steps or the relationship between any entities or characters.

Always consider what you would like to achieve using a map. Typically, 
such a map would include the following learning objectives:

 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

•  Link to individual behaviors introduce ‘what we do’

•  Understand history and brand

•  Understand corporate structure

•  Understand enterprise language

• Identify roles and responsibilities

IMPACT TO THE BUSINESS

The impact that this type of learning map can make on a business is valuable. 
Here are some :

•  Reduce employee turnover

•  Improve employee survey results

•  Reduce on-boarding cost

•  Optimize individual performance faster

Here at this link you can see an actual Onboarding and Induction map—at an early stage of development:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/gnabiy7jzkmll58/LumberCompany.png

Next blog will cover the 2nd map application: Brand Engagement.

Bill Hinsch is the original learning map artist in America, and utilizes

 the map as one tool for various visualization methodoigies at 

Learning Visuals, www.learningvisuals.com

Business Could Be Better

I've had the extreme benefit to have had two long careers in businesses about as different as can possibly be, but also polar opposites in terms of the leadership equation. 

One was a long standing, staid business, the other a sexy start up. Each had their benefits and not-so-great aspects. But having experienced 30 years of observing corporate life through these two lenses has had me thinking a lot about how businesses should be, rather than how they really are.   

The negatives of each weighed heavily upon me. To the point that they eclipsed the enjoyment of the benefits.

By nature I am an optimistic person most of the time, so the realization that the negatives tended to outweigh the positives left me dumbfounded. The good things were really good. Why couldn't it always be good I wondered? Was I overly sensitive? Was I simply not well suited for corporate life, being somewhat of a free-thinker and not fitting well within any structured environment, especially when controlled by others? This view seemed to win out after i started my own business, and I found less to be unhappy about even though I was not making as much money. Like an old colleague once said "listen Hinsch, when you become the owner, you can do what you damn well please, until then keep quiet".

At least my success and failures were in my own hands now and a causal relationship between my actions and results could be seen, rather than obscured by other factors. or other's intentions.

After reflecting a lot on this it hit me: most of the unhappiness I experienced was directly related to the "leader's"  imperatives shifting as the business evolved. In their quest to be successful themselves, a common denominator emerged: In both businesses, the pressure mounted on the leaders and they took steps to turn the businesses around. In doing so they adhered to close counsel of just a few people rather than seeking wisdom from others or attempting to unleash the power of the spirit of their workers. In both instances, a tendency to allow independent action in a more entrepreneurial earlier phase of the business gave way to less tolerance for individuality as "things became more serious".  in both instances my own spirit, usually strong and intact, became infected when this push came to shove.

This exposed my problem areas. The obverse side of my independent nature and ability to operate well without a lot of direction (good things usually wanted in a worker) was that when more control needed to be applied so that the org's direction could be assured, my independent and self-actualizing mode stood out like a peg that needed to be hammered down to the same level as the whole.  Marching in lockstep to the vision becomes the most important thing. Anyone not doing this threatens the advance in a new direction. 

Yet, ironically, times of change creating the crucible that push leaders to administer more control, is also the time when independent action is needed most. This is anti-intuitive —a dichotomy hard  for leaders to navigate.

It takes a person with a secure sense of self to see when independence is a good thing, and when its not, and requires great skill in differentiating the duality in dealing with people so their spirit is not broken and the independence that is at the heart of innovation is preserved and even put to service toward the changed direction.

 All too often, as with me, a knee-jerk reaction is to call out the ones that do not conform as being "not on the bus" and therefore candidates for extraction from the tribe. When formerly the independent streak could be seen as a positive tendency toward innovation, it now was seen as threatening to the combined effort necessary to get through the challenging times—in other words, a distraction. Its like when in  a lifeboat separated from the downed mothership. if you want to make it to the next shore, best not to have folks in it that want to do their own thing. 

But what if their thing is constructing sails that get you faster to the shore? It may not be seen clearly what the outlier is up to. It takes careful assessment, and maybe even talking to the person to gain their perspective rather than automatically assuming, because they are not in lockstep they lack the necessary conforming gene.

This is where real leadership gets to be a real challenge.

This becomes even more of a problem in the future as work teams get more dispersed by geographies, the work becomes irrelevant fast to the individual with goals for themselves that supercede the organization's and there is less culture and loyalty sufficient to bind people together making control easier. "Go fuck yourself boss—I have my kids ballgame tonight".

What becomes apparent is that all people within the org need to become their own leader, rather than dependence upon the archaic leadership approach born in the industrial revolution and still hampering us today where "the leader' is seen standing on the ramparts, pointing the way, and cajoling all the proletariat to follow, pistons pumping and gears turning in synchrony. 

Today's world is increasingly asynchronous. Workers are smarter, they have their own minds about things. There's a rift between the diverse multi generation's world views. A millennial may as well be an alien species to a boomer, and vice versa.

