Chapter 18. On False Maps
If you mention maps many organisations claim they already have them — road maps, process maps, customer journey maps etc. — it can seem as though maps are everywhere. But people don’t find these maps as useful as spreadsheets, or powerpoint for example because these are not real maps and that’s a problem. If the ‘maps’ you’re using fail to perform the basic functions of a real map — enabling you to see the wider Landscape you’re in, find your current position and discover options for moving through it — then you’re not developing the situational awareness you need to operate effectively in a changing world. To illustrate this point let’s return to the scenario we introduced in chapter 11:
You find yourself in an unfamiliar city where you don’t speak the language. You need to get from your hotel to a restaurant but have no idea how to get there. So you ask your friendly, multi-lingual hotel receptionist for directions and they hand you something they call a map.
Fig 47. A ‘map’ of the route from your hotel to the restaurant
When you look at the ’map’ you see it has a few of the essential characteristics of real maps[1]:
- It’s visual — as you can quickly scan it
- It’s context-specific — as it appears to be the city you’re in
- It shows some relevant components — including your hotel and the restaurant.
However, other essential characteristics are missing:
- There’s no anchor — meaning you have no way of knowing which direction your should head in
- Position — you only have an approximate idea of where these components are relative to one other
- Which makes movement through this space uncertain — for example, do we just need to go in a straight line passed the coffee shop and plaza to get to the restaurant? And how far is it?
This is the problem of false maps — they look like real maps, but lack some of the essential characteristics we need to navigate our way through an uncertain space. So, while many organisations seem to understand the power of maps, (perhaps from people using them in their daily lives) most of things they call maps are ‘false maps’ and, like the one above, this obscures the paths they should be taking rather then revealing them. This is why many organisations feel lost — they don’t have maps.
Let’s look at six of the most common of these ‘false maps’ and show you how they’re letting you down.
- Strategy maps
- Mind maps
- Info-graphic maps
- Roadmaps
- System maps
- Process maps
1. Strategy Maps
In a Harvard Business Review article, Kaplan & Norton (of ‘Balanced Scorecard’ fame) urged businesses that, if you’re “Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It”:
‘Imagine that you are a general taking your troops into foreign territory. Obviously, you would need detailed maps showing the important towns and villages, the surrounding landscape, key structures like bridges and tunnels, and the roads and highways that traverse the region. Without such information, you couldn’t communicate your campaign strategy to your field officers and the rest of your troops.
Unfortunately, many top executives are trying to do just that. When attempting to implement their business strategies, they give employees only limited descriptions of what they should do and why those tasks are important. Without clearer and more detailed information, it’s no wonder that many companies have failed in executing their strategies. After all, how can people carry out a plan that they don’t fully understand?’
Unfortunately, this was the map Kaplan & Norton presented:
Fig 48: The Balanced Scorecard Strategy Map. HBR (Sep 2000)
Let’s break this ‘map’ down. It does contain some of the six essential characteristics of maps:
- It’s visual, although it’s not a great visual as it takes time to read
- It shows components such as ‘employee competencies’, ‘technology’ and ‘corporate culture’
- But it doesn’t appear to show the position of these components in any meaningful way — they’re grouped at the bottom and we have no way of knowing whether that makes them foundational to the strategy or incidental to it (as they’re located far away from what looks to the be the anchor for this map “improving shareholder value”).
- And if we have no agreed understanding of what position means on a map it’s hard to use it identify moves we can make. Yet strategy is all about making moves to tip conditions in a Landscape to your advantage — like Themistocles sending the Spartans to ambush the Persians, giving the Greek states time to mobilise. But can you imagine trying to convince King Leonidas to lead his men on a suicide mission to Thermopylae with Kaplan & Norton’s strategy map?
Kaplan & Norton urged companies to get “clearer and more detailed information” so they can communicate their strategies better and drive better execution. But their strategy map is not a real map at all: It’s not context-specific but generic (each ‘map’ would follow the same structure); it has an anchor (shareholder value) but fails to consider other anchors that might be relevant, like customer needs, (despite them admitting that, “the core of any business strategy is the customer value proposition”). They give us a fixed set of activities around ‘operational excellence’, ‘customer intimacy’ and ‘product leadership’, but no insight into what these components are or how to deliver them more successfully than rivals. We’re left with the impression that if we squeeze the complex reality of our business Landscape into these neat and tidy boxes a strategy will emerge. Yet this would be like asking city mayors to take the meme “map of every European city” (below) and squeezing all their city’s buildings, streets and features into it. The result will look like a map but, as the people using it will quickly discover, it will prove limited in guiding them around the city as it’s a ‘false map’.
