In an ideal world, there would be a core group of early adopters - advocates - interested parties to help inform, design and promote your Social System Map.
In an ideal world, there would be:
- Somewhere between 8 and 20 of these advocates,
- Representing all the distinct stakeholder groups or different perspectives your network engages,
- Psyched about the vision of having a Social System Map for their network,
- Willing and influential enough to help convince others in the network to share their info in sumApp once the project is launched to the whole network,
- Willing to give input into:
- Survey design,
- Connection questions,
- Informational texts (if only to tell you what's confusing after everything has been drafted),
- Map prototype & design
- Willing to be part of a pilot test & map prototype
- and tolerant of having to re-do the survey if things change,
- Interested in participating in SenseMaking activities with the completed map,
- Able to encourage others to engage in SenseMaking as well
- Likely to embed SenseMaking-with-the-map activities into ongoing decision-making activities of the network.
In the real world - we generally don't get all of that in one go. We get a few people who give survey-design input, some others who will help invite people to participate, others who will SenseMake. Or we get a dedicated group - that represents only one or two stakeholder groups.
The truth is, the smaller the group, the easier the project - fewer meetings, less word-smithing, less coordination, less differing-perspectives-conflict. But easier isn't usually what makes the final outcome great. So there's a tension there. So just remember that according to
Glenda Eoyang of Human Systems Dynamics tensions in a system are what generates the energy for transformation.
Your job, as a map maker, is to manage that tension and keep the project moving forward.