Ian Robson

If you want a fast, step change in the performance of your organisation, Ian Robson is one of the few experts who can guarantee success.

  • Performance Improvement
  • Transformational Leadership
  • Executive & Management Development
  • Change Management
  • Team Building
  • Performance Measurement
  • Strategic Planning
  • Risk Analysis
Ian Robson
Ian Robson

Ian Robson is one of those rare experts who does not just talk about successful change and performance improvement; he ensures his clients achieve it. For example, one Government Agency was last of twenty-three similar units in terms of efficiency. Within just a few months, it had transformed its performance by two million pounds annually and had moved to third position. It is now progressing to become the best performing unit by far. Yet research suggests that typically over 70% of change initiatives fail to achieve the desired results. So how can Ian be so confident?

Ian has spent ten years developing and successfully implementing a transformation technique known as Challenge Mapping. As soon as you start to listen to Ian, you will realise that Challenge Mapping is not just another fad, or a remix of approaches that you have already heard about. Challenge Mapping is successful because it takes a completely different approach to improving organisational effectiveness.

Ian explains that an alternative approach is required because we traditionally view organisations in terms of their constituent parts. These views are usually either the hierarchy of the people and posts involved, or maps of the different processes carried out within the organisation. The interfaces, between people, processes, equipment and information are usually almost totally ignored. They are simply represented by lines on our organisation charts or process maps. This typically leads to functional silos, turf wars and organisational black holes that consume a disproportionate amount of resource without any benefit.

Challenge Mapping is a “Systems Thinking” skill that allows managers to overcome these problems by focusing on optimising the relationships between the parts of the organisation. This enables them to build holistic solutions that maximise the overall synergy. As it is the relationships that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts, it is in this, almost completely neglected area, where it is easiest to make the greatest improvements in the overall performance of the organisation.

So Challenge Mapping utilises a unique way of identifying the relationships between the performance of a system and the critical, measurable aspects of the inputs. This reveals how to create the Value Levers that will achieve the maximum level of improvement at the lowest possible cost. In other words, Challenge Mapping changes the focus from the control of the component parts of an organisation, to the control of the interfaces.

One of the consequences of using the approach is that it allows everyone in the organisation to work much, much smarter in aligning their actions with improving the performance of the organisation in an ever changing world. The reason for this is that people can only work smarter if they have the relevant information, techniques and understanding to enable them to utilise their untapped intelligence. Few other approaches even start to address such fundamental issues. This difference alone can account for substantial and fast, step improvements in both performance and flexibility.

However, the differences do not end there. Challenge Mapping is different to other approaches because;

  • Typically, the various management techniques have been developed by attempting to simply copy a method that has been successful in other organisations. Challenge Mapping is based on sound scientific principles, so that the solution can be specifically developed to ensure it succeeds in your organisation.
  • Standard approaches separate the “hard” technical issues from the “soft” people issues. Challenge Mapping integrates these two aspects, because the hard issues often affect the way people behave and vice-versa.
  • Other programmes tend to focus on solving specific problems. Challenge Mapping focuses on creating holistic solutions capable of simultaneously resolving multiple problems.
  • Many techniques use analysis to reduce, or break down those problems into even smaller parts, creating an additional problem of trying to join up the separate solutions. Challenge Mapping uses synthesis to create complete and fully integrated solutions.
  • Normal approaches often focus on what is going wrong inside the systems, processes, departments or organisations. Challenge Mapping focuses on what needs to be right at the interfaces or joins between the systems.
  • The majority of methods plan, forward in time, those processes or actions required to progress in the general direction of the desired goal. Challenge Mapping starts from a precise future goal and plans back, towards the current situation. In this way it is possible to quickly identify all the critical intermediate states or milestones that are essential to success.
  • In other approaches, risk analysis is often neglected because it is a completely separate part of the change or improvement project. In Challenge Mapping, assessing and minimising the uncertainty is an integral part of the approach and is a key factor in its consistent success.

At Ian’s workshops, you can learn how to use Challenge Mapping to achieve dramatic performance improvements in very short timescales. Ian has assisted International Organisations, Government Agencies, Local Authorities as well as small and medium enterprises. He has enabled them to substantially improve every type of performance, including efficiency, quality, cycle times, on-time delivery, safety, staff morale and absenteeism. Furthermore, his Challenge Mapping technique has been successfully applied to virtually every type of operation, including banking, commercial, chemical processing, manufacturing, administration, housing services, waste management, retail, construction and legal services.

Ian demonstrates how it is possible to focus the whole organisation on identifying and developing solutions, or Value Levers, that are capable of creating the maximum improvement with the minimum cost. Challenge Mapping enables people to understand how the organisation functions by viewing it as sets of interlocking systems. It changes people’s behaviour by changing their perception of their situation. It achieves this by simply changing the point from where there are perceiving their own system. Once people are able to perceive their system from the outside looking in, their behaviour changes surprisingly quickly.

However, Challenge Mapping is not just another stand-alone technique. Ian graphically illustrates how this single approach affects and greatly assists in improving every aspect of management, including: Leadership, Process Improvement, Performance Measurement, Training, Strategic Planning, Team Building, Project Management, Motivation, Communications, Change Management, Design and Alignment of Organisational Structures. It enables managers and staff to address the critical issues that will ensure their organisation can thrive in a world where the ability to continually and rapidly adapt is no longer an optional extra.

Ian shows that because Challenge Mapping is the only approach based on sound scientific principles, it does not suffer from the high failure rates associated with other management fads that have so often in the past, quickly risen and fallen from popularity.

Find out how Ian Robson can help you quickly learn how to apply the principles of Challenge Mapping in your organisation and gain the most benefit from the least effort. However, time is of the essence if you want to gain a competitive advantage. Ian is currently writing the definitive book on Challenge Mapping. So, soon everyone will know about it.