Synergy Mapping on November 16th
No one has time. They make time.
Elisabeth Gravil had an interesting take on last week’s invitation to map the relationships between your museum’s various initiatives and resources. Elisabeth used a few AI models to rethink and apply the diagrams in a museum context. Check out her post on LinkedIn for more. Bravo, Elisabeth!
I took an hour to try the exercise myself — mapping MAP’s programs. You can view the canvas here. (I even added some MAP characters to illustrate the nodes in the network, à la Disney, because why not.)
Museums As Progress is not as big as The Walt Disney Company yet, so my map is thin compared to those I shared in last week’s letter. My map is also incomplete both in terms of the project nodes and the relationships between the parts. I gave myself a limited amount of time to sketch out the relationships between MAP’s little ecosystem, partly because I imagine one of the things that prevents us from examining our work in ways like this is our fear of imperfection or incompletion. Doctors should know how their medicine tastes.
I’ll bet MAP is smaller than the organization that you work at, too. You probably have many more projects and assets to map than I do.
Still, the exercise showed me that even a small organization can use this approach. That makes sense, given that every organization — even each person — has challenges and opportunities they’re trying to address. Strategy isn’t only for large organizations.
Maybe more of you tried creating your own maps last week, and I just don’t know about it. But I’ll bet many did not try, and I wonder why that is. I can’t imagine it’s related to the credibility of the exercise. Disney has seen some success over the years. If this visualization exercise is good enough for them, surely a museum can benefit from the model.
Maybe we’re all too busy to find time for an exercise like this, which would be sad and frightening. After all, if everyone is too busy for strategy, then working is like driving around at night with all the car headlights turned off. Everyone is moving, but no one knows where they’re going. Collisions are all we can count on.
So, I’m inviting you to make time to make time to make your own map. Together. Join me in three weeks for a MAP & Tell session on synergy mapping — a free session, open to all. Learn more and add it to your calendar.
Have a good week,
Kyle
