Mapping for Social Change at Mapcamp 2021
I recently had the opportunity to share some thinking and mapping at a gathering of folks interested in Simon Wardley’s (swardley) method for mapping in service of strategy known as Wardley Mapping. This year’s Mapcamp was organized in three strands: resilience, sustainability, and society. I took the opportunity to work on a long-standing challenge I’ve been wrestling with: how to get strategic about societal change. A few years ago I articulated this challenge in a video: Getting Strategic About Peace and Social Justice.
My big puzzle has been how to translate strategy, which is assumed to be in a context of competition, with societal change efforts that must (by definition?) include everyone. In other words, a strategy in which there can be no winners & losers.
I’ve found a helpful “hand-hold” for my challenge in the work of Alnoor Ebrahim, a professor of management at Tufts University who studies non-profits. His book, Measuring Social Change: Performance and Accountability in a Complex World has been a goldmine of ideas and applications.
With only 15 minutes of “air-time” during mapcamp, I just barely scratched the surface of the work I’ve been doing at the intersection of Wardley Mapping, Ebrahim’s ideas, and the societal change contexts in which seek to contribute. I took Ebrahim’s Social Performance Model and built it out a bit based on the description in his book. That elaborated model is shown in the image below, and can also be explored in kumu, a mapping platform.
Ebrahim’s research, model, and case studies have helped me bridge the gap between strategy and societal outcomes. I think there are multiple bridges here. One bridge takes me from strategy as competitive endeavor in which we seek to “win”, to a broader framing of strategy as a cooperative endeavor in which we seek to create more just and equitable social systems.
A second bridge takes me from the clear strategic boundaries of us and them to a much more amorphous and tangled social system of dynamic us’s, and them’s, each with dynamic needs. The language of strategy often presumes clear lines between the inside and outside of a “we” with a common purpose, for instance a company, its customers, suppliers, and competitors . In societal change, we are all the creators and consumers of societal outcomes.
Ebrahim engages with this broader societal perspective, proposing four strategic orientations (not mutually exclusive) based on a contingency framework with dimensions of uncertainty and control. You can see each of the four strategic approaches shown in the contingency framework (below). He unpacks each approach using a detailed case study. For a mission in which you have high uncertainty and high (or at least higher) control, Ebrahim suggests an ecosystem strategy.
The case used to illustrate an ecosystem strategy is Miriam’s Kitchen, a non-profit seeking to end chronic homelessness in Washington DC. Miriam’s Kitchen’s long-time mission had previously been to provide restaurant quality meals to homeless people. The shift in mission scope helps me to understand the relationship between mission and strategic orientation towards the problems of a given population (particularly around control). Feeding homeless people exerts little “control” over the societal problem of homelessness, while connecting homeless people with permanent housing exerts higher (if not high) control over the societal problem.
In bringing together Ebrahim’s model and Wardley Mapping, I focused in on the Miriam’s Kitchen case using the details presented in the book. I began by replicating two detailed diagrams that Ebrahim includes in the book: a system framing map, and a results chain (also referred to as a logic chain). In the image below, Ebrahim’s original Systems Framing diagram for Miriam’s Kitchen is shown on the left. One the right is my attempt to turn this into a Wardley map.
Wardley Maps are anchored by the needs of a user you seek to serve — the value you generate as an organization. In mapping, you add what is needed to meet your users need. You can then move each item in the chain of needs, placing along on the horizontal axis, with the left most items being the most novel, new, or not-yet-established, and the right most items being the most stable, ubiquitous, or standardized. The resulting chain of needs forms a tree of dependencies that can inform your strategy by allowing you to see how various “moves” can evolve elements of the value chain. In the Wardley Map of Miriam’s Kitchen above, I highlighted two “moves” the organization chose to make as part of their revised mission of ending chronic homelessness in DC:
- A move away from the traditional approach of “sobriety first” as a condition for housing and instead adopt an evidence-based approach of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH). Sobriety first is shown as blocking the evolution of PSH (red arrow).
- A move to orchestrate the development of a common assessment to be given to clients experiencing homelessness, and a shared database in which to store this information used by the larger ecosystem of government and non-profit service providers to homeless people in DC.
At first I tried to use what Ebrahim calls a logic model (sometimes referred to as a results chain in the book) as the fodder for a Wardley Map of Miriam’s Kitchen’s work, but I ran into a mismatch with how time was envisioned in Ebrahim and Wardley’s approaches. In the results chain for Miriam’s Kitchen included in Ebrahim’s book, there are five strands of strategy, each of which represents a hypothesis of causal results projecting into the future that Miriam’s Kitchen seeks to create. When Wardley mapping, I try to stick to mapping the present value-chain before thinking about strategic “moves”. This mismatch in the way time shows up between Ebrahim and Wardley’s approaches was a sticking point for me when I tried to take the results chain from the Miriam’s Kitchen case and Wardley map it. It seems to work much better when using the contents of the systems framing diagram of homelessness in DC that Miriam’s Kitchen had created. I’ve got more work to do here for sure, but I forged ahead and took what I’d learned in mapping efforts and made a mashup of Ebrahim’s generic social performance model and the Wardley evolution axis. (You can explore the maps I created on kumu.)
