This is the last post in our series on “tools” or “exercises” strategists may use to support their strategic management work. We will return to this topic in subsequent blog postings.

Strategic Mental Maps

Every individual has an internal “mental map” that helps to explain reality, guides decision-making and the actions we take. These mental maps are the system of values, beliefs, and interpretations of the different parts of our world. Some mental maps are stronger than others and, correspondingly, some components of mental maps are stronger than others. Mental maps are the result of an individual’s acquired knowledge and experiences throughout his or her life. While not directly visible, they can be inferred from decision and actions and be identified through the science of psychometrics.

In the world of work, mental maps apply in all aspects of management including strategic management. Managers’ mental maps can significantly explain their vision and their understanding of the future of their industry, their preferences for certain organizational objectives, strategies, strategic initiatives and action plans. Mental maps may evolve over time as managers gain new knowledge and are exposed to new challenges and experiences. Manager’s mental maps that historically were effective in fostering organizational success may be obsolete in affecting the same outcomes in today’s business landscape.

Organizational Mental Maps

Management teams and organizations as a whole are made out of people who have different individual mental maps. Through the processes of personnel selection and hiring, organizations tend to recruit individuals who have some degree of compatibility with the organization’s acceptable mental maps. Some elements of the organizational mental maps are spelled out in the criteria for recruiting and hiring. The search for mental maps compatibility is also present in interviews of potential employees. However, after all the filters have been applied and the hiring made, plenty of differences will remain between the mental maps of the new individuals and the collective maps of the organization.

Differences in mental maps become much more relevant in strategic management teams. On one hand, the diversity of mental maps enriches the discussion about strategic issues and result in the generation of more powerful strategies. On the other hand, it may generate divisive behavior and dysfunctional conflict that may result in a gridlock about strategies or in the lack of commitment to the strategic plan. Due to the dynamism and complexity of our current global business environment, organizations are finding that they need the full cooperation of every member of their management team to effectively leverage all their intellectual assets in order to survive and succeed in the market place. This implies that that the entire management team needs to be fully committed to every part of the company’s strategy. In other words we need a strong collective strategic mindset.

Mental Maps Development

Developing a strong strategic mindset in a management team requires that individuals embrace a section of their mental map similar to everyone else in the organization. That particular section requiring a shared mindset deals with the strategic architecture of the organization. By strategic architecture I include the core values, vision, mission, major objectives, strategies, strategic initiatives and strategic processes. This mindset should not preclude the organization to use its capabilities of identifying new internal or external elements that may warrant the possibility of introducing changes in the strategy. An important deliverable in building shared mental maps is to make sure that whatever strategy the management team develops, is powerful and inspiring. Developing the wrong mental map will ensure organizational mediocrity, individual indifference and organizational failure.

Specific Techniques

I am aware of five techniques that work well together, particularly in strategic retreats, to help management teams develop the best possible mental maps. These techniques are:

1. Focused Strategic Information leverages the recognition of the strategic issues that may appear or that are scheduled for discussion at a particular strategy session. Once the issues are recognized, it is necessary to do serious research about the nature of the issues and produce information that is powerful, easy to understand, compelling, as unquestionable as possible and, is going to reveal very relevant characteristic of the issue in question. Doing the needed research to find key information for a scheduled issue is a technique in itself. Anticipating an issue that may appear and that has not been scheduled for discussion, but appears in a strategy session is a craft.
    
2. Selective Challenging is a technique that requires the discussion leader or a member of a team to challenge managers to set up more ambitious objectives or to explore additional and unforeseen opportunities. This technique needs to be applied in “real time.” This means that the challenge has to happen while the group is actually engaged in discussing strategy.
    
3. Critical Thinking is defined in Wikipedia as the process of “thinking that questions assumptions.” The discussion leader needs to conduct this kind of discussion in a way that is it simple, moderately structured to foster the questioning of weak arguments and, help the group separate facts from opinions and theories.
    
4. Dialectic Inquiry engages managers in a process of generating ideas and proposals and uses the debate of alternative solutions until all the angles have been explore.
    
5. Devil’s Advocacy is the process of presenting solutions while other members of the team cite reasons why the proposed solution may not work. This is done until there is common acceptance of the quality of the solution.

It is important that these techniques not be pushed to their limit. Rather, they should be employed as tools for the discussion leader to use at opportune times to enrich the conversation, maintain group comfort, promote an adequate level of informality, generate a strong level of interest and maintain a reasonable discussion flow.

An Example of Focused Strategic Information

While doing rounds of interviews at a medium size engineering company in advance of conceptualizing a strategic planning retreat, I detected a strategic issue that was making the management team in the area of operations very uncomfortable. The Chief Executive Officer was a very competent and wise individual who became CEO after working in Operations for many years. He knew the operations function very well and was efficiency oriented. One of his main strategies was cutting costs of manufacturing. He was asking his operation department to lower manufacturing costs by 10%. The engineers in manufacturing were uncomfortable because they thought they could not get production costs any lower, yet the CEO kept on pressing them. In preparation for the strategy retreat, I challenged the engineers to find ways to cut manufacturing cost more or to find an alternative way to save money. After several discussion meetings using the techniques mentioned above, they came up with the figure below.

The figure shows that approximately 60% of the cost of a product is determined at the “Concept Design” stage of the product development cycle while the manufacturing process represents approximately 10% of the total cost of the product. This means that the CEO was focused on cutting 10% of the 10% of the cost. In other words, they would have cut 1 % of the cost. We presented this chart in the environmental analysis part of the Strategy Retreat. The chart generated a lot of discussion and the CEO agreed to examine the cost structure of their products. Later, he decided to allocate resources to improve the design of their products in order to produce cheaper products and he also relaxed the policy of reducing the cost of manufacturing.

The case above, illustrates how a relevant piece of information can change a deeply ingrained policy. It took a great deal of research and preparation to find the kind of information that fundamentally changed the CEO’s mental map. But by making a commitment to do the due diligence required, allowed the organization to make the right call and assign resources in a more productive way.

Mental Maps and Powerful Strategies

The concept of mental maps has been raised in the strategic management literature before. What has not been extensively discussed is how to apply that concept to business organizations and organizations in general to improve strategic planning and management processes to produce and implement more powerful strategies.

Questions that come to my mind are:

1. Are business organizations and/or consultants working with the concept of mental maps?
    
2. Are there other techniques that are being used to develop mental maps?
    
3. How much of an improvement in strategic management we can get by working on mental maps?
    
4. How do we train people in the craft of changing mental maps?

I’ve been working with mental maps for a long time but I’m always excited to get reactions from professionals in the trenches. I welcome your thoughts and ideas on the subject. Let’s start a conversation and discuss the possibilities.