Geo-philanthropy & the pursuit of reciprocity
I work closely with peers on diagnosing organizational issues and developing strategies for improving enterprise geo-spatial programs. It’s peer exchange. I do this for free and it’s an incredibly rewarding use of my personal time.
When I first meet a new organization online, I’m invariably asked:
What’s the catch?
There is no catch.
Why are you doing this?
Geo-philanthropy.
No, really! What’s in this for you, Paul?
… reciprocity
The Short Story
I developed a framework, method and tools to measure the organizational impacts on people, process, technology and ultimately on data quality. It needed to be practical, just enough and just-in-time. I licensed it Creative Commons then posted it on the web. One of our peers downloaded and applied the maturity model which led to state-wide adoption.
The seed was planted in mid-America, watered through peer exchange then took root, starting what I call a Mass Maturity movement.
Something significant is happening and we (state departments, counties, industry, regional and local govs) are doing it together. It’s early stages have already helped your peers win a Best Challenges award.
What’s fueling the movement for me personally is reciprocity. The users believe in what our model & method can do. They’ve contributed and continue to make it better and so do I. I owe it to them, I owe it to you and I owe it to the academics and peers that are cited in the model.
Early on I supported this project simply as contribution to the profession. Then in 2016, I became obsessed with the concept of reciprocity.
In a world of selfish motivations, though, it is becoming a rarer thing.
I speak often about how fewer of us (seem to) feel a sense of responsibility to the collective, to the taxpayer and the organizations we serve. The collective ‘we’ is being trumped by selfish interests, delusions, ego and bad leadership impacting many of the organizations we work for. Think HIPPO, Peter Principle, Dunning-Kruger, Command and Control — these are the opposite of enterprise, innovation, creativity and collaboration.
Poor organizational health driven by the self-interest model roadblocks our ability to fulfill our enterprise mandate.
Reciprocity defined
Fortunately, our industry is multidisciplinary and many of us are hard-wired to share. It’s in our bones.
According to Wikipedia, reciprocity in social psychology is:
a social norm of responding to a positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind actions. As a social construct, reciprocity means that in response to friendly actions, people are frequently much nicer and much more cooperative than predicted by the self-interest model .
Reciprocity to me is:
developing a network (collective) of like minded people willing to share experiences for mutual benefit and so we can leverage each other’s knowledge to tackle enterprise challenges.
There’s hope in good people
On the first zoom meeting with a new group, I can sense if I’ve found the right people. Sometimes it’s through email even before we “meet”. These are the digital & data-savvy professionals that have enterprise talent and drive. They know the stack. They aren’t faking it. They’re leaning into their enterprise data challenges and have the chops to know it isn’t going to be easy.
Maturity is a tough slog and they have the courage to try.
These like-minded people are as open about their organizational, leadership & engagement problems as I am about past experience & my repeated failures at resolving systemic problems in local gov.
My story seems relate-able(?)
The right people are dialed into the realities of their organizations. As change agents, they get that transforming their agencies with location data is a long game. More importantly they have not let themselves become part of the problem and are comfortable with managing the friction of challenging the status quo.
Without support, digital change agents may become disenchanted and lose morale and seek to take their expertise and passion elsewhere. — The Digital Change Agent’s Manifesto
To support their enterprise geospatial effort, good people are looking for a better way to manage change — they need parameters and the method to do so.
With the Slimgim method, models and the movement, this is where I’ve fit in.
I admit I don’t have all the answers (none of us do) but together and with the insights the model provides, we’re finding ways to creatively and strategically build our enterprises.
We do this consistently through a standard series of initiatives:
We’re designing these initiatives to harmonize maturity factors across the following strategic tenets:
No, really! What’s in this for you, Paul?
Reciprocity.
To learn and to help.
… oh, and maybe disrupt the way we do strategic planning. There is a better way. We think we’ve figured it out so follow us on Medium and subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates.
“Maturity isn’t instant and it certainly isn’t easy”
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