Mapping the World of Merck

If someone had told me back in 2012, when I got Shark Tank-like approval at Merck to create a story map for Global Technology Operations, that I would spend the next decade mapping the entire business and IT organization, I would have called them crazy. Turns out, that’s exactly what happened. What started as a side project became a globally recognized storytelling brand that crossed continents, languages, and learning styles.

This is the first blog article and a high-level look back at the journey that led me to start Ride the Waves Consulting company with Cathy Carfagno. My love for maps, and for the visual stories they can tell, goes back to my childhood. I’ll save that part for another blog post. For now, I want to tell the story of my story maps.

The year was 2012, and Merck IT was in a constant state of change. We were starting to reap the benefits of a global single instance of SAP. We had successfully pulled shared IT services out of the divisions, and the merger with Schering-Plough was working well. Global Technology Operations was the backbone that supported and ran technology for the enterprise. It included technology platforms, IT hubs, IT operations, device management, IT partner and supplier management, application management, and more. It was the epicenter of IT operations. My role as a trusted strategic advisor was vast and exciting, helping senior IT leadership on a variety of projects and programs. I was the go-to person for designing engaging, visually consistent presentations, and I saw growing frustration around how we communicated what GTO was and what it did. As our three IT hubs started to grow, new hires and even senior executives seemed to have different understandings of the organization’s story and structure.

Graphic Recording Workshop Example

It was at that time that I started working with a creative organization that taught me how to become a visual leader and run visualization workshops. I used a wide variety of templates to craft a framework for working with leaders, and the output of those workshops became a storymap. These maps, as fate would have it, would play a key recovery role during Merck’s cyber incident in the summer of 2017, but that again is for another blog article.

After a couple of months and several iterations, the Global Technology Operations (GTO) Story Map launched in 2012. Let’s just say it was received with mixed reactions. You either understood the vision and metaphors, or you dismissed it as a nice “cartoon.” In fact, that cartoon label would stick around for the next decade. I quickly found out that not everybody thinks visually. Most people in technology tend to be left-brain (logical, linear) dominant and can have either an aversion for, or an allergy to, the creative arts. This is a key tenet of Ride the Waves: we educate our “board navigators” to practice whole-brain thinking, something that is only now getting the recognition it deserves.

For the people who “got it,” it was a game changer. Finally, there was one visualization that showed GTO as Grand Central Station: an underground city that orchestrated the company’s pulse and flow while creating the digital backbone for a larger-than-life pharmaceutical company. High-speed rails represented emerging IT platforms, while old steam engines represented legacy applications headed to the scrap yard for recycling. Employees would often come up to me and say, “It finally all makes sense now!” Everyone can relate to the complexity and value that a transportation hub brings to a major city in their country.

To keep this article somewhat short, I’ll end with this: the story map did get its recognition. In fact, it launched a decade-long side project that had me working with senior IT and business leaders across the entire organization. In an upcoming article, I’ll talk specifically about the amazing work Cathy and I did to create the Global Clinical Operations Journey Map. That one map, which is still being used today, launched the idea I had for creating an interactive, immersive world: Merck World.

Here is a sample list of some of the story maps I designed and published at Merck:

·      Global Technology Operations

·      One IT – Global IT Hub Transformation

·      Global Clinical Development / Operations

·      Early Discovery and Preclinical

·      Research & Development

·      R&D Sourcing and Procurement

·      Manufacturing

·      Manufacturing Asset & Reliability Management CoE

·      Manufacturing Strategy, Business Development & Alliances

·      Integrated Product Information

·      Pharmaceutical Sciences

·      Global Clinical Supplies

·      Global Workplace & Enterprise Services

·      Sales & Marketing

·      Data Sciences & Analytics

·      Big Data

·      IT Risk Management & Security