Tuesday, July 22, 2025

What's your problem-solving process look like?

While I've tagged over 130 article on this blog with #planning, probably most of the one-thousand plus articles posted here since 2005 focus on the planning needed to help great, on-going, mentor-rich programs reach K-12 youth in all areas of persistent poverty. 

I show planning steps and information mapping below.  Do you have visualizations like these to show your problem-solving process? 

This concept map highlights steps in an on-going planning process which aims to influence what resource providers, businesses and policy-makers do, not just what kids, educators, program leaders and parents do.  click here to open

Below is another version of this planning process. click here to open


On both concept maps you'll see geographic maps used at the beginning of the planning process.  Unless you define what places you want to help, using a map, you could get a lot of people together, spend a lot of money, and still miss a lot of the places that need help the most.

On both concept maps I show a next step, of gathering available information about the problem, who's already working to solve it, who should be involved in planning and action steps, etc. 

Using that information the Tutor/Mentor Connection (1993-present) began creating maps to show locations of non school, volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs in 1993 and to follow media stories about shootings, gangs, or poorly performing schools, with map stories that talked about the availability (or lack) of tutor/mentor programs in the area surrounding the incident.  

My goal has been that maps and the library of programs and research be used by leaders in business, government, colleges, hospitals, faith groups and government to fill high poverty neighborhoods with a wide range of  youth development and workforce development based tutor and mentor programs.
(Read more in this article)

The map below is another example of my use of maps. 

I used these maps in this article. It shows how maps can be used in planning, to identify stakeholders who should be involved in the process.  It should lead to questions such as, "Do we invest in helping existing programs grow?  or, "Do we invest in new start-ups?"  The planning process should provide answers.

Here's another article, titled "Use Maps for Understanding and Serving Areas of Need."

In the concept maps at the top of the page I include links to the research section of the Tutor/Mentor library. It's shown in the map below. click here to open


The small boxes at the bottom of each node contain links to external websites and pages of my library, and to additional concept maps.

My goal has been to expand the information planners had available when developing new solutions to persistent problems.  A research team could dig into my library and the websites I point to when starting a planning process.  Ideally they already would have spent many hours learning what's in the library, so when a grant opportunity or new policy initiative is being discussed, they already know where they can find large amounts of information.

Concept maps can help people navigate this vast library.  Here's one of many articles I've written showing uses of concept map. 

I added two new resources to the research section of the library today.  Below is a view of one page from an extensive "Poverty & Wealth  Inequality" project created by Gene Bellinger, a systems thinking pro who I've learned from for more than a dozen years.  You can see his influence in the planning map shown at the top of this article.  


Open this link to start your journey.  Gene has used AI to create a series of stories and relationship maps, that show a not-to-distant future where the rich and powerful have taken full control. His stories show how people have built a resistance that ultimately overthrows that government and replaces it with one more fully committed to the welfare of all people and the planet. Open the link to start reading the stories and open more and more pages.   

You won't see the interactive graphic shown above until you open the html file that Gene points to in the upper right of the page.   If you open that file you'll find an interactive map. That means you can zoom in to look more closely at different elements. You can click on nodes to read the text. You can create and share your own versions, as I'm doing. 

There's a load of information.  When you open the link to start your journey you'll see a list on the left side of your screen, which I show below.  


Each link on this page opens to a story, with additional maps.  As my #CLMOOC friend Terry Elliot would say, it's like "going down a rabbit hole" of learning. You just keep going deeper and deeper.

View this short video to see Gene Bellinger's introduction to AI Modeling.

Which leads me to the map shown below.  At the top of the third column from the left is a "Project 2025" link.  Click here to open that page. 


If you don't go any further you'll be lost because the concept map shown with the article has so many nodes that it's impossible to read.  However, if you open the html version, as I did, you can zoom in to look more closely at the elements on the map.  For those concerned with the direction the USA is going, this is a valuable map. 

Last week I wrote an article titled "Solving problems? Know the Network."  I pointed to a Power Mapping article that provides steps for learning who you should be connecting with to be able to solve the problem you're trying to solve (or to build the business you're building).  The Project 2025 map is an example of Power Mapping

All of this is just part of the first stage of a planning process.  It's really on-going because problem solving is cyclical. As you solve the first problem you face new problems, which require new information, and new people and resources.   Furthermore, this process is at different stages in thousands of places where people are trying to solve the same problem.  If information showing what each group is doing is available in web libraries, planners should be able to learn from each other, and not be constantly "reinventing-the-wheel". 

One of your challenges will be to build this network, then sustain and expand it over many years.  That's Step 1 in the concept map shown below. 


However, it's Step 2 and Step 3 that are more difficult.  Step 2 focuses on generating on-going attention that draws a growing number of people to the library and blogs like mine.  Step 3 focuses on helping people find what they are looking for, understand what they find, and apply what they learn in actions that help solve the problem you're focused on.

If the process works, it leads to Step 4, where planners find lists of organizations to support, or tools to fill voids where new organizations are needed.  The public awareness generated in Step 2 aims to motivate people to volunteer time, talent and dollars supporting youth serving programs in the area planners are focused.  In my case, that's been the Chicago region since 1993.  My list of tutor/mentor programs can be found here

I've never had much money for any of this, particularly Steps 2 and 3.  So I've focused on motivating other people to share the message and help build understanding.  It's what faith leaders have done for over 2000 years.  

How might athletes and celebrities support this process?  In February 2024 I wrote this article after watching the NFL annual awards presentation.  I wrote this article in 2023.  These show how athletes in major sports and many celebrities could go beyond the individual charity efforts they support to call greater on-going attention to the needs of entire neighborhoods and cities.  I wondered if anyone was aggregating information about all the foundations and causes athletes and celebrities support, so a  library and Power Map could be created that planners could use to better understand who is, or is not, being served, and who might be able to help draw greater attention to specific issues.   

Is anyone doing this?

7-23-2025 update - read this post by Dave Snowden and you'll see the same thinking as in my planning maps.

Thanks for reading.  Share your thoughts about mapping information libraries with me on LinkedIn, BlueSky and other social media platforms (see links here). 

If you value what I'm sharing please make a contribution to help me pay the bills.  Click here

1 comment:

Dogtrax said...

Thank for sharing the work of Gene Bellinger. I'll take a look.