The designated leader increasingly finds herself needing to be an orchestrator of activity rather than the font of knowledge whom can't be seen as not having "the answer" both to her minions "below her" or her "superiors"' whom she "reports" to. Even the language gets in the way, so hierarchical it's as stifling as living in a caste society.

When leaders can give way to orchestrator's and everyman becomes his own leader, we have a recipe for the new org. In stream with it will probably be a legion of freelancing specialists networked with those on the inside and also their own networks on the outside, an extension that benefits the org without the additional overhead. 

In this, America leads the way. It might be the last thing we truly lead the world with, but it might also be our salvation since an operational model such as this defeats the low cost labor paradigm that advantages low paying economies still invested in the command and control model we are freeing ourselves from. 

Bill Hinsch is the original learning map artist and developed many of the visual techniques used today in delivering strategic visualization. He is president of Learning Viasuals and can be contacted at bill@learningvisuals.com

How learning maps became popular purveyors of strategic information.

“How do you know where you're going if you don't know where you've been”

― Todd Stocker

I'll kick off my first blog post with something near and dear 

to my heart—the learning map.

Recently my former company Root Learning, sent me a letter 

asking me to stop using a URL domain name "thelearningmap.com" 

for trademark infringement. (little do they know that the domain 

is owned by Axel Meierhoefer, not me).

I HAD designed the site for Axel whom I know. 

I responded to this bullying explaining that the trademarked term 

has fallen into generic use, having been popularized to a 

point where it's been included in other trademarked names such 

as Dynamic Learning Maps, and Collaborative Learning Maps,

and also been incorporated in the language of training 

around the world. 

What I was struck by is that all these companies using the 

term have no idea where the technology originated nor how 

the term came to be in the first place.

So this seems like a logical place to start my blogging adventure.

The learning map was with us way before a RootMap existed—

going back to the early 1980s in Sweden.  It variously was called 

the ARBETSDUK, meaning Work-sheet or Workcloth and Lärduk—

a term which was coined by the Foresight Group much later in 1995 

or so on an attempt to get into the business of maps.

Klas Melander is generally thought of as the originator of the Work 

Cloth, but the antecedents of it go back to a program in the US military

to train soldiers upon return to the US after World War ll.

The first learning maps were born in Sweden when Mellander and a

group of colleagues were hired at SAS Airlines and formed the SAS 

Business Consultants group and around 1983. But the leader of SAS.

Jan Carlzon had previously placed the first shot across the bow 

with his Little Red Book (http://www.slideshare.net/karina_nik/lets-get-in-there-and-fight-by-jan-carlzon-sas that raised awareness of employees' on business issues within SAS 

using metaphoric cartoons in an engaging dialogue with them, very 

personal, It had data, and customer service advice and observations.

Mellander went on to form his first company—LMI for Learning 

Methods International where the true first learning maps were 

employed at SAS, Volvo and SAAB among others.

Meanwhile, The learning map first landed in America in a joint  

venture with Tom Peters Group, SAS Business Consulting Group,

 and Mellander’s LMI on something called “Value for The Customer”. 

Micahel Pieschewski was largely responsible for developing this seminal

 learning map launched in America around 1990. 

Around 1990,  along came Randy Root who had learned of the work 

cloth/lärduk from the Foresight Group in Sweden.  Possibly 

misunderstanding the translation of the word Lärduk he 

termed it “learning map” because he thought, mistakenly, that 

Lärduk meant “learning matte”. He then trademarked this around 1993. 

There are varying accounts of the following but recounts 

what I've been able to piece together in talking with the

 principles. Randy had shoe-horned his way into Göran 

Johansson’s learning map project with Preston Trucking 

who had brought him to America.  Preston was aware and 

impressed with the SAS “The Challenge” project in which Göran 

had been involved. With Göran’s initial architecting of the work, Randy 

who had been charged with the visual part, later took over the entire

 project from Goran who went back to Sweden. Presto!—Root Learning 

was born.

After the learning map was introduced here, in quick succession Paradigm 

Learning launched Discovery Maps as a spinoff , and Applied  

Learning Labs came up with the Knowledge Map and later the Conversation 

Map with the startup of it's sister company, Healthy Interactions, 

dedicated to a single subject—diabetes.

The methodology then traveled back to Europe with Xallax and Dialogbild in Germany, 

and Big Picture Learning in the UK. Downunder, Traniac in South Africa and 

Assured in NewZealnd spun off aspects of learning maps with hybrid 

map approaches that hearken back to the original efforts of the Swedes 

incorporating gaming concepts, workshop components, puzzle exercises, 

competitions, dialog circles, and video.

But the venerable learning map, no matter what its called,  is at the 

heart of all these, because of its low cost, workability, appealing 

application, and effectiveness in reaching the hearts and 

minds of workers.

Bill Hinsch is the original learning map artist in America, and utilizes

 the map as one tool for various visualization methodoigies at 

Learning Visuals, www.learningvisuals.com