Decision Mapping
Discovering decisions and their nature is part of creating a bottom up approach to knowledge management strategy. Decisions are at the heart of human activity and mapping gives you the basis for lots of other understanding and intervention design.
Decision mapping has high utility in its own right as, done properly, it reveals the true nature of activity in an organization. That can then be contrasted with the formal understanding of the organization, normally represented in a process map with supporting procedures. Contrasting what is with what is thought to be with a representation of reality is a key complexity technique. Presenting that contrast without evaluation is an essential aspect of changing attitudes by enabling descriptive self-awareness. This means allowing decision makers to come to conclusions for themselves by presenting evidence of dissonance; the role of the consultant being to enable this rather than to determine the answer.
This type of mapping is not just of value in knowledge management. It's a key element in complexity based strategy, scaling Agile development, etc.
Decision mapping produces two outputs (i) a series of actions or projects arising from contrasting it with the formal process map and (ii) a set of knowledge objects, things that can be managed, derived from the decision mapping using the ASHEN perspective question.
Contents
Prior knowledge needed
List of concepts and necessary understanding to use the method (it is OK to say none)
Preparation
Factual description of what is needed together with lists of materials and the physical environment needed. Default is physical but see later section
Workflow
The process can be done manually, or more effectively with a simple SenseMaker® deployment. It is described with SenseMaker® but the manual alternative is also indicated stage by stage in the commentary & tips.
| STAGE INSTRUCTION | COMMENTARY & TIPS |
| All staff or a representative sample of staff are asked to download SenseMaker® to their smartphones and are asked to make a note of every decision they make no matter how trivial. This can be done by typing, recording or taking a photograph or using a drawing/picture or the like. | Without SenseMaker® this is done through workshops and interviews with a sample of staff focusing them on what decisions they make daily, weekly, monthly, annually or some other event based stimulus. |
| For each decision, they are encouraged to comment on it, and are in particular asked to identify information sources used in: making the decision, the manner of its communication and the resources or more precisely artefacts used to support the decision. This can use predetermined categories relevant to the organisation or can just be left open. Often it is worth capturing for a week or so, then creating a drop down set of options as the journaling continues. | Capture is more limited manually, but does have the advantage of letting the interview start to construct an emergent taxonomy of information and resource use which will reduce the time in analysis. |
| At the same time they have the opportunity to identify how the decision could better be communicated, to whom and with what improved information sources and resources. | |
| If using SenseMaker® each decision is mapped onto triads and stones. That allows us to look at underlying decision types and then cluster them for evaluation. | Without SenseMaker® the process of clustering is workshop based and manual in nature; having a lot of junior analysts helps here. |
| In a workshop with some preparation, the decision clusters with summarised information flows is presented and decisions are linked and connected. Communication from one will be information to another and so on. This will also show up gaps that require investigation. At the end of this you end up with a wall of hexagons with lots of links between them. | |
| The map is transcribed into concept mapping software which optimises the representation and you end up with something that looks like an extended network model. It's messy but it is coherent and it bears little relationship to the formal process map. | |
| Of course it would be better to start process mapping with a decision map and then modify it over time. But in most cases that is too late so you are forced to make senior executives very uncomfortable when they see just how little the neat and tidy constructs created by those pervasive consultants a few years back match the reality of day to day work. The gaps between then become specific change projects that will feed into the wider picture. |
Ideally you would run this over a few months in background and then leave it in place for subsequent monitoring.
Do's and Don'ts
Simple bulleted list including common mistakes
Virtual running
Default is to state that it cannot be until we have developed and tested practice. If it can be run virtually then we describe it here.
It is acceptable to add a third column to the workflow if needed
References
Link to other articles on this wiki if they are relevant.
Articles
Specific articles can be referenced here
Blog posts
Cases
Link to case articles here or third party material