Fig 49: “Map of Every European City” by Malachi Ray Reopen (2018)
Strategy Maps and the six essential characteristics of real maps
Visual — NO
Context-specific — NO
Components — YES
Anchor — LIMITED
Position — NO
Movement — NO
2. Mind Maps
Mind maps are useful for describing relevant components and what they consist of. Yet real maps are also meant to enable us to see the bigger picture and discover better options for action. So let’s make a mind map of the situation we discussed earlier in chapter 13 — the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BCE.
Fig 50. Mind map of the Persian invasion of Greece (480 BCE)
Mind maps are considered a visual tool but, as we can see from the above example, it takes more than a few seconds to take in the wider situation as we need to read all the information in it first. It is though undeniably context-specific — it’s a mind map of the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BCE rather than some other war and it also provides a lot of information, such as Xerxes’ motivations for invading Greece, the strengths and weaknesses of the Persian forces and the Greek options for action. Yet this is a partial and selective story. The ‘Greek options’ presented here appear to be the authors’ conclusions, but we have no way of challenging their assumptions or discovering better alternatives as the ‘mind map’ doesn’t show us the bigger picture. We’re left having to choose from the options given and hoping they’re exhaustive and well thought through. Yet, if you were Themistocles, you might find this state of affairs deeply unsatisfactory as it limits your ability to find the unorthodox moves that can tip the situation in your favour, which is the essence of strategic thinking.
The mind map does describe various components, such as physical features (the vale, the isthmus, the pass at Thermopylae, various cities) and controllable assets (such as the armies and navies). But the lack of an anchor, a way of locating us in this Landscape so we know where we are and what’s around us, makes the position of these components meaningless, which prevents us from seeing how their movement might be exploited. Let’s demonstrate what we mean by moving something on this mind map:
Fig 51. The ‘Persian navy’ has been moved
Now ask yourself, does moving the Persian navy from one position to another change the situation here at all? The answer is no, not in any meaningful way, there’s a cosmetic change on the mind map but that’s about it.
In contrast, if we were to change the position of the Persian navy on a real map — showing it moving on Athens from the South (rather than from the North) would that change the situation being described?
Fig 52: The Persian Navy is attacking from the South
The answer is, of course, yes. If the Persian navy was moving on Athens from the South then Themistocles’ moves to block their advance at the Cape of Artemisium would be useless. Movement changes a situation and strategic thinkers have to anticipate this. With a map Themistocles could see the Persians movement and create counter-moves — sending the Athenian navy North to block the Straits of Artemisium and the Spartans North to block the narrow pass at Thermopylae — using the Landscape as a force multiplier.[2] A mind-map wouldn’t have helped in this situation as they’re ‘false maps’ and limited for strategic thinking.
Mind Maps and the six essential characteristics of real maps:
Visual — NO
Context-specific — YES
Components — YES
Anchor — NO
Position — NO
Movement — NO
3. Info-graphic Maps
The info-graphic map from Deloitte (below) may, at first glance, look like a map as it has components laid out visually. Yet this is another example of a ‘false map’.
Fig 53: The Agile Landscape (2017)
This info-graphic is context-specific as it shows “The Agile Landscape” rather than some other Landscape, but it lacks any sort of anchor. Anchors provide a consistent sense of direction so we can move around a space with confidence. But this ‘map’ lacks an anchor so we can’t use it to navigate around this Landscape as there’s no obvious logic to the position of components. For example, if we’re interested in ‘Design Thinking’ (on the left, in the middle, in red) do we have to start with the first component (‘Focal Question’) then learn about every component until we get to the end of the line (’Story Mapping’), or can we start anywhere and move in either direction? We have no way of knowing but this is, of course, a feature not a bug — we’re meant to be confused so we have to call the consultants who made this and ask for guidance — yet this defeats the purpose of a map, which is meant to enable anyone to find their way in an unfamiliar Landscape.
