by John Brooker | Aug 14, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Overcome Challenges, Tools
“First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” John F. Kennedy, former US President How might you gain a better understanding of your goals and challenges? Kennedy made the above point in a “State of the Union” speech to the US Congress on 25 May 1961. Whilst most countries would probably dedicate a whole speech on the subject, the moon landing was one of eight strategic goals that Kennedy spoke about and was just one of the four space initiatives that included communication and weather satellites! The reason for starting with this moon landing story is to illustrate that whatever your goal, it will form part of a taller and wider hierarchy that you can represent on a map. For example, a more operational goal would be “Enable astronauts to write in weightless environments.” (This might remind you of the story that the USA spent millions of dollars inventing a pen to write in space whilst the USSR used a pencil. People often cite this story as a reason to find the simplest solution, however, please see my closing story for a different insight.) SO If your goal is very strategic and you wish to understand the hierarchy of goals beneath it, you can use a Level Map. This enables you to: • Diagram that hierarchy and see the relationships before you choose one to work on. • Chunk the goal into lower level goals, thus increasing the potential goals to achieve and reducing the...
