Remember maps?
Before Siri’s disembodied voice told us where to go, we had all kinds of maps –road maps and key maps and the big folding maps that never quite went back the way they started. Sometimes we even printed off Mapquest. Learning to read a map was an important skill, whether you were hiking in the woods or driving in the city.
But what if you look at a map and can no longer find where you are?
In Canoeing the Mountains, Tod Bolsinger offers a brilliant analogy for modern leadership: being off the map in the same way that Lewis and Clark reached the edge of their maps and kept on going.
In case you haven’t thought about the Lewis and Clark expedition lately, remember that the team of explorers set off to explore what they believed would be a single waterway leading to a western ocean. Instead, as Bolsinger puts it, they encountered uncharted territory in which the world in front of them was nothing like the world behind them.
If you’re a leader of any kind, that probably sounds familiar.
Lewis and Clark and their team set out to discover unknown territory, create relationships along the way and to leave a path that others could follow. To that end, they made maps.
Being off the map means that you must shift from reading maps to making maps.
There are two parts to this kind of map making: First they had to explore. Then they had to capture and communicate what they had discovered.
Reading maps doesn’t require exploration. Making maps does.
In the 28 months of their journey, they made 140 maps and collected 30 maps from others, mostly the people who already lived in the territory they were exploring. *
William Clark made most of the maps that were included in the final report. It is interesting to note that he was the second-chair leader of the expedition and had little formal education. However, he had on-the-map skills such as surveying and a commitment to the process that helped him create effective maps as they traveled.
The explorers made 4 types of maps:
Compass traverse maps showed the route traveled each day.This process would be similar to keeping a daily log or calendar, recording what they had done.
Journal maps were small, page-sized maps that could include details of a small area or sweeping sketches of large areas, further reflecting on what they had seen. This might correspond to keeping a journal.
Existing maps, made by indigenous people and traders, became more important as the terrain became less familiar. When we learn from people on the margins of our experience, people whose lives have taken them where we’re trying to go, we are collecting existing maps.
Composite maps were made by combining all of their own observations as well as verbal descriptions by others. These 10,000 foot view maps are distorted and imprecise but they formed the mental map of the west for years to follow. We make composite maps when we go to a very high balcony to try to make sense of everything we have learned.
But remember: first they had to explore. Then they made the maps.
Can you imagine what the Lewis and Clark team were feeling when the jagged peaks of the Sierra Rockies came into view on the horizon? Exploring uncharted territory can be exciting but it is also dangerous. It inevitably sparks anxiety in most of us.
On Friday, our podcast will help us understand, confront and manage the anxiety that goes hand in hand with map making. We hope you’ll listen and let us know what you think.
Until then, put the old maps away and start making maps of your own.