The reason this info-graphic is mistaken for a map is its similarity to a famous map — Harry Beck’s original London Underground map from 1931, which is real map as it has all six essential characteristics: It’s a visual representation of a context-specific place (the London Underground) and it has an anchor, which is the system itself (we can only move along its tracks) and this means the position of components (stations) has a logic. If we want to move from Wimbledon (bottom of the green line) to Victoria on the other side of the river we now know that we have to pass through all the stations on the way, perhaps changing at Earl’s Court.
Fig 54: Harry Beck’s Original Tube Map (1931)
A more evolved version of Beck’s map is still used in London today (see below) a century later. The reason it’s still used is because it’s fulfils a key purpose — enabling millions of people to navigate their way around the city, including huge numbers of tourists who are unfamiliar with the place. It can do this because it’s a real map — unlike Deloitte’s ‘Agile Landscape’ that may have a passing resemblance to it, but is a ‘false map’.
Fig 55: The London Tube Map (2023)
Info-graphic maps and the six essential characteristics of real maps:
Visual — YES
Context-specific — YES
Components — YES
Anchor — NO
Position — NO
Movement — NO
4. Roadmaps
When business people think about maps they often have roadmaps in mind. So let’s explore these and ask the same question: Are roadmaps ‘real maps’ or ‘false maps’?
When the focus is on major investments or a product roll out someone will suggest making a roadmap because they have many of the characteristics of real maps that make them useful: They’re visual and context-specific (it’s a roadmap of a particular project and we can scan it quickly) and they show relevant components (assets we control). However, roadmaps have some serious shortcomings.
Fig 56: A Typical Roadmap
Roadmaps use time as an anchor, showing what should happen by when. But using time as an anchor is problematic because the future is an uncertain destination. Predicting where key components will be at some point in the future is mostly guesswork or wishful thinking because we’re not in control of all the variables that can influence the situation. Think back to 2020 — would you have been able to anticipate even half of the major changes we’ve experienced and the challenges you’ve had to work through since then?
When plans involve building a bridge we can calculate most of the variables — how much material we need, how long it should take and how much it will cost. We can also be fairly confident that a rival will not suddenly build a better bridge in the same location making our bridge redundant. In such non-competitive situations a roadmap can be useful because we control (most of) the variables. But in the competitive environments most business operate in, multiple rivals are launching new products all the time and customer expectations are continually changing in unexpected ways. Relying on a road map (created in the past) to navigate this continually changing Landscape is like a chess player deciding all the moves they are going to make before the game starts, then ploughing on with no regard to the (potentially unexpected) moves their rivals are making. Sticking to the plan here, rather than adapting, leads to defeat.
Road maps can be useful in competitive situations for getting initial agreement (ex, funding) or buy in (ex, from teams) for a journey you plan to set out on. But they can be dangerous if people eschew ‘learning as they go’ in favour of sticking rigidly to the roadmap, because the position of components will not be where you thought they’d be, rendering redundant the moves you intended to make. This is because roadmaps are ‘false maps’.
Roadmaps and the six essential characteristics of real maps:
Visual — YES
Context-specific — YES
Components — YES
Anchor — UNRELIABLE
Position — NO
Movement — NO
5. System Maps
System maps are a useful for describing relationships between activities (things we do) and knowledge (things we know). These relationships can be casual (‘solar energy is created by ‘the sun’) or correlated (‘nuclear fusion’ and ‘coal’ are both ‘energy sources’). System maps are used to describe network interdependencies, such as the IT architecture of an organisation or a bigger system, like a national electricity grid.
Fig 57: System Map of an Electricity Grid
System maps are useful for describing complicated systems because they’re visual. They enable us to scan an entire system quickly and see the relationships between components — knowable assets like ‘chemical reactions’ and what this enables (‘chemical energy’) and controllable assets like ‘generators’ and how they need (‘energy sources, such as oil and gas’). This system map is also context-specific as it shows an electricity grid, (rather than just any network) and has an anchor — the ‘electricity grid’ itself — which provides a focus point: We can now see what’s needed (‘sources’ of energy like ‘solar’, ‘chemical’ or ‘mechanical motion’) for the grid to provide ‘kilowatts’ of ‘power’. However, system maps are ‘false maps’. Let’s explain why.
If we move one of the components (‘the sun’) does it change the meaning of this system map?
