The Writings of Michael Jagdeo

wardleys-map

4 min read

Wardley’s Map For Trend Management & Execution

It’s not whether you can succeed; it’s IF YOU SHOULD SUCCEED IN THE FIRST PLACE. You’re talented, which means that you can manifest anything. So the question isn’t can you do it, or how to do it, but rather SHOULD YOU DO IT AT A

- Kevin Fernando

By understanding Wardley’s Map, you’ll be able to chart the next 10 years in your industry and then determine which battle is winnable and worth winning.

Pre-requisites:

📎 OODA Loops

Simon was devastated.

His company Fotango was about to be Instagram before Instagram ever exited, and the Fancy Management Consultants fuzzed it all up.

A [[Wardley Map]] of Fotango - click here for videoA Wardley Map of Fotango - click here for video

After seeing his baby perish at the hands of the Consulting Elite, Simon decided he wasn’t going to let that happen again.

He started to talk to executives about their organizations’ strategies. What he got back was a mumbo-jumbo mix of buzzwords and flashy terms, and this taught him something crucial

Nobody knows what the hell they’re doing. Their using language to disguise their ignorance.

Not satisfied with learning that the blind were leading the blind, Simon sought to determine the true nature of strategy. Not only did he found a new doctrine - Wardley Mapping - but he also helped steward the creation of Ubuntu Linux, the most widley-used cloud computing operating system on the planet, Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu means I am because you are.

Now that you’ve understood OODA Loops, you’re ready to take on the challenge of understanding Wardley’s Maps and how they can transform how you see the future and your place in it.

The future is not to be predicted, the future is to be achieved.

-Tapscott

The Applied OODA Loop

In this succint infopraphic, Wardley lays out his first innovation.

Wardley argues that when we think about purpose, there are actually TWO purposes we should be thinking about:

  • The Why of Purpose

  • The Why of Movement

In other words, where we are today is inextricably tied to where we want to go and what we want to become. As-Is is connected to To-Be. We must start where we stand.

To understand the Why of Purpose and The Why of Movement, we have to understand the Landscape, how the Climates are affecting the Landscape, and continuously update our knowledge of what’s happening in the field. Our doctrine - what we think is true and what we think SHOULD be true - guides our observations, orientations, decisions and actions.

📺 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZZKjxeg5W0

Wardley’s Map

How do you make a cup of tea?

Easy - boil water, and teabag, wait.

How might we represent this process? That’s Wardley’s innovation. This simple way of organizing an industry by its components is the way business strategists are designing the future of their companies.

Simon Wardley ❤️🇺🇦 on Twitter: "Take a basic map of a cup of tea, with anchors (the business selling cups of tea and the public consuming it), a chain of needs that

But what if you were more interested in creating a Netflix isn’t of having a cup of tea? Wardley Maps are there for you, too.

The Wardley Map displays the present and future of an industry. It predicts the future of an industry by assuming that all innovations pass through four stages:

  1. Genesis - initial creation

  2. Custom - applying innovation as consulting services

  3. Product - applying innovation as an off-the-shelf product

  4. Utility - innovation becomes a regular part of society

The y-axis shows time and innovation phase. The x-axis represents how much we can see of the technology as end users.

The Wardley Map below shows what Netflix looks like in the context of the wider media industry.

Bits or pieces?: An introduction to Wardley (Value Chain) Mapping

By understanding these terms - genesis, custom, product, utility - you’ll be able to really hone in on what people mean during meetings. By mapping strategies using the Wardley Map, unseen assumptions will start immediately popping up.

Questions to Ask Yourself

What are the services - electricity, water, cloud computing - that underlie my business? What phase of innovation are they in - genesis, custom, product or utility? What do I do today that is going to become a commodity in the future? How might we go from providing custom-built services to creating a product that automates the services were provide?

Graph View