Why Do Maps Matter When You’re in a Crisis?

Is there any place for maps today? With phone apps giving us up-to-the-minute instructions on the best route to our destination, we don’t even need to know where we are.  

But what if the road conditions change so dramatically that your mapping app only leads to one road closure after another? 

What if you had to figure out for yourself where you were and plot your own route?  

You’d need to have a set of maps in the car. And you’d have to know how to use them.

Business leaders operating in today’s crisis environment are facing a similar disorientation. Most, if not all, saw their business plans upended completely in just a few weeks as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, their business models were obsolete. Designed for a different world.  

Few now have a clear view of what could happen even two months in the future. And, unfortunately, many can’t say confidently what their current operational and financial condition is.  

They urgently need a new set of maps. 

Learn from history’s finest mapmakers

On May 15, 1944, British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery stood behind a huge colored map of lower Normandy placed on the floor of the auditorium at St. Paul’s School in London. His audience included the top military brass from both U.S. and British armed forces, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and King George VI. After brief introductory remarks from Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Montgomery presented a briefing of the final plan for Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy.  

The easy part was done. From that point, Allied planning staffs had to translate this invasion scheme into comprehensive, interlocking plans and timelines that reached all the way down to the last unit and landing craft. To pack the biggest punch possible on D-Day, they had to coordinate 156,000 men, 10,000 aircraft and gliders, and 7,000 sea vessels, with the utmost attention to detail. And once they created their plans, they had to brief the entire invading force.  

To do that, they created maps. Precise, detailed maps and diagrams accounted for every rifle platoon and Higgins boat, with expected timelines for each wave beginning at H-Hour. 

They knew their plans would become useless as soon as the battle began. But the planning and mapmaking proved essential in preparing the invading force to act decisively when they encountered trouble.

Like when Teddy Roosevelt Jr. and the troops he was leading landed nowhere near their intended destination on Utah Beach.

Assess your current position 

As companies begin to move past the paralysis of pandemic lockdown, the task is not as daunting as the one facing the D-Day planners. But the stakes remain high. What lies ahead is highly uncertain and perilous.  

According to David Goldsmith in Paid to Think: A Leader’s Toolkit for Redefining Your Future, “80% of an organization’s ability to compete and perform is driven by its systems and structures, and only 20% is by its people.” Companies too often overlook financial and information systems, processes, and outputs that prove critical when companies must navigate uncertainty. The result is decision-makers don’t have the information they need to think, plan, and execute effectively.

As business leaders, you want to mobilize your organization. Solving problems quickly and making sound decisions at every level of the company could mean the difference between the success or failure of the whole enterprise. 

To execute your plans effectively, you must ensure everyone is on the same page and has clear objectives. Objective data found in financial and non-financial measures bring clarity to decision-makers in the battle. Without clear, accurate maps and a keen understanding of them, your team’s effectiveness is degraded. 

Given this imperative, it’s time to take a realistic look at your company’s mapmaking capabilities.

Build the right maps

D-Day planners strove to present the leaders of every unit with a detailed view of where they were going and what they would face. As Stephen Ambrose recounts in his book D-Day, “in the case of the 12th Regiment, 4th Division, (briefings were done) on a huge sponge-rubber replica of the Cotentin Peninsula made to scale both horizontally and vertically, complete in minute detail with roads, bridges, buildings, power lines, hedgerows, fortifications, and obstacles.” 

Ending the war in Europe turned on establishing a strong Allied beachhead on the sands of Normandy. It would have been unthinkable for planners to send forces into France without the most complete set of tools available. So they mapped out every detail they could.  

Even in the current environment, operating a business is not as challenging as invading France. But many business leaders do not have accurate and accessible financial and operational information despite the extensive resources readily available to them. Here are some common problems: 

• Financial statements are not prepared consistently, or they’re not current enough to be relevant
• Few outside of the finance staff know the details of monthly financial budgets 
• KPIs and supporting analyses are underdeveloped and have limited distribution
• Standard tools like A/R and A/P aging reports are inaccurate because invoice dates or terms have not been maintained in the accounting system
• Cash forecasting is done irregularly, if at all.  

Why is this the case? Most often, business leaders have not prioritized development of the processes that produce this information. Getting these tools set up and functioning properly requires an investment in time and, usually, outside expertise. 

When business is stable and the future seems predictable, the tyranny of the urgent can push this important, but often tedious, work to the back burner.   

The trouble is, the operating environment can become uncertain with startling speed. And when it does, the lack of actionable information is debilitating. Decision-makers scramble for analysis that isn’t available and make high-stakes decisions relying on their gut reaction. 

Wherever your company is, the time for action is now. Too much is at stake to run the company without timely and accurate financial information. Your finance team should start with the basics, then move to more robust analytical support. 