Fig 58: Moving a Component on a System Map
The answer is no, for as long as the relationship between ‘solar energy’ and ‘the sun’ is marked by a connecting arrow it doesn’t matter where we place ‘the sun’ on the system map as position has no meaning. In contrast, if we were to shift the position of a component on a real map — for example, shifting ‘Thermopylae’ from the North to South, next to Sparta — this would have significant meaning (as Themistocles would have had to come up with different moves to defend the Greek states as he couldn’t have used the narrow pass as Thermopylae as a force multiplier as it wouldn’t have been on the Persian invasion route). That space has no meaning on a system map reveals them to be ‘false maps’ — limited for strategic decision-making, which is all about identifying how movement can help you achieve objectives in a certain space.
Fig 59: Moving a Component on a Real Map
System Maps and the six essential characteristics of real maps:
Visual — YES
Context-specific — YES
Components — YES
Anchor — YES
Position — NO
Movement — NO
6. Process Maps
The final ‘map’ we’ll look that’s used widely in business is the very popular ‘process map’, which have a lot of the essential characteristics of real maps. They’re visual representations of a context-specific process.. They have an anchor, (in the example below the ‘order generated’ by a customer, which is the focus of the map) and shows the components needed to satisfy that (ex, from ‘completing the order’ to ‘processing payment’). Because of the anchor we can see of the position of components (once an ‘order is generated’ by a customer it’s ‘completed’ by the sales team, then ‘received’ by the credit & invoicing team, who ‘check the credit’ of the customer etc.) which shows us how a customer order moves through the process. However, we have no sense of how the process itself might change and that limits its use as a strategic tool.
Let’s explain with an example.
Fig 60. A typical Process Map
Below is a map of the Moscow Metro in 2010. Like its counterpart from London (see above) it’s a real map: It’s visual (we can see the entire system quickly), it’s context-specific (it’s the Moscow Metro, not the Paris Metro), it has components (Metro lines and stations) and an anchor (the system itself through which passengers move along set routes). This enables us to describe the position of components in a meaningful way — Park Kultury is seven stops in a northbound direction on the red line — giving us a consistent concept of movement — to get to Park Kultury from Sportivnaya we have to travel two stations North on the red line.
Fig 61. Moscow Metro map 2010
Yet the Moscow Metro has evolved (see below). If you tried to navigate the Moscow Metro in 2020 with the map from 2010 you may have quickly got confused as that map is no longer a useful representation of reality.
Fig 62. Moscow Metro map 2020
And the Moscow Metro continues to evolve. The map (below) shows how the system should look in 2030 with all the current lines and stations shown, as well as those planned for the future. With this map we can not only move around the current Metro system but also anticipate how this Landscape will change. If we were a retailer, for example, we’d now have some idea about where to open up future stores so customers could get there by public transport.
Fig 63. Planned Moscow Metro map 2030
If the purpose of a map is to help us navigate a space it needs to provide some way of showing change because, if even large scale infrastructure (like a Metro system) is changing this quickly, you can imagine how quickly your processes are changing in response to new technologies, emerging practices, changing customer needs and intensifying competitive pressures.
In the same way geographical maps show how a physical Landscape changes (ex, the pass through the Vale of Tempe may not be passable in winter, but is in spring once the snow melts) process maps must also show how a process is changing, otherwise they will quickly become a poor guide for navigating your Landscape. This is why, despite being very useful, process maps are also ‘false maps’.
Process Maps and the six essential characteristics of real maps:
Visual — YES
Context-specific — YES
Components — YES
Anchor — YES
Position — YES
Movement — ONLY PARTLY
Conclusion
Maps seem rife in the business world, but none of the things people call maps are in fact real maps as they all lack one or more of the six essential characteristics of real maps. This lack of real maps in the business world is a huge opportunity cost as organisations — blind to their Landscape they’re operating in or how it’s changing — are reduced to following in the paths of others, copying ‘past practices’ rather than discovering unique moves of their own. But successful military leaders would not conduct a campaign without maps of the Landscape they’ll be fighting in; explorers wouldn’t set off to an unknown destination without first securing the best map of that Landscape they could lay their hands on; hotel receptionists give out maps to tourists to help them find their way around an unfamiliar Landscape; football managers use a map of their Landscape (the pitch) to show players where to make moves (runs and passes); and nearly all of us use maps on a daily basis to find the best routes to and from a meeting place as daily traffic makes some routes quicker than others. The business world, it seems, is the only place where we don’t use real maps. Therefore, those businesses that do use maps have an opportunity start out-thinking and out-moving their rivals to deliver success.
1 See Chapter 14.
2 See Chapter 12
