Global Leadership Summit: Map Making

When responding to what theme the GLS had this year, I've heard "Action" and "Do Something" from several participants.

As I thought about this "action" theme, I also remember Seth Godin saying "There are no maps" during his segment of the GLS. This reminded me of a book that I had read a few years back: Missional Map-Making: Skills for Leading in Times of Transition written by Alan Roxburgh.

I opened that book back up today. It is reinforcing what I felt at the Summit...that many actions, if they are based on our internalized maps of yesterday, will no longer work. It is a new day, where new map-making is required because our old maps cannot solve the challenges of the new context in which we find ourselves.

A few quotes from the book:

"If we don't feel the depths of our own crisis like the scientist did in her field, we won't feel compelled to think beyond our existing maps. Without this deep, visceral sense that something unimaginable is taking place in the world, we will remain committed to our established certainties and try to make them work again; we will stay inside our established categories, believing that they only need to be touched up or reworked."

"The path forward will require that we learn to do things that will feel odd and even counter-intuitive to the leadership habits and skills bequeathed to us by modernity. Rather than grand schemes (vision and mission statements) or attention to the the usual objective indicators of success, we will need to become comfortable with living in a world where we don't have the answers but build communities of dialogue, both inside and outside the church, in which ordinary men and women discover that the imagination for thriving in this new space is among them in their everyday lives."

"The new maps are made on the journey; they can't be drawn ahead of time. On this journey, we'll need to let go of some common-sense convictions and address anxieties about not being in control."

One of my action steps after the Summit is to re-read this book. As I consider next steps of action, I need to better understand the maps I've been shaped by, the changing landscape around me, and the cultivating process of making new maps for the future.