Last week I had the opportunity to learn about Wardley Mapping and how this can help shape business strategy and decision making. The event was called Map Camp and having attended with around other 600 people, I wanted to share a few highlights from the day.
TLDR: Map Camp was a great opportunity to learn about Wardley Mapping, with lots of different examples and talks. It helps strategic thinking become more accessible to the wider team and is something I’ll be spending some more time on and would recommend it to others also.
To kick the day of Simon Wardley reminded us all of his personal journey and discovery that Maps are more useful than SWOT diagrams for planning grand strategy. A quick reference to the Battle of Thermopylae and off we go!
So what is Wardley Mapping?
Wardley mapping is a technique that invites us to start with a customer need, identify the value chain and then break down the different components and sub-components required to satisfy the customer. Basing this on a map allows us to visualise position and movement (evolution) and in doing so we can better relate to how the competitive landscape (the map), the external forces acting on the landscape (climate) the training of the people come together, such that we can make strategic decisions. For example, go from building and using a custom-built toaster (build all the parts yourself) to a commoditised off the shelf toaster from Argos!
This activity would be carried out by the team rather than by an individual and as Roser Pujadas explained, the value is in the mapping activity, the process, the conversations and debates and not in the map or the asset. By visualising our shared understanding, it welcomes broad opinion and ideas and helps work beyond many assumptions that the team may hold.
There’s so much more to this and if you’d like to find out more details, Simon Wardley has kindly provided a comprehensive guide which you read here.
If you’re not learning, you’re losing to someone
Adam Clay Shafer
The environment and climate crisis was a key part of the morning sessions, with several speakers highlighting the importance of including environmental factors in strategic decision making. One suggestion was to review Cloud providers not just their technical capability but also their level of sustainability with each of the major suppliers having achieved different levels of offset against their data centre footprints.
It was interesting to see how these decisions and the costs of making or not making them could also be captured through mapping. Once captured, the discussion is one about merits or otherwise of the argument and less about the person making it. This came through many times, that it was the story and not the storyteller that we wanted to focus on.
Please note the values in the picture below are for illustrative purposes only!
We were also challenged by Andrew Clay Shafer to think about the difficult choices (depending on your skill level) we have to make on a chessboard, to think about which move is the best move. This is a game where the system is knowable, it’s bound and has clear rules observed by all participants. In business it’s clearly much more complicated, do we even know which game we’re playing (e.g. are we providing amazing service or is it about market share) do we know whom we’re playing against (is the online book store going to start delivering fresh produce to peoples homes?).
In and amongst this, how do we learn and gain situational awareness for us to decide what the best move is, that we’re willing to make?
I enjoyed Rachel Murphy's approach to business and how they used maps and took decisions to align with their values. They recognise their people as a key component for their success and place them in the genesis stage as their key differentiator. With this in mind, they then turned down business opportunities which weren’t aligned with their purpose, which wouldn’t satisfy their people and wouldn’t, therefore, have supported their strategy.
One of my key drivers for attending was to get a sense of how mapping was being used across different industries and businesses. In this respect, it was great to hear from speakers about how they were making practical use of maps as part of their decision-making process. This was as true for teams working in the private sector as much as it was for the public sector organisations.
We heard from companies working across the world on Smart Cities, on major UN initiatives (see pics below) as well as how Venture Capitalists were using Maps to help guide the strategy of the startups they’d taken under their wing. All had learnt from someone and all were involved in teaching someone else. There was a real sense of a community of innovators and early adopters trying things out and seeing what it could make possible.
The day ended with an amazing discussion with Dave Snowden, Simon Wardley and Cat Swetel. It was refreshing to hear well thought out opinions being shared in a respectful manner on some challenging topics.
On the way home I was reflecting on where I could use this knowledge to improve decision making. There are some candidate areas I’m keen to try this with, so let’s see what happens! So all in all, it was a great day, lots of great talks and lots of potential to have a real impact on the way business approach strategy.
If you’re interested in some of the talks I’ve referenced above I’d suggest you take a look at the Map Camp site where some of the slides are being shared. If you’d like to discuss this topic then feel free to give me a shout it’d be great to share ideas and learn together.
Thanks for reading
Inderjit
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