Talent and Leadership Needed to Achieve Goals

While this blog focuses on ways maps and visualizations can be used to communicate holistic strategies that reach more youth, in more places, with comprehensive, long-term support, the Tutor/Mentor Blog has a wide range of articles focused on recruiting talent and leaders to make such programs available in Chicago and other cities.

I've been showing a variety of concept maps since last October, which illustrate goals, strategy and information I collect and share. Below is a "talent map", showing the different talents needed to help me do this work.

I think this map could be used as a team building tool by any organization, or intermediary. The center of the graphic, or hub, is the organization and its mission. The spokes in yellow, numbered from 1 to 7, represent key talents that are essential to organizational strength and mission success. In small organizations the leader may have many of these talents, but usually not all. As the organization grows, finding people who share the mission goals and passion, but fill specific talent roles, is one of the greatest challenges.

Each of the talent areas highlighted in yellow, may have several sub-talents. For instance I feel technology talent is critical to the work I do. However, while some people might be able to build a web site, they may not have the skills to build data visualizations, concept maps, or geographic maps, which are key tools to use to communicate holistic strategies. In the Public Awareness spoke there may be some who are good working with traditional media, some who are good at writing stories, some good in creating video stories, and others good in using social media to expand the reach of your message. However, few people have all these skills and most non profits have few people with the time to do this work consistently, or the talent. Thus recruiting talent to fill these roles is another huge challenge for social purpose organization leaders....including myself.

Another version of the Talent Map focuses on the network, or organizational background, talent comes from. The graphic at the right illustrates how people who share the mission, vision, need to help recruit talent and financial support for the organization. Recruiting people who have connections and civic reach within key industry, media, political sectors makes it more likely they have relationships that can draw the on-going support an organization needs.

While I've been creating these visualizations and writing blog articles to share them, I've had help from interns from different universities. Visit this page and this page to see visualizations done by interns. Consider doing some of this work yourself to support organizations you're involved with.

Or offer your talent to fill these roles with the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC.