Operational researchers working on a variety of different tasks use cognitive mapping technique to structure complex data, interview people, and manage large qualitative data for easy problem solving (Brazão, Da Motta, and Rijo, 2013, p. 640). This reflective essay focuses on Build company that recently secured a grant funded project tasked to design and deliver a ‘Believe in Change’ program that can assist the young offenders suffering from addiction and who need rehabilitation and reintegration to the society. To achieve the set objectives of the project, Build partnered with Life of Choices, FreshStart, Thoughtcare Addiction Service (TAS), and the local Further Education College whereby each of the partners have a particular duty in the rehabilitation of the youth to the society. This essay provides individual reflection on how cognitive mapping gets used by operational researchers, the benefits of cognitive mapping, the roles of cognitive mapping technique, and its comparison with the application of SSM.
The primary aims of the grant-funded project secured by BUILD are helping young offenders suffering addiction, and those released from prison get reintegrated and rehabilitated into the society. The project targets to create links for rehabilitation in the broader community and increase the employability of the addicted youths to the job sectors (Crawford and Newburn, 2013, p. 5). The top priorities for meeting these project goals and ensuring project success include:
Building partners happiness through the provision of sufficient finances for employment of suitable and committed project participants. Also, using cognitive mapping, the partners would interview the youth released from prison to collect their ideas and perceptions on the proficiency of the coaching team (Eden, 2004, p. 680). The obtaining of response that the coaching team is incompetent would assist BUILD to hire more qualified trainers. Further, another priority for the grant-funded project establishing cooperation and a friendly atmosphere between the young addicted people to get rehabilitated and the participating partners of the BUILD project.
The use of cognitive mapping helps in structuring accounts for problems, helps in the interview process, and acts as a powerful device for ideas sharing (Papageorgiou, 2011, p. 510). However, its application in the grant-funded project by BUILD requires competent participants and partners. The leadership skills and behaviors needed for this project’s efficiency and effectiveness include:
Life of choices partner that offers coaching services to the youth released from prison needs to show competence in delivering the required quality services (Galotti, 2013, p. 100). Showing expertise and right skills in coaching the addicted people would attract concentration from the released prisoners hence conduciveness in project activities.
The participants need to show commitment to the project. Currently, TAS faces trouble from less committed members, and this has been erratic. Adjustment of participants behavior would motivate TAS to ask for sufficient resources from BUILD to retain BUILD champions.
The management of BUILD needs to involve Freshstart in laying down strategies for prioritization policies of ‘Belief in Change.’ This would offer Freshstart with capable analytical skills, cognitive skills, and knowledge to place participants to the most appropriate employment.
From the case study, the delivery elements of cognitive mapping with the relevant partners of BUILD can help design a mutually beneficial impact to the stakeholders. In undertaking the grant-funded project of ‘Belief in Change’ by BUILD, the experimental learning organization has partnered with TAS, Life of Choices, Freshstart, and the local Further Education College. While BUILD plays an overall role in monitoring the action plan and duties of these partners, all the participants benefit (Kim, 2013, p. 500).
The support delivery elements used by the partners include government work program by Freshstart, direct coaching method by Life of Choices, community health services by TAS, and next stage education and training by the local Further Education College (Beck, 2011, p. 66). The use of cognitive mapping captures all partners ideas on their counterparts, analysis of obtained feedback from the project participants, and the ultimate impact as measured through employment rates diagrams.
The ‘Belief in Change’ top priority by BUILD experimental learning requires efficient management of the grant-funded project. The rehabilitation and reintegration agenda of the release prisoners to the society by BUILD would be measurable at the end of the strategic plan period by considering its outputs. The coaching and training of at least 20 addicted and released prisoners would be monitored by cognitive mapping technique in the course of the period (Axelrod, 2015, p. 6). Laying down the right measures to prevent the project problems from persisting would at least lead to the rehabilitation of ten addicts and reintegrate them to government jobs.
The company under study, Build is an experimental learning firm whose current project is aimed at designing and delivering a ‘Believe in Change’ program for the young offenders in the society. There are numerous problems in the case that required to get addressed. The use of cognitive mapping may have been employed in the structuring, organizing, and analysis of the key issues facing the project to assist the client and the responsible partners solve these problems (Meissner and Wulf, 2013, p. 840).
The problems facing the project include poor understanding of the grant project by the left, senior management, unhappy partners, the inability of TAS to identify reliable participants, disappointments to the lead trainer by dealing with addicted youth, pressure from the government, poor project understanding, and poor documentation.
