{"id":435072,"date":"2021-06-02T19:11:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T02:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcuser&p=435072"},"modified":"2021-06-02T19:11:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T02:11:00","slug":"6-ways-to-make-geographic-thinking-part-of-culture","status":"publish","type":"arcuser","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcuser\/6-ways-to-make-geographic-thinking-part-of-culture","title":{"rendered":"6 Ways to Make Geographic Thinking Part of Culture"},"author":1031,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[369792,25012,275962],"tags":[472461,474622,474802,276302],"arcuser_issues":[474432],"class_list":["post-435072","arcuser","type-arcuser","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-location-intelligence","category-managers-corner","category-managing-gis-2","tag-arcuser","tag-geographic-thinking","tag-geospatial-strategy","tag-spatial-thinking","arcuser_issues-spring-2021"],"acf":{"short_description":"These six keys help a company build and sustain a geospatial culture:","pdf":{"host_remotely":true,"file":null,"file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"blockquote","content":"There\u2019s a great quote from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear that I love:\r\n\u201c[People] don\u2019t rise to the level of their goals; they fall to the level of their systems.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"This rule also applies to organizations. Most companies have goals and strategies. Some companies thrive, and some don\u2019t.\r\n\r\nWhy is that?<\/strong><\/em>\r\n\r\nA lot of it comes down to those companies\u2019 systems.\r\nUnsuccessful firms view strategy as outside day-to-day activities\u2014separate from what they normally do. Winners, on the other hand, internalize strategy. For these firms, success is a habit made possible by the capabilities that are ingrained into the culture of their organizations.\r\n\r\nAs a strategist focused on the geospatial industry, I spend a lot of time helping organizations devise and then implement geospatial strategies. I have observed that the most successful organizations get the culture part of it right. They create an environment where thinking about where becomes second nature.\r\n\r\nHow do they do this? I have encapsulated this approach into these six keys to building and sustaining a geospatial culture:\r\n
    \r\n \t
  1. Improve geospatial literacy<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. Institutionalize geospatial knowledge<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. Plan with geography<\/li>\r\n \t
  4. Communicate with geography<\/li>\r\n \t
  5. Celebrate GeosSuccesses<\/li>\r\n \t
  6. Create GeoLeaders<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n

    1. Improve Geospatial Literacy<\/h3>\r\nA baseline level of knowledge in the tools and science of geography is the first step in building a geospatially-informed culture. Without it, your people will struggle. The jargon will sound foreign and the concepts will confuse them. People will regard geography as a specialist discipline that is for experts and not for them.\r\n\r\nFirst, evaluate your organization\u2019s geospatial literacy by creating a role-based assessment. This measures people\u2019s proficiency with geospatial concepts and tools across key business functions. The idea is to assess a person\u2019s ability to apply some basic geography concepts to their role in the organization. The Concepts of Geographic Thinking<\/a>, is a great guide for crafting those questions. I also wrote a blog post, \u201cHow to find geospatial opportunities hiding in your business,\u201d that describes a simple tool for translating business language to geospatial language.\r\n\r\nOnce you\u2019ve done that, create a basic geography curriculum. We\u2019re not creating experts here, so no need to go overboard. Focus on improving geospatial literacy in terms of applying geospatial analysis to various job functions.\r\n\r\n "},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":435132,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"

    2. Institutionalize Geospatial Knowledge<\/h3>\r\nInstitutionalizing geospatial knowledge has a lot in common with the previous step, but it goes further. For knowledge to be ingrained in the organization\u2019s collective consciousness, it needs to be organized. That means compiling people\u2019s experience and know-how into reusable practices and resources that everyone can leverage.\r\n\r\nOne of the best ways to institutionalize geospatial knowledge is to establish a geospatial competency center, or center of excellence (COE). A COE is a shared business function responsible for developing practices, providing leadership and training, and advancing innovation with focus on a specific area. It\u2019s like having an in-house academy for all things geospatial.\r\n\r\nThe form a COE takes is unique to the organization. For some organizations, the COE might focus on standards setting. This could include developing rules around proper cartographic representation or external data distribution. For other organizations, the COE might focus on knowledge curation, such as compiling geospatial use cases from across different departments and synthesizing them into consumable content.\r\n\r\nStill other organizations might focus on researching advances in geospatial technology and serve as an innovation center.\r\nYou might be tempted to think that a COE is the exclusive domain of federal government agencies or large academic institutions. Not necessarily. I see COEs in the geospatial and analytics space in organizations that range from local governments to commercial entities.\r\n\r\nEven if you don\u2019t establish an official COE, it\u2019s the process of institutionalizing geospatial knowledge that matters. At a minimum, form a virtual team of cross-department leaders who meet regularly to perform the ongoing work of organizing geospatial know-how.\r\n

    3. Plan with Geography<\/h3>\r\nHow often do your management planning sessions genuinely consider where.\r\n\r\nBe honest.<\/em>\r\n\r\nMaybe there\u2019s a casual nod to geography in the form of an operations map, but do discussions ever delve into the influence of location on your business interests?\r\n\r\nTo plan geospatially is to consider the impact of location on key business decisions. One way is to include a set of questions in planning meetings that prompt a geospatial perspective, like these:\r\n