The problem I had was how do I map a business? Unlike a board game such as chess with its turned based moves, when you consider a business it is a living thing. It consists of a network of people, a mass of different activities and reserves of capital including financial, physical, human and social. It consumes, it produces, it grows and it dies. Like all organisms, any business exists within a community of others, an ecosystem. It competes and co-operates for resources and it’s shaped by and shapes its environment. Even within a business, people come and go. The things we do, the things we build and the things that others desire change over time. All firms are in a constant state of flux and the ecosystem it lives within never stands still. What sort of map can cope with that?

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Hurray, we’ve got a map! What now? The purpose of producing a map is to help us to learn and then apply basic climatic patterns, doctrine and context specific forms of gameplay. Maps are our learning and communication tool for discovering these things and enabling us to make better decisions before acting. However, the strategy cycle is iterative and we’re not going to learn all the patterns the first time we use a map any more than we learn everything about Chess in our first game. Instead, like a game of chess then play by play, move by move we’re going to get a little bit better.

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I had created my first map and applied an understanding of some basic climatic patterns that might influence it. These patterns were the ones that I could not stop but I could anticipate. Whether I liked it or not the components on my map would evolve through the actions of the market. However, whilst I had no choice over the market that didn’t mean I had no choice over my actions. I might be able to influence the landscape through action, I could decide how I organised myself, the principles that I emphasised within the company and our manner of operating.

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In chapters one to four I’ve covered the basics of mapping, common economic patterns and doctrine. However, these Wardley maps of business don’t tell you what to do any more than a geographical map tells an Admiral how to win a battle. The maps are simply a guide and you have to decide what move you’re going to make, where you’re going to attack and how you navigate your ship through the choppy waters of commercial competition. In other words, you have to apply thought, decide to act and then act. In this chapter we’re going to cover my journey through this part of the strategy cycle — see figure 46.

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I often talk about that wise executive that I met in the Arts hotel of Barcelona. I’ll jump ahead in the story and let you into a little secret. He didn’t have a clue either and I wasn’t the only person faking at being an executive. However, I didn’t find this out until six years after I had started mapping when someone pointed it out to me. I had always assumed that there was some secret tome out there and mapping was just my poor man’s way of emulating what everyone else was already doing. It turned out that most of the industry was instead fighting battles with little to no understanding of the landscape. It’s like generals fighting without maps. It boils everything down to luck and individual heroism.

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It was 2007, I was at home and I was unemployed. I twiddled my thumbs for a couple of days, did some DIY and then set about thinking on my future. This is code for watching my bank balance plummet whilst not doing anything useful. I was exhausted, running a company, inspiring a future and being broadsided had taken its toll. However, whilst I wasn’t ready to immerse myself into a new role, I couldn’t just sit idle. So, I undertook a few paid speaking gigs, did some advisory work, wrote a few articles, ghost wrote a few more and researched. At least, it would keep the wolves at bay for a bit.

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To keep funding my research, I took a few more paid gigs which basically meant becoming a gun for hire. Cloud computing was colliding with the technology scene and there was lots of confusion about. Hence I had a constant stream of conferences — including some that actually paid — along with plenty of opportunity for piecemeal work. It was a wild west in computing with unfortunately some fairly shady practices and exploitation in the industry. I tried not to cause harm but I had an Achilles heel in simplicity.

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Most people don’t have a desire to learn mapping for the sake of it. Instead, what people are looking for is a way to create advantage either through learning of context specific play (i.e. outsmarting others), the application of doctrine (i.e. being more effectively organised than others) or anticipation of change (i.e. seeing change before others). Back in early 2008, I had become quite a dab hand at using maps and common economic changes (i.e. climatic patterns) to anticipate change in business. I was regularly invited to speak at huge events and published articles in which I would declare that over the next decade we would see :-

• Rapid increases in the rate at of innovation on the web.
• New entrants dominating IT
• High rates of disruption in the IT markets
• Radical changes in IT practices.
• Higher levels of efficiency within IT.
• Widespread adoption of cloud services.
• Increasing organisational strain especially focused on IT creating a necessity for organisational change.

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I was in a quandary. Having described the three states of war, wonder and peace then I found myself in the unusual position of finding them everywhere. All activities seemed to show these three competitive states. However, I had no real way of testing the existence of these states and my ability to perceive them might be caused by some sort of bias? It’s bit like owning a Mini Cooper, once you have one then you suddenly notice how many other cars are Mini Coopers. I started to scout around for some means of testing these concepts. Did the states really exist? How could I test them? Do they just effect individual activities in industries or could they have a wider effect?