The template I created by mashing up Ebrahim’s Generic Social Performance Model with a Wardley Map is shown above. The key aspect of Wardley mapping that I’ve added is the horizontal axes representing the degree of stability or evolution. To recap, items towards the left of a Wardley map are the most novel, new, and not-yet-established, and the right-most items are the most stable, ubiquitous, and standardized. One can use Wardley’s method to map activities, practices, knowledge, and other things. (You can explore — and fork — the Ebrahim/Wardley Mashup template in kumu to try it out on your own social change effort.)
I took at pass at creating both a conventional Wardley map (created using onlinewardleymapping.com), and a map using my Ebrahim/Wardley mashup template to visualize the system context and strategic moves for a non-profit I’m on the board of. This non-profit, Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR), has a mission that includes ending the use of solitary confinement in DC, VA, and MD prisons. You can explore these maps in kumu.
In the traditional Wardley map (above) you can see IAHR’s current strategic “moves” shown in orange. IAHR’s main move is to ban or restrict the use of solitary confinement through legislation. Note: I’ve not used the vertical axis to indicate anything meaningful, but Wardley maps typically use this for “visibility”. I’ve also included a “user journey” across the top (a person’s movement through the correctional pipeline) as well as the relevant institution below that journey. While this is not usually a part of a Wardley map, I find it quite useful (Thanks to Benjamin Mosior for this helpful idea)
Moves that entail shifting an element on the map further right on a Wardley map are described as attempts to “evolve” that element. The three “moves” IAHR are counting on to further its mission are:
- Legislation banning or restricting the use of solitary confinement,
- Litigation challenging cases of abuse (related to solitary confinement or other practices),
- Obtaining data on the use and abuse of solitary confinement. A previous effort resulted in mandatory reporting bills on the use of solitary confinement in Maryland prisons. In Virginia, correspondence with people experiencing solitary confinement in prison has emerged as a valuable means of data collection. As a result, the current focus is to expand the use of correspondence with people in solitary in Maryland prisons as well.
The Wardley map provides a view of the system that IAHR is trying to change and the “moves” we believe will result in the change we seek.
Alternatively, Mapping IAHR’s work using the mashup template that incorporated Ebrahim’s Generic Social Performance Model provided me with more of a view of where we are as an organization. The mashup template shows aspects of Ebrahim’s model across the top of the map. To the left of the map are the major categories of elements that Ebrahim names as part of results chain.
As Ebrahim describes it, our strategy is a manifestation of both our causal assumptions, and our theory of change (I would add this is true whether they are explicit or un-articulated). For example, in IAHR’s efforts to make a change to a specific practice used in the correctional system (e.g. putting people in solitary confinement), our major effort goes into placing legal restrictions on that practice through legislation. The theory of change here is that making the practice called “solitary confinement” illegal will create a change in the day-to-practice of correctional officers seeking to manage the prison population. (note: I highlight on the label of the practice here since legislation is often quite particular around language. Some prior efforts to move the US away from the use of solitary confinement have simply resulted in a name change for the practice, e.g. administrative segregation.) To put a fine point on it: The moves that we make in service of strategy represent our hypotheses about how to create the future we envision.
In contrast to a traditional Wardley Map, the mashup version adds cues to a mapper to include the aspects of Alnoor Ebrahim’s generic social performance Model. The version of the mashup map I created for IAHR’s efforts to limit the use of solitary confinement in MD, DC, and VA prisons is just a first pass. It’s also the work of just one person — me. Some things I found interesting about this map…
I included a LOT of accountabilities! This might not have been what Ebrahim had in mind when describing multiple accountabilities as a key element of a social performance model, but I took his provocative ideas about accountability and ran with them. Ebrahim describes accountability is a relationship of power. He writes that accountability of compliance is the norm, but proposes accountabilities of strategy matched to the kind of problem space we are acting in. When operating in contexts of high uncertainty around how to realize the future we desire, accountability to ourselves and to funders and donors will rarely be a clear result of our work alone — in other words, if society shifts in the direction we’re pushing, we can’t take credit for it. Accountability in these murky social change efforts needs to be more about contribution than attribution. Ebrahim stresses the multiple accountabilities and he describes them as “upward” to donors and funders, and “downward” to the individuals served. Note that Wardley turns up and down on it’s head (user at the top) so it’s best to leave the directions out of our thinking when using the mashup template.
