Context Mapping

Facilitating Context Mapping

Facilitating collaborative context mapping is a valuable tool in the change design process. It involves bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders to explore a problem space, gather insights, and identify opportunities for action. 

By collaborating in this way, leaders can develop a shared understanding of the factors influencing a situation, leading to more effective solutions that meet the needs of all stakeholders.

1. Gather your team: Gather the team involved in the context mapping. Make sure to include stakeholders from different areas of the organisation and external stakeholders if applicable.
2. Share a springboard: A springboard is a prompt or idea that can help jumpstart the context mapping activity. This initial input could be a question, statement, or image related to the problem space. Share the springboard to set the context and get participants thinking about the topic.
3. Set up Canvas: The canvas is a visual tool that helps you pose contextual questions and organise information and insights. Depending on the need, your canvas could focus on macro-environmental factors, market or industry forces, service or operating models, stakeholder relationships or systems behaviour. See the White Water Rapids Example below for reference. 
4. Capture Contributions: Invite the team to use sticky notes and markers to populate the canvas with their ideas. Have them use the “write, stick, say’ method to individually capture their response, post it onto the canvas and read it aloud. This process generates much input quickly, without duplication or individual voices overpowering the group. Consider spending only a short, time-boxed period on each question and moving them together in sequence.
5. Organise outputs: Once the team has populated the canvas, it’s time to look for patterns, themes, and connections between ideas. You may need to rearrange or group the sticky notes to create a clearer picture of the insights.
   With large groups, you can break the participants into subgroups and present them with a context map to populate together.The activity allows everyone to share their thoughts on each area on the map. The task is not to agree on each sticky note but to deepen the pool of shared understanding and surface important information required for the change.
6. Capture insights: Identify the most significant insights and use different methods to represent them to build a shared understanding among the participants and other stakeholders. Guide the group in capturing the insights clearly and effectively to promote action and change.

Following these steps, you can facilitate a collaborative context-mapping activity that generates valuable insights and ideas for addressing the problem space.

Example: White Water Rapids Context Map

To allow participants to build a shared understanding of the system context in which their initiative operates.

Set up the metaphor – Introduce the metaphor and share the key questions. Set it up that the White Water Rapids analogy represents the initiative’s context. The river is a flow of work or activity, and the environment prompts us to discuss critical questions.

This visual canvas acts as a container to capture the groups’ collective thoughts around the following ideas: 

1. Landing – What does the ideal destination look like?
2. Weather – What environmental factors might help or hinder?
3. Launch – With what resources are we starting the journey?
4. Light Rapids – What will give the work momentum?
5. Waterfall – What challenges will we have to navigate?
6. Danger – What significant risks must we avoid?

To find out more about how to up skill your leaders in leading collaborative design or for support with your next codesign project, reach out to us via info@soji.com.au.

Click white water context to download poster.