On being lost and the imposter CEO
The first five chapters of my book, covering the beginning of my journey through strategy & mapping is now up as a publication WardleyMaps on Medium. This introduces the strategy cycle and how I went from being totally lost to having a vague idea on what I was doing.
Act I - the beginning
Chapter 1 : On being lost and the imposter CEO
Chapter 2 : Finding a path and learning how to map
Chapter 3 : Exploring the map and common economic patterns
Chapter 4 : On doctrine and universally useful patterns.
Chapter 5 : On developing a play, deciding to act and blowing the future.
Chapter 6 : Getting started
Act II - my wilderness (currently writing)
Chapter 7 : Finding a new purpose
In later acts, I will cover my Ubuntu to better for less story and my LEF days. This entire book should serve as a useful guide for those who want to get involved with the practice of mapping a business.
Do remember, all models are wrong. Some are merely useful - well, for a short time anyway.
---- other useful links
Using maps to improve your situational awareness in business.
More on mapping from the Leading Edge Forum
Enabling the delivery of training in Bid, Project and PMO across Thales UK
8 年Hi Simon, I have been strategising around a 1000 day plan for PM consultancy and found your thoughts highly insightful and added genuine value to the process, thank you! I look forward to reading more.
Co-Founder & CEO
8 年I played with various approaches to get a visual representation of the business landscape; for the very same reasons you explain in your book (chapter 1). Exciting beginning! As you suggested in chapter 2, I picked some examples and started mapping them. It took me a while to get used to the mapping plane with different units of lengths for the both axes. But I arrived at something that helped me to draw the following conclusions. (i) Components and their subcomponents are linked together to form a graph. Topology does not change when components move from left to right. The value chain remains the same. Topology (and the whole value chain) changes when components are removed or added or when connections between components are changed. (ii) The most challenging part of the whole exercise is to find the appropriate level of detail for the map (few components and some connections vs. many components and numerous connections). (iii) Things get more interesting but also somewhat cumbersome when one overlays the graphs of several competing businesses (incl. substitutes and new players). Now going to read the remaining chapters.
Head of Digital Risk, Standards, and Engagement at The National Archives, UK
8 年If we can't find value in this brilliant model, we deserve to be ambushed by Orcs...
Retired from my long career, most of it developing SW.
8 年"all models are wrong" is definitely a key idea; an even more memorable soundbite for the same concept was phrased quite a while ago by one of the 20th century's greatest engineers, Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski: "The map is not the territory"...
Consultant bei PROFHUNT Executive Search
8 年What happened after 4,5 years at this company?