Make your own map

This activity will help you answer that. The output is a map of your career skills, a snapshot for where you are right now. You can use this map to project future scenarios, tangibly compare and discuss with others, and target skill areas for focused attention. 

Anyone who is doing some amount of research work can map with this framework. It’s an activity designed for individuals, but best done along with a group, to discuss, share, and question along the way. 

We recommend 40-60 minutes of preparation, and the first map will take you anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.

Plan for 20-30 minutes to get up to speed on the format, and 20-30 minutes to explore the patterns in advance. 

You’ll need somewhere to actually make the map, and you’ll want to refer to a few different places while you’re mapping. For now, prioritize flexibility in moving ideas around over visual appeal.

Start at the Skills index. Our goal is to quickly generate a list of the skills that you’re actively working with, looking to explore, or already have a strong mastery. 

Read each skill pattern title and quickly decide if it is a part of your practice, or not. If you’re not familiar with a skill, feel free to dip into the pattern and see what it’s about. Take this list and move to step 3!

Now look at the theme<>skill mapping. Our goal is to translate the list of skills into the shortlist of themes we’ll actually put on the map. 

Go through your skills and jot down a list of the unique themes they belong to. Now rewrite your skills, organized around each theme.  

If the list is big, more than 8 or 10 themes, consider filtering out some themes for the first map. You can drop any themes with single skills that are not an active part of your day to do work.

Get your map template ready, whatever format you may be working with. We’re going to get the themes on the map first, not worrying about how they’re connected. 

Go through your themes one by one to locate them on the map. Consider first your level of mastery (see Components page for reference.) Then, consider the potential for impact/influence this theme has on the larger course of your work. Mark the skill on the map. 

As you add each new theme, you will face some interesting choices about relative levels of mastery (x-axis), and relative visibility (y-axis). This is a crucial part of mapping: exposing the interesting and un-examined edges of our practice, raising new questions. 

Each theme added to the map may lead you to shift, adjust, and move what’s already there. Don’t worry about getting it perfect. Get it good enough so that you could explain to someone else, roughly, “why is this skill placed around here?” It is okay, and in fact encouraged, to keep it messy: we’ll translate to a “full draft” version in two steps. 

Once you’re (somewhat) satisfied with where all the themes are on the map, we’ll look at how the skills support one another.

Pull up the Value chain. This is one hypothesis of how these skill themes interrelate and support or depend on one another.  

If it’s your first map, work directly from our value chain. Go through each theme on your map—for each connection that theme has in the value chain sample, draw that connection on your map if both themes exist. 

If you’re more familiar with the format, think about connecting your own interpretation of how your skill themes relate. For any pair of skill themes that you believe support, constrain, or depend on one another, ask yourself, “Is there a meaningful relationship here? A way I can explain how one affects, amplifies, or enables the other?” Where the answer is yes, connect those two themes on your map.

It’s probably a good time for a short break. And to share your progress with the group, check for any interesting crossover insights or interesting interpretations. 

Come back and look at your map, pretending that someone else made it for you. Does this reflect the shape of your craft? Can you understand how your skills fit together and build a realistic current picture of your practice?  

Hopefully, yes! Either way, we’re cleaning it up for the final step. Take your rough map and redraw it on a new template. Don’t worry about big structural changes right now (it’s enough if you’ve already noticed them), but do fine-tune relative positioning as necessary.

Now we use the map as a diagnostic tool. Our goal is to find 1-3 themes we can actively work on (intentionally move to the right), that will make our practice more robust and impactful. 

Your time is limited and you can’t get better at everything. We recommend having, at most, one skill theme you’re exploring in a learning mode, one skill theme you’re actively practicing, and one more that you are consolidating. (These correspond to the fuzzy zones on the Map.) We’ll walk you through how to pick one of each; if time is a factor, keep your set of focus areas to 1 or 2 total.

Pick one theme to focus on learning
‍Start at the left of your map.

Take a look at the skills farthest to the left and highest up in visibility. Think about the themes that are supported by other, fairly developed, themes. Is there anything here that’s fuzzy? Something you want to do but don’t have a clear handle on? Pick the most important of these, and consider if you should set as your learning focus. 

Focusing on learning a skill means exploring how others use it, getting a sense of where and when it fits, and where you may be able to start piloting or testing it. It might take one month, or it might take six, but that doesn’t matter; the moment you decide on learning a skill, your focus will help you find the right opportunities to ask questions and weave it into your work. Pay attention to existing resources, remain curious, and try not to get too distracted by other interesting new things. You will improve and get to a point where you can use it in practice. 

If you’re working digitally (or with markers), put an orange circle around this theme on your map. Or just write “LEARN” on top of the node. 

Pick one theme to focus on practicing.
Now we move toward the middle.

‍Take a look at the skill themes that seem to be the most connected. Or where you are spending time and energy, but seeing uneven results. What are the core themes that will unlock new skills or open up your time once they are mastered? Pick the most interesting of these—perhaps the one you’re spending the most time on—and consider if you should set it as you practice focus. 

Focusing on practice means actively seeking out the projects where it makes sense to use that skill. It’s not about trying to use that skill in all of your projects. The first and most important part of practice is actually practicing. Professionals need practice—it’s clearest in athletics, where practice is in the form of drilling and live play. Breaking down our skills into their “drillable” parts while actively attending to how we use those pieces creates a new and flexible understanding. The goal is to build up a sensitivity for the forces that require you to use certain skills, and the forces at play while and after you employ it. Practice and reflection will move skills to mastery. 

If you’re working digitally (or with markers), put a blue circle around this theme on your map. Or just write “PRACTICE” on top of the node. 

Pick one theme to begin consolidating.
Finally, the right.

Take a look at the skills that are farthest along in mastery. Think about those that are well-developed, almost second nature to you. First, take a moment and try to remember what it was like when that was hard. Can you see it? Do you remember how it felt to try it? You’ve improved quite a bit. Now, think about the skills that are still an important, active part of your practice. Are there any of those that take up time you could be using in a better (left-er, and higher up) place? Rather than let it stagnate, consider if you should set that skill as a consolidation focus.  

Focusing on consolidation helps create a final layer of learning, the move from understanding enough to do it well, to understanding enough to explain it well. By consolidating, attempting to “decouple” from a skill, we find where the real edges lie. Is there someone you can teach so they can take some of the work off your hands? Teach them. Are there people who need to do it, but just don’t have the right waypoints? Write a guide. Do you think you, personally, will always have to do this thing for a while? Revisit your practice: set up templates and structures so that you never really have to think about it again. These acts of consolidation are the final push that will help your well-developed skills stay strong, and give you the closure necessary to free your attention to other areas. [Ed. note: Consider trying to break your skill down into a set of one or more patterns!] 

If you’re working digitally (or with markers), put a black circle around this theme on your map. Or just write “CONSOLIDATE” on top of the node.

You’ve done it. You have your map, your focus areas, and hopefully new clarity. How did it go? How much time did it take, compared to our expectations?  

Post up a picture with the #researchskills hashtag on twitter. What did you find? Share your results in #skills_framework on the ReOps slack. Tell us how we can make this activity smoother, or better.  

How well will you move the needle? Consider setting a calendar reminder to come back and update your map in 3 or 6 months, to see what might have shifted.


[Ed. note: Get good at mapping! Start here, with your skills, and practice turning thoughts into a tangible map. Conceptually describing complex systems is hard work, and this is an elegant way to start doing it. Learn it now and you will find a wide range of applications down the road. Especially if you’d like to be involved in strategy.]