How To Tap the Strategic Potential of GIS

This article details the six objectives that successful GIS teams operate on, according to Gary Maguire, who is the manager of business and location intelligence services (GIS) at the Department of Communities and Social Inclusion in South Australia. Maguire's team operates in the health and community sector and combines ideas and strategies from every individual on the team.

The first objective is "Dream to Change the World;" Maguire claims that "dreams need to be situated within an organization's overarching strategy and designed to complement the organization's vision" (Maguire 2016.) He goes on to say that each person on the team has a different dream and a different vision, and by aligning those dreams, they produced a team vision. This vision was then recreated as a Geospatial Strategy, which aims to "provide the best services, support both independence and participation, and connect people to place" (Maguire 2016). This strategy is illustrated by the figure below.

The next objective Maguire outlines is "Reflect to Effect Change" which underscores the idea that you can't move forward if you don't understand your past. And by understanding your past, he's talking about your successes as well as your failures. The third objective is "Lead from the Balcony and the Dance Floor," which Maguire describes as "taking the front line during troubling times, and when celebrating success, standing behind colleagues rather than overshadowing them" (Maguire 2016). The fourth objective is to "Prioritize Relationships," and the fifth is "Speak the Same Language" - though not always literally. The final objective is to "Invest in People." Maguire says that in order to tap everyone's full potential, you need to identify their talents and put them into play! 

Maguire's objectives are what make his team successful, but only because they came up with them together. As in any team, you need to work together in order to accomplish great things, as the team at DCSI do. Utilizing this as an outline for our own GIS teams, whether it be in a group project or as a class, we too can be successful.