If finance team members can’t provide what you need, either because they lack expertise or have an overwhelming workload, bring resources in from outside your company. Fractional CFO services offer a workable option to establish these processes quickly. And their priority is setting up the highest impact items first.  

Whether you do it yourself or draw on expert assistance, you can’t afford to operate without maps showing where you are and where you plan to go. 

Understand your numbers

In the last weeks before D-Day, briefings on plans and maps cascaded down the chain of command to the battalion and company level. Unit leaders were expected to digest what they’d learned and brief their men. Soldiers spent hours poring over maps, internalizing their missions. Some even killed time in the briefing rooms on the eve of the invasion, discussing scenarios and contingencies.  

Allied planners wanted their forces to understand their missions in detail. All the effort spent crafting intricate plans and maps would go to waste if the troops didn’t understand them.

Having timely and accurate financial information is not enough. Leaders throughout your company need to understand it, especially what’s most relevant to their responsibilities and the decisions they make. Your finance team should take the lead to engage and train them. Once again, If the finance team lacks capability or bandwidth, secure qualified outside expertise, such as fractional CFO services. 

Start with your leadership team. At at minimum, they should be able to understand:

• Summary-level financial statements each month, especially comparisons to the financial plan and to prior year
• A select set of KPIs with appropriate dashboard reporting, reviewed as a team weekly.  

The next level is reporting and analysis that provides operational insights for individual functional areas. Examples include:

• Production planning and reporting tools for manufacturing operations
• Inventory analysis, including current days on hand by item, for purchasing 
• Accurate and timely job costing and project status reporting for project supervisors.

None of this information should be created on an ad hoc basis. Standing processes should generate reports on regular, predictable timelines.  

A CEO’s core responsibilities include aligning company resources to strategic priorities. Your finance team must do more than merely take care of the numbers, pay the bills, and collect sales. Their focus should become ensuring actionable information is available and decision-makers are equipped to take effective action in response.

Put maps to use when the situation changes

The D-Day plan gave airborne forces a critical assignment securing objectives behind the German beach defenses. The problem was no airborne operation had ever been attempted on such a scale and with so much riding on its success. And Allied airborne forces were largely untested in combat.   

The plan unraveled as soon as they crossed into French airspace and came under heavy anti-aircraft fire. Pilots became lost while trying to evade flak and avoid mid-air collisions in the dark. Most abandoned the effort to find their assigned drop zones. 

Instead, their priority became unloading their troops as quickly as possible and returning to England. In many cases, pilots simply flipped on the green jump light wherever they were, sending troopers blindly into the night. 

Paratroopers landed scattered all over the region. Units were dispersed, mixed with other units, and most landed miles from their drop zones.  

The effect on the invasion could have been catastrophic. But plan briefings allowed leaders to recover. They began to improvise. They rounded up whatever troops they found. They tried to figure out where they were. And they made up new plans to target key mission objectives.

 Despite the disastrous beginning, the 101st Airborne Division fought its way forward and successfully secured causeway exits to link with the troops landing on Utah Beach. 

The troops hitting the beach faced similar trouble. Look back at the map at the start of this article. You see the arrow? That’s where the troops came ashore on Utah Beach, a mile south of their intended location. 

The oldest man to land on Utah Beach during the invasion, 56-year-old Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. rode aboard one of the 20 Higgins boats in the first wave. 

His boat was the first to land. 

He was first off the boat.

Roosevelt immediately realized they’d landed way off target. He drew on his combat experience to order a change in strategy. 

Grasping their predicament, Roosevelt reportedly told a group of subordinates huddled in a shell hole on the beach:

“We’ll start the war from right here.”  

His decision applied not simply to the soldiers already on the beach. It reset the landing plan for all the waves that followed at Utah Beach on the first day. And it earned him the Medal of Honor.

That famous sentence has been repeated in history books and in the 1962 film The Longest Day. And it applies to the situation business leaders face today. 

Your company’s best conceived plans will surely be put to the test. Perhaps they will unravel when you set them into action, as they did for D-Day planners. You’ll need to respond as Roosevelt did.

We’ve got to start from right here. Where the pandemic has placed us. 

What happens next could depend on whether your teams have information and take effective action. Making the investment to prepare your organization now will enhance your ability to see your company over the many obstacles lying ahead.

The ability to respond quickly and decisively to battlefield conditions served Allied soldiers well on D-Day and in the weeks and months that followed. As a business leader, you need to draw these qualities out of your organization to achieve your objectives.

When you make clear, accurate financial information available and train your teams to use it, your organization will have a fighting chance of executing plans effectively. And as your company navigates through the current storm, you’ll build an organization that’s equipped to think, plan, and execute its way to success once the crisis passes.

If you’d like to learn more about how we help companies build maps and navigate the path to success, please email Eytchison Strategic Advisors.