We repeat our story – often unconsciously. Our story can produce positive and negative outcomes. Often the patterns in our story are more ‘system maintaining’ than ‘system-changing’.
Change can be defined as the disturbance of repeated patterns. Gridlock mapping enables us to see those patterns, make hypotheses about their source and to propose focused or targeted interventions.
As an example – I work with an organisation that wants to move from a centralised leadership model to a more distributed leadership model with shared accountability. At a recent Board meeting each of the directors was invited to give a short presentation on how they would define their contribution to the organisation – their individual accountability and the outcomes expected from their personal endeavour.
At the end of the exercise – one of the directors inquired ‘Who is going to get to tell us if we have done this correctly or if we are missing anything?’ The question struck me as revealing. It is suggestive of a mind set that is trying to apply an old routine (centralised leadership) to get to a new place (distributed leadership).
Is the change process modelling the desired outcome or is it modelling the prevailing state? If your change process is not reflecting the end state – it suggests you might be in the grip of a gridlock. Cultural and psychological gridlocks imperil most change processes.
Gridlock mapping enables the visualisation of the behavioural patterns (individual or organisational) that drive results – whether they are desired or not. With the gridlock map you can more intuitively develop a hypothesis about the source of the unseen patterns driving outcomes.
To be truly proactive and change-making we need to be able to see how we contribute to our own problems. We can’t change what we don’t see. Change flows when everything is seen.
In conclusion – gridlock mapping offers the potential to devise hypotheses and test solutions that have the potential to produce significant and enduring impacts. Contact me to discuss how this idea might apply to your situation.
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