The geospatial profession’s paradox

Despite today’s highly advanced technology and expertise, many geospatial initiatives still fail to come to fruition. The problem often lies in the knowledge and language gap between technical specialists and executive decision-makers. Well-rounded leadership skills hold the key to bridging this gap.

The geospatial profession has never been more technically capable. From high-resolution remote sensing to AI-accelerated analytics, the tools are evolving rapidly and multiple training courses are available to help practitioners exploit these advances. Yet despite this innovation, many geospatial initiatives – such as those needed to address climate change or safeguard supply chains – often fail to come to fruition. This is not because the technology fails, but because the leadership skills needed to develop, promote and secure investment are often poorly developed.

Geospatial practitioners must be able to shape new ideas and capabilities into powerful business cases, work with – and understand – the business objectives of stakeholders, and be able to influence key decision-makers. In short, they need to develop well-rounded leadership skills.

The technical ceiling

For decades, the geospatial profession has prioritized technical excellence. Practitioner communities have advanced standards, certification and peer exchange. Technology leaders such as Esri have continually expanded the capabilities of GIS platforms, cloud infrastructure and spatial analytics. Too often, GIS teams are viewed as service providers rather than strategic partners. They respond to map requests. They generate dashboards. They maintain data layers. They support projects. But they are not consistently included when strategic priorities are defined or budgets are allocated. The question is: why?

The answer frequently lies in a knowledge and language gap between technical specialists and executive decision-makers. Executives and elected officials operate in a framework defined by return on investment, risk mitigation, cost control, regulatory compliance, organizational performance, strategic alignment and improvement to public services. When geospatial practitioners present their work, they often emphasize accuracy, resolution, innovation or methodological rigour. Take, for example, a statement such as ‘We implemented a new spatial data model that improves topological consistency’. This speaks to technical accomplishment. While these qualities matter, they do not automatically answer the executive question: ‘How does this help meet our business objectives?’.

Therefore, geospatial practitioners must increasingly be able to translate spatial insight into measurable organizational outcomes. By saying ‘We reduced infrastructure planning errors by 18%, preventing costly redesigns and accelerating project delivery by six weeks’, they speak to business value. If such skills are not developed (and fast), new and innovative ideas risk being misunderstood, underfunded or, worse still, sidelined.

Why leadership skills matter now

Three forces are now making leadership skills particularly urgent for geospatial practitioners who wish to develop and promote solutions within their organizations: enterprise integration, fiscal accountability, and executive expectations.

Enterprise integration: Geospatial is no longer a standalone desktop application, it is increasingly seen as a key approach to addressing some of the world’s most urgent issues, such as climate change. GIS is embedded within enterprise architecture. Cloud migration, cybersecurity requirements, data governance frameworks and API integrations – all of these carry significant financial and operational implications. Understanding these implications requires an understanding of an organization’s objectives, beyond spatial analysis.

Fiscal accountability: Public and private organizations alike face intense budget scrutiny. Every initiative competes for limited resources. Geospatial leaders must justify investments not only in software licences and hardware, but also in staffing, training and data acquisition. In other words, essential spatial programmes must now be supported by clear, concise and well-grounded business cases, which fit within budget constraints, yet demonstrate the business value of the programme.

Executive expectations: Executive leaders increasingly expect data-driven decision support. But they also expect presentations that are clear, concise and well argued. Long technical explanations are rarely persuasive in boardrooms or council chambers. Geospatial practitioners must learn to understand an organization’s business objectives, work with key stakeholders and be able to present their proposals fluently to win over key decision-makers.

From technical expert to business leader

Many geospatial practitioners advance through technical excellence. They become experts in GIS software, data management, spatial statistics and visualization. However, progressing to leadership roles require additional skill sets. These include understanding an organization’s objectives and key stakeholder pains and gains, developing and promoting business cases for geospatial investments, leading and managing cross-functional teams, influencing key decision-makers, and planning and managing implementation projects. Without these competencies, even the most sophisticated geospatial programme may struggle to gain sustained executive support.

So how does a geospatial practitioner develop leadership skills? And equally importantly, how do businesses who want to attract and retain the best talent help individuals to gain these skills? There are typically three approaches: on-the-job learning, mentoring, and education and training.

On-the-job learning: This is a time-honoured approach across many industries. While – ultimately – leaders cannot be optimally successful without having built authentic skills through experience, the fact is that this approach is too slow to satisfy demand.

Mentoring: Mentoring, where inexperienced staff are formally supported by those with more experience, faces the same challenge as on-the-job training – a lack of experienced people with well-developed leadership skills. Over time, mentoring should become more useful as geospatial professionals develop their business skills, but currently they are too thinly spread to meet demand.

Education and training: Whilst education and training cannot replace the skills learned by the experience of doing, it can equip practitioners with the skills to ‘sit at the top table’ more comfortably with decision-makers. Some larger organizations offer leadership training in-house. However, there is a need to ensure that any course considers some of the specific leadership issues that geospatial practitioners face. It is also possible to enrol in an MBA or one of a range of external leadership courses, but they are often expensive and assignments are often very generic. Or even when practical work can be linked to organizational issues, the tutors often do not have the geospatial domain knowledge to be able to really get to the core of the issues. Geospatial practitioners will increasingly demand access to leadership training and will seek out organizations who provide – and value – access. Organizations who wish to retain and develop the best talent will have to consider how to provide leadership training, or risk losing their most valuable assets. In short, there is a huge need for geospatial leadership training but, as of today, there are few effective options available.

Growing the leadership pipeline

To help grow the leadership pipeline, ConsultingWhere has developed – together with a team of subject-matter experts from within the geospatial industry – the Geospatial Leadership Certificate (GLC) specifically for geospatial practitioners. Involving part-time study typically over a nine-month period, it is designed to work alongside a student’s day job. The GLC is accredited for continuous professional development (CPD) by the UK’s Association for Geographic Information (AGI) and the Royal Geographic Society and, as the course is run by chartered surveyors, it is also eligible for consideration under the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors’ CPD scheme.

In addition to studying leadership, team development, justifying investment in geospatial projects, and influencing decision-makers as mandatory modules, GLC students choose two of the following five optional modules: geospatial project management, geospatial maturity assessment, sustainable business models, marketing strategy and planning, and mastering basic sales skills. An additional module on the business impact of artificial intelligence has also been developed to further enhance the curriculum. Each of the mandatory and optional modules consists of a self-paced e-learning component, an assignment usually based on some aspect of the student’s work, and a workshop with fellow students and a panel of industry experts.

Solving urgent problems

In an era defined by complex challenges – climate resilience, infrastructure modernization, public health preparedness, economic competitiveness – location matters more than ever. These rising demands on the geospatial industry call for stronger leadership skills to enable greater success in solving some of the world’s most urgent problems. The industry can, and should, continue to refine its tools, because innovation remains essential. But there must also be investment in the leadership capacity of geospatial practitioners – because, increasingly, they must be able to translate spatial insight into measurable organizational outcomes. If these skills are not developed quickly, there is the risk that new opportunities for innovation will be missed. However, there is a well-recognized gap in the availability of leadership-skills training that would help geospatial practitioners to play leading roles in developing, promoting and successfully implementing new solutions. Geospatial practitioners, and the organizations they work for, should therefore urgently think about how they can develop the necessary leadership skills, including consideration of external education offerings.

Further reading

https://consultingwhere.com/the-geospatial-leadership-certificate-glc/