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“Here’s one I made earlier” is the staple diet of TV programmes when faced with the possibility that something might go wrong. Demonstrations are always a risky business. In the case of this book, doubly so. I want to let you loose on a scenario but alas I’m not even there to correct things if it all goes pear shaped. To manipulate the odds slightly in my favour of a beneficial result then before we get to the scenario (chapters 12 and 13), I’m going to cover some aspects of mapping in a little more detail. This is somewhat naughty because these ideas being fresh in your mind are likely to create a bias which is exactly what I’m hoping for. I’m signposting the answer before we’ve even got there. It’s the closest I could get to “Here’s one I made earlier” without writing down the answer first .

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You are a member of the executive board of a huge conglomerate focused on facilities management. You’re attending a meeting of a wholly owned subsidiary company with their executives. You’re on a fact finding mission, trying to determine what the future of this subsidiary is.

There has been some recent positive noise about the subsidiary from analysts and also some interest by third parties in potential acquisition. This company offers a single product which is a software system that monitors a data centre’s consumption of power in order to determine whether it is being used effectively. The product is known as Phoenix.

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It maybe unlucky for some but I’m going to start this chapter 13 by announcing that I’m not going to give you an answer to the scenario — yet. Instead, I’m going to give you some analysis just in case you’re needing a bit of help. If you’re some wizard that has already worked through the scenario, determined the right strategy and have a solution then that’s fine, you can skip unlucky 13 and head straight into the next chapter. This is more for the rest of us mere mortals, who like me, have found themselves totally lost when faced with problems such as the scenario. I’m not going to use any additional information other than that already provided — in other words, there’s no mystery character inserted in the last paragraph that committed the crime, see all those loathsome detective novels that make you go “where did that come from?”

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The hardest thing about mapping is coming to terms with a simple fact that there is no right answer. Mapping enables you to observe the environment, the constant flow of evolution and moves of other players but it won’t tell you what to do. There are alas no simple steps for you to follow to success. There are no plans that guarantee to bring you a fortune. I face this obstacle regularly when companies ask “how will mapping benefit me” to which the answer that “it depends upon what you observe and then what you do” is seldom welcome. They often want the concrete, the definite and a world of levers you can pull or buttons you can press. I long to say “By turning this mapping dial you will save 12% of costs” or “press the mapping button to increase your rates of successful innovation by 34%” but it just isn’t true. The benefits are context specific and they depend upon you.

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One difficulty that people face with the Phoenix scenario outlined in the previous chapters is the question of role. It’s not unusual to look at the scenario and its corresponding plays such as “pig in a poke” and ask what happens to the people? A common retort is “leadership is all about people and the leader should sacrifice themselves for their people”. It’s a noble idea.

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The LFP example is based upon a real-world event. I say “based” because I usually take time to disguise the actual event to protect any guilty parties. In this case, the haphazard and stumbling CEO was … me. I’m very wary that my long experience with mapping means that I tend to gloss over parts through assumption. In much the same way, I spent six years assuming everyone already knew how to map and it wasn’t until 2011 that I started to realise they didn’t. With that in mind, I’m going to go into excessive detail in the hope that I don’t miss anything useful to you. To keep it relevant and not just a history lesson, I’m going to go through the steps of how you would tackle the LFP scenario as if it was happening today.

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I was working on the use of printed electronics with paper (think of digital interactivity within a normal book) when I got that phone call from a friend about “this spaceman who really wants to meet you”. I was curious, so I went along to meet someone called Mark at Canonical. I didn’t know what to expect. The first few minutes were certainly interesting.

Shuttleworth : “I’m Mark. I’ve been told you’re a good UX designer.”
Me : “I don’t know anything about design.”
… silence.

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In early 2009, I met Liam Maxwell. That name might not mean much to you unless you work in Government but he has been an influential figure in government technology throughout the world, a strong advocate of mapping and a good friend since that first encounter. We met when I was speaking at some random conference in London on evolution and technology. By happenstance Liam was in the audience. We got chatting and discovered we had common interests and ways of thinking about technology. I was soon invited to the “Triple Helix” group which consisted of a motley crew of interesting people — Jerry Fishenden, Mark Thompson and others. They wanted to try and help fix problems they saw in Government IT. It was a non-partisan group i.e. many of us came from different political backgrounds.

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In this chapter, I’m going to introduce some basic concepts that we will use and expand upon when exploring the issue of strategy itself. These concepts include stepping stones, use of policy, nature of capital and finding a balance.

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