I took this idea of multiple accountabilities and ran with it in the mashup map of IAHR’s work (shown in yellow in the map above). In a way, I thought of IAHR’s relationships with every player in the system as necessitating some degree of accountability. In the map I included our champions/sponsors in the State General Assembly, fellow non-profits & coalitions working on similar issues, currently and formerly incarcerated people and their families, faith communities that support our work, and of course, funders and donors. But I also included correctional officers, secretaries of corrections, and others who carry out the work of corrections on behalf of society. Finally, as an interfaith organization, we have some over-arching accountabilities to ourselves as an organization regarding the means we are wiling to use to achieve a more human system of corrections, as well as the various individual orientations we bring as board-members.
For example, as a Quaker, I’m uncomfortable with any strategy that entails “othering” certain groups in this system. In other words, I believe there can be no villains in a healed and restorative system, and I try to hold myself accountable for aligning my actions with that belief.
Ebrahim’s generic results chain served as a helpful organizing frame for the vertical axis. At the bottom of this map were inputs, things like funding and volunteers, and at the top were societal outcomes. The vertical axis of a Wardley map is often described as “visibility”, something I’ve always found problematic as what is visible depends on where you stand. The primary anchor in a Wardley Map is the user (in our case an incarcerated person), so visibility could be based on that position in the correctional landscape, but most of us on the board have not experienced that perspective. When mapping societal change, using Ebrahim’s results chain serving as alternative vertical axis seemed to make sense, but I’d be curious to hear the prospective of others Wardley Mappers using maps for social change strategy. The full generic chain includes:
inputs -> activities -> outputs -> individual outcomes -> societal outcomes.
There’s much more mapping to be done here. While it seems that, as an organization, we at IAHR have gaps in our social performance model, I think it’s worth noting that IAHR is a very young organization. Also, I initially took our organizational mission to be most similar to Miriam’s Kitchen, assuming an ecosystem strategy would be the best fit. After doing all this mapping and coming to understand Ebrahim’s contingency framework a little better I think the outcomes IAHR seeks, and our own organizational state of development,require a more emergent strategy. On Ebrahim’s contingency framework, IAHR’s would be a mission in which the connection between cause and effect is unpredictable, and we have low control over the larger societal problem — in this case, an inhumane and punitive system of corrections, rather than a humane, rehabilitative one.
And now to circle back to some puzzles remaining for me on all this... How do we, as a society, know how good a job we’re doing in helping people re-enter society “better” than they went in? What should we measure? I think we’ve got a lot of thinking (and mapping) to do to address this question. The two horizontal buckets in Ebrahim’s contingency framework are low and high control over the larger societal problem one seeks to address. This is a bit confusing as the things you are placing in buckets on the two axes are not the same things.
As noted earlier, Miriam’s Kitchen’s initial work entailed serving restaurant quality meals to people experiencing homelessness in DC. The desired effect was to reduce hunger. The intervention that cause that reduction was serving meals. Since there is a clear understanding of the cause-effect relationship between MK’s work of feeding people and the results of feeding people (lower hunger), that work is categorized as low uncertainty. But what about the control? MK’s work is categorized as low control over a different problem — the problem of homelessness, not the problem of hunger. The shift to higher control was also a shift in the situation/problem they sought to address — from the hunger of individuals experiencing homelessness to the societal problem of chronic homelessness. While feeding people was a good fit for a niche strategy entailing a standardize and streamline approach, a different approach was needed for getting strategic about ending chronic homelessness. As a result, MK shifted to an ecosystem strategy in which much of the work entailed orchestrating the many service providers and data gathered.
It’s worth noting that after Miriam’s kitchen shifted their mission to ending chronic homelessness in DC, they still maintained their earlier mission and (and its sub-strategy), as it still fit into the larger mission in an important way: Serving meals provided a way to connect and build trust with people experiencing homelessness. I wonder, does an eco-system strategy always or often include other strategies as well?
And on Miriam’s Kitchen’s own evolution, I can’t help wondering if the organization passed through phases of integrated and emergent during the transition. Ebrahim notes that Miriam’s Kitchen had branched out to providing case management and has even opened a homeless shelter before taking stock and arriving at their current mission. That was a path of expanded services that would have been a good fit for an integrated strategy — basically a bunch of coordinated niches. Rethinking the mission caused them to back off on running shelters. I imagine the arc that then brought the organization to “orchestrator” of the ecosystem spanning services, policy, community, research, assessments, database, etc… required a good bit of time spent engaging in iteration and adaptation — the hallmarks of an emergent strategy.