Structuring accounts of problems
Build seeks to train, coach, and develop the addicted youth to ensure wider community employability. The fact that the project is full of problems requires the group team to structure the accounts of problems to understand the teenagers and other partnering firms perceptions of the problems. The use of cognitive mapping could assist Build company to figure out that TAS as a partner had trouble in getting suitable participants and that the lead trainer felt uncomfortable by working with a less cooperative team (Kolmos and Graaff, 2014, p. 160). If cognitive mapping was used, these dilemmas, conflicts, and feedback loops could have been worked upon and avoided. The end impact would be the establishment of confidence among the partners and between the participating partners with the addicted youth who need rehabilitation.
Interviewing the addicted youth
Recently, the coaching course by Life of Choices project has been questioned whether it is fit for purpose since the coaching service is considered incompetent to deliver the required services to the client. Using cognitive mapping could help Life of Choices in capturing the chains of argument and linking together participants insights and perceptions into the correct state of affairs as demanded by the client’s project (Gunstone, 2012, p. 144). When issues of incompetence get addressed, the processes taken are represented in cognitive mapping diagrams for future retrieval. Cognitive mapping would have facilitated easy collection of data from the addicted youth on the quality of training and coaching they receive from the coaching staff.
Strategy development and individual problem solving
In this case study about Build company, the management can benefit a lot from using cognitive mapping when developing problem-solving strategies for both the management and individual team members. The four partners of Build can use cognitive mapping in designing a uniform solution that will solve all issues affecting each partner in their roles (Wilson and Hoge, 2013, p. 450). For example, the loss of the champion person who had gained original grant funding for the youth rehabilitation project can get solved by analyzing the techniques he or she used in undertaking the project when the cognitive mapping is utilized.
Benefits and roles of cognitive mapping in the project
The experimental learning firm, BUILD is facing numerous challenges that hinder the grant-funded project success. The use of cognitive mapping in the youth rehabilitation project by BUILD and its partners would have significant and valuable impacts to the success of the project. These benefits include:
Make ideas relationships explicit
The inability of partners to remain happy, the perception of coaching service incompetence, unreliable participants, and dependence on one person in the youth rehabilitation project can be solved by cognitive mapping (Wilson and Hoge, 2013, p. 515). Cognitive mapping will help the partners reason in the same direction and hence resolving these underlying project issues.
Enhance easy sharing of captured ideas
BUILD company can benefit from cognitive mapping by informing all project partners that their captured ideas and perceptions will be treated with confidentiality (Novak, 2010, p.40). By this doing, the partnering firms would feel comfortable in sharing their captured ideas in the course of training and other project processes to for client’s benefit.
Helps in structuring and obtaining chains of thought
Training and coaching the addicted youth to equip them with the right employability skills would assist in the project manager in enhancing team spirit around the project within BUILD. To this extent, the cognitive mapping would assist in structuring the training methods utilized and capturing the interviewee’s chains of thoughts and perception (Wilson and Hoge, 2013, p. 506).
See the whole system
The use of cognitive mapping by a project team to solve the project issues enables them to take the time to learn and understand the messy sources and impacts of the problems to the project’s goals. In this case, the sources of challenges are lost of experts, insufficient participants, incompetencies, and contrary commitment by the addicts on the client’s goal.
Facilitate spotting the heart of the problem
Cognitive mapping would help the project participants in the proper understanding of the project within Build. The technique would create a new partnership structure, project evaluation criteria, and service level agreements thus spotting the heart of the issue.
Comparison with the application of SSM
The soft systems methodology (SSM) and cognitive mapping help in solving structural complexity issues within a project. The SSM technique helps in solving managerial problems that face projects just like cognitive mapping.
However, since the SSM technique of project problem solving considers all points of views in implementing the proposed amendments makes cognitive mapping a better technique to utilize (Wood et al., 2012, p. 1340). In the BUILD case, the application of cognitive mapping would be stronger to solve the underlying issues when compared to SSM due to the weakness that SSM has of considering all partners, stakeholders, and clients perceptions even if they are poor.
The use of cognitive mapping model by the management of BUILD provides a valuable decision support tool for the four partnering firms to give only the viable recommendations for problem-solving.
Unlike SSM, cognitive mapping would coordinate the activities of the four partners all the way from training and coaching, treatment and support services, government work programmes, and skills training to the released addicts from the prison.
Conclusion
Cognitive mapping plays a significant role in project success. The operational researchers together with the project participants structure complex data for easy problem solving that prevent project’s success. Cognitive mapping facilitates structural thinking by project participants, makes ideas and their relationships explicit, and helps project managers have a broader view of the entire system. Therefore, project managers and operational researchers need to utilize cognitive mapping technique in sporting and solving the heart of project issue.
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Wood, M.D., Bostrom, A., Bridges, T. and Linkov, I., 2012. Cognitive mapping tools: review and risk management needs. Risk Analysis, 32(8), pp.1333-1348.
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