Anatomy of an Opportunity Map
An opportunity map visualizes how people approach a goal and how an organization supports those approaches.
An opportunity map has two main sections — top and bottom — and five primary elements (numbered above).
The top section includes the overarching goal (1), the neighborhood of attention (2), towers of mental attention (3), and windows of interior cognition (4). The bottom section shows the organization’s capabilities (5). Windows in these lower towers describe what resources or programs the organization has to support the cognition and mental spaces found above. their goal. Towers with little or no support may represent opportunities. (Though, not all "opportunities" are created equal, as we'll see below.) Once leaders can see where there are less-supported modes of thought, feeling, and decision-making, they can decide whether there may be a strategic advantage in supporting those modes.
The parts of an opportunity map correspond to altitudes of planning.
An urban planner works at various scales. There are times when she needs to consider how a street is composed; At other times, she has to think about how those streets integrate with a neighborhood, and still other times when she has to think about how the neighborhoods function within the city as a whole or even the region of the state. It’s similar to museums. There are times when museum staff need to make decisions at the individual level (visitor experience), the community level (marketing and communications), the ecosystem level (strategic planning), and everything in between.
The parts of a map correspond to the scale of the decision at hand. Imagine yourself in an airplane on your final descent over a city. Details become clearer as you get closer to the ground, but that doesn’t make one view better than another.
1) The Person’s Goal (10,000 feet)
Everything in the map is related to a single goal. (A goal refers to a person’s goal, not an organization’s aims or mission.) The goal in the example above is Supporting Future Museum Leaders. It’s from a MaP Community Lab that studied how current museum leaders approach helping emerging professionals develop new skills and advance their careers.
At this altitude, the details of the city are impossible to discern, but we can see we’re approaching our destination (the goal), and we can see whether the city is big or small and the density of different areas. The north side of the city is sparse, while the south side has many more buildings. There are lots of lights on over here, but it’s pretty dark on that side of town … Observations at this altitude invite more questions. Why do the neighborhoods over there look abandoned? Are we not supporting people in that neighborhood, or is it that we just don’t know enough?
2) Neighborhoods (5,000 feet)
An opportunity map typically has multiple neighborhoods of mental attention. A neighborhood describes a category of thinking associated with the person’s goal. The example above shows just one neighborhood: Recognize Potential. At the Neighborhood level, we’re at an altitude where we can begin to see some characteristics of a part of the city, but not a lot of detail about the buildings themselves.
3) Towers (1,000 feet)
At this altitude, you can discern individual buildings. Each building is a tower in our map, and each tower represents a more specific area of mental attention related to the goal in question. Within the neighborhood of Recognize Potential, we can see towers of attention like Decide if they’re ready (to take on more responsibility) and Wonder about my role/influence (on the emerging professional).
4) Windows (10 feet)
You’re hovering outside the windows of the buildings. But it’s not specific people you see inside the towers — You see the inhabitants' inner thinking, feelings, and guiding principles. These are the things that guide their decisions as they address their goal. Each “window” is a statement constructed similarly: It’s always written in first person, present tense, and uses the person's language. Their words, not ours. Here are some examples of interior cognition from the example above:
make sure I assess employees by their experience, not their degrees
think the employee is ready to be promoted, just not at our museum
believe they may have the capacity to be an executive director when they start
5) Piles of capabilities and supporting bricks (10 feet)
At the same altitude, we can see piles of capabilities — subterranean towers corresponding to the towers of mental attention above. The piles are comprised of bricks. Each brick represents a particular program or tactic (e.g., communication pattern) that the organization has in place to support the mindset above.
Some piles have few bricks or none. This suggests that the organization has overlooked this area of mental attention or is not well suited to support it. Other piles have many bricks, which shows that the org has lots of supports — perhaps that area of attention corresponds with the thinking styles that are prevalent among staff — or has an inherent ability to support that thinking concerning this goal.
A pile with no bricks tends to suggest a problem or opportunity. It’s safe to assume that an organization trying to understand people with this overarching goal corresponds to a strategic initiative. (After all, if the goal isn’t of value to the organization, why bother?) In that case, an empty pile represents an opportunity for the organization. If the organization can create programs or more effective communication methods in those areas, it will be investing in supporting how people approach a goal (not how we assume they do), based on the evidence that's accrued.
Conversely, a pile with lots of bricks suggests a well-supported area of mental attention. (The effectiveness of those supports is a separate question, but we can see they’re there.) The corresponding towers above are probably areas of mental attention the organization is naturally suited to support. Perhaps these mental spaces come more naturally to staff.
Why bother?
I wonder if this seems overwrought and unnecessary to some.
Why can’t we just ask people what’s important to them and then make changes based on what we hear?
How to ask is a topic for a different article. Opportunity maps are outputs, so I’ll focus on the second part of that imagined question, which really boils down to: Why can’t we just keep doing what we have been doing?
As opposed to what many museums usually do, opportunity maps are a systematic and externalized way to make decisions related to how they support (or “engage”) people. Without an external system, we carry things in our heads, and our heads are inevitably subject to biases. Museums staff may be experts, but they’re still human, and — biases aside — they all have different experiences that color their interpretation of “feedback”. Some interpretations seem so obvious to us that we can’t imagine how a colleague could see things differently, so opportunity maps help create internal alignment as much as they reduce bias. A map creates a source of truth that lives out in the world — something staff can gather around and use to extract their own assumptions.
Good things can still happen without a map, but a map they’re more likely to happen with one.
Kyle
P.S. I learned about OMs from Indi Young, and I recommend reading Indi’s explanation of OMs. This article describes OMs in relation to cultural institutions and serves as a point of reference for MAP Community projects and discussions.
Interested in developing an opportunity map that describes how your visitors or members approach their goals? Contact us.
