{"id":1969,"date":"2019-08-07T09:11:29","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T09:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eho.zrs.mybluehost.me\/?p=1969"},"modified":"2021-09-28T10:41:27","modified_gmt":"2021-09-28T10:41:27","slug":"why-roadmaps-lead-to-the-graveyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/why-roadmaps-lead-to-the-graveyard\/","title":{"rendered":"Why roadmaps lead to the graveyard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dominic Hofstetter writes about the challenges of innovation in complexity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He describes the allure of roadmaps as metaphors for change processes:<\/p>\n

“They provide a compelling vision of a future state of the world; one that is desirable and noble and elicits our sense of adventure and courage. They break a long journey down into manageable milestones, providing changemakers with a framework for managing actions and tracking progress. They present evidence in the form of studies, charts, and tables to convey a level of scientific rigor, thereby allowing funders, policy-makers, and executives to use them as a decision-making tool and as a mechanism to defer accountability.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The trouble is, the metaphor is misleading. Conventional roadmaps chart the way to real<\/strong> places; change roadmaps are about imagined destinations. They assume that change is a predictable process of simple steps in cause and effect, where the consequences build in a linear fashion.<\/p>\n

“A tool originally developed to represent existing realities doesn\u2019t work well as a mental model for creating new realities…if the world is a complex adaptive system and consists of complex adaptive sub-systems, is it surprising that linear, deterministic, and static tools so often fail?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Hofstetter gives the example of the UK wasting millions on a failed roadmap for carbon capture. He also argues that the Paris climate agreement is a roadmap that has the unintended consequence of engendering complacency where none is due.<\/p>\n

He argues that it’s fine to set ambitious goals. But it’s the laborious mapping of how to get there that leads us awry.<\/p>\n

We often feel like this about agendas for meetings. Planners often draw comfort from mapping out how an event will flow in 20 minute increments. But if we’re tackling a complex challenge this approach may blind us to the small signals of unexpected challenges and opportunities that arise when smart, passionate people sit down to work together.<\/p>\n

It’s often better to set a theme and then allow conversations to evolve rather than forcing people into a linear routine (“we’ll diverge in the morning and then converge after the lunch break”). We often talk about not trusting the process – which for complex issues won’t be the same as last time – and instead trust the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dominic Hofstetter writes about the challenges of innovation in complexity. He describes the allure of roadmaps as metaphors for change processes: “They provide a compelling vision of a future state of the world; one that is desirable and noble and elicits our sense of adventure and courage. They break a long journey down into manageable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1971,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions\/1971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativefacilitation.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}