I’m not very familiar with The Hague: whilst i’ve visited before, i’ve never stayed here, and lack the broad mental map of how everything connects up. Fortunately, the bike is a good way to rectify this: as i cycle from the ‘known’ to the ‘unknown’, i build out my conception of how it all fits together. I hold this map on different levels: the highest level being where The Hague sits within the Netherlands, then how different districts fit together, and how different streets and turns relate to each other.
Sometimes my mental model is wrong: i take what i think will be a short cut, but get lost, or it takes longer. Sometimes i am surprised when i stumble across something familiar, and adapt my mental map accordingly.
Funnily enough, this dynamic mental mapping of new locations is a challenge for computers, despite being so natural for mere humans.
Think about when you joined your Organisation: how did you build your understanding of how it ‘fit’ together, and in which dimensions did you do this?
On the one hand, the geography of a campus, on another, the domains and structural entities of production, and finally the social and tribal groupings. How often did you have to roam to find these out?
Use your sixty seconds today to ask yourself this:
Is your conception of the Organisation you are in ‘real’, or a map unique to you?
How can you support others to draw their map?
I hope you are enjoying Social Leadership Daily: we have our first online community meet-up on the 29th April. In this one hour session i will share some of the thinking behind this work, about being ‘in practice’, as well as inviting you to share your experiences and ideas about Social Leadership in action.