The Journey from Innovation to Dinosaur By Dr. Mark L. Vincent

It’s a Rapid Journey!

It is always a journey! Cleaning out a storage room, we uncovered this wall-sized canvas with which I traveled the world years ago while the millennium was turning. My feet at the left end give you a sense of their size.

The Post-it Note

In its day, this tool was an innovation for strategic planning, with added capacity for multi-lingual situations. The strategy emerged in front of the group through the abundant use of Post-it notes. Our posting and subsequent rearranging of them on the map pointed the way forward and created the plan’s first draft. No consultative guru must disappear behind a closed door to organize the data and provide a coherent report from filled-up newsprint pages.  When their report finally emerged, they would say, “Here is your plan.”  Was it? We could not see what was up their sleeve. Now, the mystery was gone.

Next – Newsprint

The previous innovation was brainstorming on newsprint. Newsprint made group strategic thinking possible instead of the boss-man telling everyone the needed strategy and that we’d better execute it.

With these innovations, more participants could be involved. Broader involvement meant greater alignment and motivation to follow through from the get-go, with less need to persuade and demand after the fact. Their thoughts contributed to the strategic whole, and in meetings, that got something done! These innovations were so cool for a process geek like me.

A Strategic Map

Now, my innovation of the strategic map has gone by the wayside, and dust has been collected in the storage room. We unrolled it one last time and captured the picture out of nostalgia. In doing so, memories flooded back of the organizations that used it: people who cared for AIDS orphans, housed refugees, made education possible for children, stemmed famine, and expanded the workforce by creating meaningful jobs.

Screen Time

We don’t need a wall-sized canvas to view the entirety of a strategic map anymore. Projectors and screens are so standard now that a strategic planning tool can shine on a wall before being exported to a .pdf file. I don’t need to lug around the golf bag that held my canvas, post-it pads, and abundant markers and pens. I plug in the HDMI cord.

Hello AI

But why project a map when everyone can weigh in from their mobile phone using real-time polling software that instantly creates infographics? And why take the time to do even that when an AI engine can sort through all the data we shove into it and then write the first draft of a strategic plan for the team (or even the final draft if you so desire)? We don’t even need to have a meeting to do that. And why use a team at all?  Why not make AI the oracle, just as the boss-man in the corner office once was?

Hmmmm. Now, the corner office can be a storage room.

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ᐧDr. Mark L. Vincent is the Founder of Design Group International and the Society for Process Consulting. He hosts the Third Turn Podcast and facilitates Maestro-level leaders. Discover the Maestro-level cohort that is waiting for you! Click the banner below to learn more!