Visual Strategy: Strategy Mapping for Public and Nonprofit Organizations

Part 3Doing Strategy Mapping (ViSM)

In Part Two, you saw how The Loft Literary Center used mapping to produce their strategic plan for moving forward. In this part you will learn how to do strategy mapping yourself.

But first, let’s review what strategy mapping can do. The Loft’s experience helps demonstrate that strategy mapping is one of the most productive ways of actively engaging a group in figuring out what to do, how to do it, and why in complex situations when there is no obvious right answer. Strategy mapping, in other words, is what to do when thinking matters. It is a way of replacing what can happen in groups—see Figure 3.1—with what should happen in groups—see Figure 3.2.

Figure 3.1. An Unproductive Group Talking Over One Another ...