Map your expertise

Yesterday I lamented the waste of not knowing what people have experienced when they join the team. So here’s what to do: Map the expertise.

Not a spreadsheet or a folder of resumes/CVs that no one will ever read. Make a map of your expertise and make it visible and available. I call them ‘experience maps’.

1. Schedule an 'experience share' meeting now.

2. Give people time to prepare their map.

3. Everyone talks through what they’ve done and shows their experience map.

4. The map lives on and can be updated over time.

A learning-focused organisation sees the efficiency, and practicality of involving people to capture, hear and see the experience in the business. And then they leverage it. It’s wasteful, ignorant and unproductive not to.

What about you? What skills or experience do you have that people wouldn’t know? 

There is power in 'collective sense'

There is power in 'collective sense'. This week I'm posting on sensemaking, the skill in understanding the deeper meaning of something.

How do you do it? Write some stuff down and write it in a layout that looks more like a map rather than a list. When you do this in a meeting and other people can see that map, you start to do ‘collective sensemaking’. Making sense of things together.

Collective sense is in contrast to lone voices and egos who dominate meetings, propose solutions prematurely, or shut people down. It’s in contrast to the loud speakers, the interrupters and the repeaters. Collective sensemaking makes better leaders, and it's a skill today's leaders need to sharpen up on.

I’ll leave you with these four templates from my book ‘Making Sense: A Handbook for the Future of Work’:

1. a simple line or continuum

2. a set of stairs (have you ever presented information about 'stepping up or improving'; this is an ideal shape and template)

3. a path or road with signs (journey, anyone?)

4. network diagram (from earlier this week). Give a like if you've learned something this week about sensemaking.

🤔 What are you trying to make sense of at work? 

Minutes are meaningless

We still use an archaic 18th Century practice of capturing ‘little notes’ or minutes in our meetings ... in our 21st Century workplaces made up of 21st Century people.

It's crazy. We're still using 18th Century meeting procedures too!

Tired old structures and systems that slow things down, put us to sleep and carve away at interest and engagement. Those old style meetings don’t make sense. And neither do the minutes from those meetings.

It’s time to make a cultural change in how you make sense of information in meetings. Taking, making and sharing minutes is an utter waste of time, an activity bottleneck and a momentum killer. In meetings, don't just document decisions - the act of making sense involves more than this.

Minutes are dead and distract us from the real work. (Ok unless you need them legally e.g. a board meeting or committee that votes or decides and minutes are evidence of that decision, yes fine have them then!) And here's to the poor souls who type them up to circulate them to people who will never read them. This week I'm posting on sensemaking.

And minutes don't make sense!

Lists are great for shopping. Not great for sensemaking.

Lists are great for shopping. Not great for sensemaking.

When you’re in a meeting, discussing, generating ideas and solutions, planning details of how things might work, you might write down some key points:

* In a list.

* Like this.

* And this.

* Another point like this.

* And more like this.

While it feels efficient capturing what’s happening - sequentially - it’s not so helpful for making sense, now or later. A vertical list of dot points is challenging to retain, build links in, find common themes or show relationships and connections.

Ditch the list; make a map. You zoom out on Google Maps to see where you are: roads, suburbs and towns become visible. The ‘dots’ of towns are connected, not in a list but in a network.

A network map is one of the foundation tools I use to help people build sensemaking skills. It shows relationships, connections, more detailed information. Lines can be different thicknesses; circles different sizes. This communicates something more than any list can. The quality of the map? It doesn't matter. It's that you made a map - that matters.

Get the third point happening.

'Get the third point happening,’ I said.

'The third what?,’ they asked.

'The third point of communication.’

‘Ok, like three dots?' they asked.

’Not quite. It’s like this…’ and I sketched out the triangle in this picture. 1 & 2.

You see, looking and talking with someone else is your first and second point of communication. And usually that’s where meetings and conversations seem to stop. Just you talking to them. Them talking to you.

How about this? 3. Bring in a third point of communication and you’re really communicating! There is an opportunity for quality sensemaking now.  

With the third point of communication, now you can go deeper on the content and be more objective. It's great news for people who might feel awkward, anxious or uncomfortable in some meetings and conversations. (All that eye contact!) Adding in the third point, a visual, references the information you’re working on. Now you’re really making sense.