Patti,

Thank you for this excellent post. I brought the Northeast Consulting Group into the American Management Association in the late 90's. The FutureMapping process was instrumental in building off of previous work we had done involving all of the stakeholders or network of the organization.

In retrospect, I see the need for someone to be identified in organizations, as we move forward with network models, to be the "Net Weaver" Valdis Krebs describes.

Without this role and organizational skill much knowledge and network strength will be lost in times of corporate reorganizations, m&a, etc.

Victoria Axelrod
 

Great post Patti! (OK, I'm biased... Blush. Thanks.) I've been a longtime fan of maps (all kinds) as tools for collective sense-making and what I like to call strategic navigation. Where words fail, rich, multi-layered pictures pick up. In particular, the maps you create using ONA and VNA techniques seem like they'd be great supplements to (or even replacements for) the future endstates and conventional wisdom maps we develop with clients in interactive scenario workshops. I.e., hypothetical maps can be as valuable as maps of current, known reality. Time to have lunch and draw on some napkins!