The Advocate Team

In an ideal world, there would be a core group of early adopters – advocates – interested parties to help inform, design and promote your Social System Map.

In an ideal world, there would be:

• Somewhere between 8 and 20 of these advocates,
  • Representing all the distinct stakeholder groups or different perspectives your network engages,
  • Psyched about the vision of having a Social System Map for their network,
  • Willing and influential enough to help convince others in the network to share their info in sumApp once the project is launched to the whole network,
  • Willing to give input into:
    • Survey design,
    • Connection questions,
    • Informational texts (if only to tell you what’s confusing after everything has been drafted),
    • Map prototype & design
  • Willing to be part of a pilot test & map prototype
    • and tolerant of having to re-do the survey if things change,
  • Interested in participating in SenseMaking activities with the completed map,
  • Able to encourage others to engage in SenseMaking as well
  • Likely to embed SenseMaking-with-the-map activities into ongoing decision-making activities of the network.

In the real world – we generally don’t get all of that in one go. We get a few people who give survey-design input, some others who will help invite people to participate, others who will SenseMake. Or we get a dedicated group – that represents only one or two stakeholder groups.

The truth is, the smaller the group, the easier the project – fewer meetings, less word-smithing, less coordination, less differing-perspectives-conflict. But easier isn’t usually what makes the final outcome great. So there’s a tension there. So just remember that according to Glenda Eoyang of Human Systems Dynamics tensions in a system are what generates the energy for transformation.

Your job, as a map maker, is to manage that tension and keep the project moving forward.

Employ the ‘Meet Them Where They’re At Principle’ while continually nudging toward a more rigorous advocate group and a more righteous process. But don’t hold things up for some impractical or not-shared ideal – because eventually you’ll be able to use the ‘Show Don’t Persuade Principle’ to help them understand why you were nudging them.