BUILDING RELATIONAL MAPS IN EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS #3

It is essential when we work with a company, whether it is in the process of organizational change or in executive development programs to understand that organizations are a web of conversations and that executives, being non-manual workers, need to remember that any problem requiring a solution is at the distance of one or more pending conversations with somebody.

By the same token, there is a basic difference between talking and having a conversation. When we speak, we simply say things, however, when we have a conversation, we try to coordinate actions for others in order to create clearly stated agreements. The above is based on the idea that trying to reach a goal means making things happen and that things happen because somebody asks for something, somebody offers something and agreements are created for action.

In this article, I would like to introduce a concept-tool that is closely related to the conversational topic and by that I mean what I like to call a relational map (Salom 2009). The relational map is a tool used for different purposes:

* Thinking in a strategic way about the conversational dimension of directive work.