Net-Map is an interview-based mapping tool that helps people understand, visualize, discuss, and improve situations in which many different actors influence outcomes. 
Some weeks back I had a great discussion (or two…) with Siraj Sirajudin of Influence and he was excited about Net-Map. We drew a map about a change process that he facilitates at the moment and came up with a little powerful innovation in the corner of the map. The major driver or draw-back of change processes is the buy-in of those involved. So after adding actors and links to the map the obvious goals to add to the actors were whether their attitude towards change was supportive, neutral or negative. So far, so standard Net-Map. But then we wondered: “So how many people are for or against us, and how powerful are they?” And added a little calculation to the corner, adding up the numbers of individuals in each camp – and adding up their influence towers. So if you stacked all influence towers of the nay-sayers on top of each other, how high would the resulting super tower be? A little calculation that you can do right there at the table with your participants, and that can have an extremely eye-opening effect. And, as Siraj rightly remarked, sometimes the neutral ones can be a bigger problem than the outspoken opposition.
Filed under: exploring new ideas, facilitation, Uncategorized
