One of the key problems facing teams new to impact mapping is jumping too fast from perceived outcomes to solutions, without considering the variety of actors involved, or the multitude of solution options that could lead to the same outcome. In particular, teams often do not consider actors or stakeholders that could hinder or obstruct the progress towards the goal (such as competitors, regulators, platform providers with their own agendas).
The objective of this game is to promote divergent thinking and explicitly provoke teams to consider different types of actors, by avoiding the discussion on solutions, and considering the different forces in play that could impact the progress towards an organisational goal.
Generate a wide list of potential actors/stakeholders to consider for an impact map; provide alignment and a big picture view for everyone involved in planning.
This game uses a metaphor of a living city for an organisation, and particularly the growth/sustainability of a city as a metaphor for the progress of an organisation towards its goals/objectives.
The city gets clean water from rivers, flowing into the city. Clean water is necessary for growth and sustainability of the citizens. Those rivers represent revenue streams and channels that need to grow or be sustainable in order for the organisation to succeed. Rivers break down into tributaries that represent customer groups, users, stakeholders and actors contributing to individual revenue streams. Those groups can then be hierarchically broken into further segments, based on the strategy and market position of the organisation.
The city is in danger from two types of pollution: direct polluters (who dump dirty water into one of the revenue streams or tributaries), and air polluters (who pump poisonous gasses into the air). The first group represents stakeholders and actors that directly block or reduce progress. The second group represents actors/stakeholder who are not immediately endangering a specific revenue stream but could turn out to be problem in the future (if the wind changes).
In public sector/non-profit environments, there will be no direct revenue streams, or those streams are unlikely to be critically important for an impact map. Instead of using the metaphor of a city receiving water, explaining the metaphor as snow melting on a mountain that will feed cities with water. The first level of rivers coming out of the city will represent types of service provided by the organisation, and tributaries will represent groups of people who benefit from the service.
The participants will work in groups of 3-5. Each group should have:
- a table to sit around, big enough to hold a large sheet of paper, or a flip-chart/whiteboard to stand around
- at least 4-5 large blank sheets of paper (flipchart size or larger) or erasable whiteboard space.
- marker pens of various colours, including black, green, blue, red and yellow/orange. Avoid ball pens because they are difficult to read from a distance.
- enough space to move around the table/flipchart unobstructed by other groups. Do not place tables/flipcharts too close together.
If using tables for groups, cabaret seating works best. If using flipcharts, just remove all tables/chairs from the room.
Each participant will need a printout cheat-sheet.
This is a group exercise around a large sheet of paper, and all participants are encouraged to draw simultaneously. Group sizes of 5-6 should allow for good discussion and divergent thinking.
Because this game facilitates divergent thinking, and uses a rich visual metaphor, don't be too strict on participants if they go off script and start adding additional ways for the city to flourish or be in danger.
The game evolves through two diverge/merge cycles, with groups working individually during the divergent phase, and then reviewing results together during the merging phase.
Divergent phases should be timeboxed to 10-15 minutes, to allow for groupwork and discussions. During divergent phases, participants work in individual groups, draw on their group paper sheet and add ideas.
Merging phases should be timeboxed to 10 minutes. The purpose of the merge phases is to inspire other groups to come up with additional ideas by reviewing progress so far. When working with 2-3 groups, it is best to review the individual group results one at a time, with one participant from each group presenting to the whole room. When working with more than 3 groups, just get people to walk around and read through the other group results in a time-boxed review after each divergent cycle.
- Frame the goals for the participants (for example, getting one of the senior stakeholders to present the objectives for the next milestone).
- Explain the key challenge of coming up with various different types of stakeholders, and the metaphor of the city supplied by clean air and water
- Show an example of a Revenue Stream game outcome on a projector or a large sheet of paper
- Explain the elements of a revenue stream map
- Introduce colour-coding:
- Green for the city in the middle; representing the organisation or a product/objective of the organisation
- Blue for the revenue streams/sales channels directly connected to the city
- Black for the contributors to revenue streams - users, stakeholders, actors
- Red for the direct polluters
- Yellow/Orange for the indirect polluters
- Hand out the cheat-sheet to all the participants
Get the participants to draw a city in the middle of their paper sheet. Then ask them to draw streams of bringing clean water to the city, representing various revenue/sales/contribution channels, using the blue colour. They should write the names of revenue channels on the lines. Encourage participants to use line thickness to signify importance
Get the participants to draw contributors to their revenue streams, and add polluters. Explain that it's perfectly OK to revisit and add more revenue streams if they can think of them.
If the second divergent session did not produce many polluters on the map, because the participants were too focused adding direct contributors, then hold one more divergent session and ask the participants to focus on imagining who could damage/obstruct the streams or tributaries. It's OK to add more streams during this session, but the participants should focus on polluters.
With intermittent merging sessions between drawing, the final maps should converge towards a common set of stakeholders, so there should be no major need for a big closing merge/discussion session. The artefacts produced from this workshop can be directly used as an input into follow-up exercises and facilitation games.