We Need a Map

“I have an existential map. It has ‘You are here’ written all over it.” -Steven Wright

I happened to be in a cabin one evening after a long day of hunting. The wood stove was blazing and we were all chilling after dinner. The guides were off to one side hanging out together sharing their experiences from the day. It was fun to watch them as they described where they had been and what they had seen. The dialog would go something like this:

“We were down trail X off of the old logging road Y near the fork in the road and we didn’t see anything” “You mean down past road Z near the bridge, right?” “No, no, no. We were down logging road Y.”

Around and around they went.

At this point in the conversation they usually resort to hand gestures to further supplement the conversation. This goes on for a while and pretty soon it’s hard to tell whether you are looking at guides trying to tell each other where they were, or perhaps you are looking at a pair of fighter pilots describing their latest dogfight. There are hands waving wildly in the air. It’s Top Gun in the hunting cabin. Voices are raised, and expressions are animated.

And still they can’t seem to simply tell each other where they were. I’m watching all of this and I’m thinking, “These guys need a map.”

I’d laugh, but I see it all the time in software teams. If I’m honest, I catch myself doing it all the time. It seems that even with all the software that we have today, visualizing what we do and sharing it with each other is still a significant problem for us. How often do you find teams working together and trying to describe something – hands waving in the air and all. I guess we’re all future fighter pilots.

Like I said, I think sometimes what we really need is a map. I challenge you to go take a look at the walls in a second grade classroom. You’ll see nothing but maps. Maps of the US. Maps of the parts of a sentence. Maps of numbers. Everywhere there are maps of the knowledge that second graders consider important. What you see on those walls is the cartography of the eight year old mind.

Now go back to your office and look at the walls. What do you see? I’m betting that the walls are completely bare. Maybe you have some of those crappy motivational posters. If you are really lucky there is a map to the fire escape. There are no maps in the office of the typical knowledge worker. Why is that?

All too often we are like the guides in the cabin. We’re struggling to communicate simple concepts with each other – playing Top Gun. Maybe it’s time for a map.

#knowledgework #communication #Software #cartography #Teams #maps