So what type of strategic approach is a good fit for Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR)? If an emergent strategy is a better fit, it would be worth digging deeper into the case Ebrahim uses to illustrate emergent strategy: an organization called Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). WIEGO works to raise the visibility and voice of workers in the informal economy. While it’s estimated to make up over half of the work-force in developing countries, the informal economy has historically been ignored by international policy and regulatory bodies. Before WIEGO began its work in 1997, little data was available on the informal economy. A large part of WIEGO’s work centered on research that could raise the visibility of informal workers, and make a case for inclusion of the informal economy in economic theory and planning. WEIGO bought together researchers, statisticians, and community organizers. While it took many years, there are now delegations from many countries that have a seat at the table at global forums like the International Labor Conference (ILC). As Ebrahim describes in his book, the approach for emergent strategies like WIEGO’s is iterative and adaptive, involving a good bit of trial and error since the effects of the “causes” (our interventions) is highly unpredictable. In other words, the causal path forward is not clear so a detailed plan isn’t going to get us there.
When intervening in complex spaces — ones in which the causal chain to reach our desired future is unknowable or murky at best — unintended consequences are practically guaranteed. A case in point resides in the role that Quakers and other reformers had in the creation of our modern penitentiary. Reformers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries were motivated by inhumane conditions and practices in prisons. I’m no historian but my understanding is that men and women (sometimes with their young children) were housed in one large room with no privacy. Reformers had good intentions: to create more peaceful and contemplative environment in which people could reflect on their actions and “repent”. Presumably the overarching intent behind societies correctional institutions is, at least on paper, to have people leave prison better able to participate constructively in society. I wouldn’t saw this never happens, but I also wouldn’t say our US system does a good job at this either.
So how do we, as a society, know how good a job we’re doing in helping people re-enter society “better” than they went in? I think we’ve got a lot of thinking (and mapping) to do to answer this question. The chunk of the mashed-up Wardley/Ebrahim map that addresses this lies at the intersection of performance systems and accountabilities. During the “fireside” chat that closed Mapcamp2021, Simon Wardley briefly mentioned a prison in the UK that tried some innovative approaches. Some of these turned out to reduce recidivism. There was apparently some talk of propagating the practices (?) (Simon didn’t share the details) to other prisons, but there was little interest on the part of other prisons as the measures of their performance didn’t include rates of recidivism. Wow. I imagine the same is probably true in the US, but I’d love to learn more about this. I’d also be interested in doing some mapping with folks who design and run prisons together with orgs seeking to evolve our correctional system to one that is more effective, rehabilitative, and humane.
In thinking about IAHR’s strategy in light of all this mapping I’ve done, I find myself wondering if a legislative approach is our best “bet” for supporting correctional institutions in moving away from the use of solitary confinement as a foundational tool for managing the prison population. I returned to the traditional Wardley Map for IAHR and added a 4th strategic move that I think is critical to inch us closer to our goal. (In the map below I’ve removed IAHR’s established strategic “moves” to make the map easier to read.) The main function solitary confinement serves in prisons and jails is to manage people’s behavior, both individually and collectively. Correctional Officers might put someone in solitary because of some infraction, for an individual’s own safety, or because a particular incarcerated person is perceived as a threat by a CO. Often, a whole tier will be put on lock-down if it’s not known who is responsible for some infraction. In the revised map I’ve added a “move” to support the establishment of new responses to rule-breaking and new practices for keeping prisoners and officers safe when they feel threatened (bottom left of the following map).
New practices, procedures, and physical spaces will need to be invented so they show up (lumped together) on the far left. But the current practices are built on the philosophies (often implicit) that underlie our correctional systems, and our theories about whether and how humans can grow and change. Our philosophy of corrections, and our theories of change don’t often change without great effort, so I’ve put these at the right edge of the map. In other words, these beliefs and attitudes are so stable as to be unquestioned and largely invisible.
The challenge of responding in new ways to rule-breaking, safety, and population management in a given facility is a big one, perhaps even considered impossible by correctional officers and administrators. I’ve included two innovative programs that have already come up with new practices inside prisons — ones that protect the dignity and respect the needs of both incarcerated people and correctional officers. The Amend and T.R.U.E. programs are established in small pockets and spreading, so I’ve put them in the “product” area of the Wardley Map. The fact that these “products” exists means that correctional institutions don’t have to start from scratch — they can build on the work done by other institutions.
For more information on Alnoor Ebrahim’s work see Measuring Social Change: Performance and Accountability in a Complex World.
For more information on Wardley Mapping, you can read swardley’s book here on Medium.
I made an animation on Solitary Confinement a few years ago.
There is much more information on the harmful effects of solitary confinement in a reports from Vera Institute of Justice.
To support Interfaith Action for Human Rights’ work to limit the use of solitary confinement in MD, DC, and VA, you can make a donation on IAHR’s website.
Sue Borchardt a research artist trying to push value out into the world without consideration of whether she gets paid for it. If you find any of this work useful, consider becoming a patron on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/researchArtist
