https://medium.com/wardleymaps/finding-a-new-purpose-8c60c9484d3b

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.

I was convinced that there was some mileage in the mapping concept but I had two major problems. First, I had failed to create that bright future with it. Second, I had no real evidence to support it. I had collected data that hinted components evolved but the evolution axis was no more than a pattern that I had observed and talked about at Euro Foo in 2004. Maybe it was completely wrong? Maybe that’s why I failed? Maybe that’s why no-one else seemed to be talking about these concepts? I decided my library wasn’t big enough to answer these questions and became a reader at the British Library. I collected, collated and trawled through a huge volume of written work in pursuit of my answers. At the very least, I was keeping myself busy and providing time to recoup.

As I read more into the subject of strategy then I noticed that disquiet over the field was palpable. Phil Rosenzweig, in the Halo Effect (2007) pointed to the cause being a marriage of convenience: “Managers are busy people, under enormous pressure to deliver higher revenues, greater profits and ever larger returns for shareholders. They naturally search for ready-made answers, for tidy plug-and-play solutions that might give them a leg up on their rivals. And the people who write business books — consultants and business school professors and strategy gurus — are happy to oblige.”

I wanted to change this, to somehow give people the tools they needed to learn themselves by exposing that secret tome of strategy to everyone. I wanted to be free of this marriage of convenience. I still believed there was a secret tome back in 2007 and that it was probably guarded in the halls of business schools. I started to think about doing an MBA, shuddered at the expense and borrowed copious notes and books from friends who had. However, I was disappointed. Beyond basic concepts in financial, marketing and operational “strategy” there was no discussion of landscape or context. Maybe the tome was guarded in the halls of strategy consultancies themselves?

I applied for a job with one of the more prestigious consultancy firms and I was invited to a competitive interview process with dozens of other candidates. We would be put through our paces in a number of rounds in a Darwinian battle, a survival of the fittest. In my first round I was asked a question — “A news media company is looking at divesting itself of its print and distribution business. What things should it consider?”

I immediately starting mapping out the landscape, pointing to opportunities and impacts from loss of control through disposal of such physical capital to provision of distribution as a public utility to redirecting print capabilities into printed electronics — “those large scale printers have the potential to be tomorrow’s Intel I declared!” There was a wealth of opportunity but before making a choice then we needed to understand the landscape more. I started to dig, asking questions about the user, their needs and what did we understand about the landscape. I met a wall of silence followed by the line that “it’s not relevant”. The company had already decided to take this action. It was part of its strategy. My role was to give some input into how to achieve this. I asked what was this strategy based upon and an argument ensued. Needless to say, I didn’t make it past round one and was the very first to leave the competition. Mapping had failed on its second outing. So I carried on researching.

It was at this time that I was also becoming quite well known in certain technology circles as a speaker on open source, web 2.0 and cloud computing. I kept being invited to more and more conferences and to present and discuss on technology changes within companies. I was flattered but quickly discovered that I needed to keep things simple. I was told the mapping concepts were just “too confusing” and so I restricted myself to talking about the impacts in more general terms. However, here I hit a snag. General concepts such as the world moving towards more utility provision of IT were often brushed aside for lacking any understanding of “real business” and the maps I needed to demonstrate why this would happen were considered “too confusing”. I felt increasingly trapped in a Paul Valéry paradox of “Everything simple is false. Everything which is complex is unusable”. I found myself sitting in rooms listening to conversations of the form: -

CTO: “All the new servers are installed; systems are running fine”.

CIO: “Excellent. Apparently the latest thing is cloud, hence I’ve asked Simon to come along. According to this business magazine then numerous successful companies are considering future pilots that might use it. We should look into it and whether it’s worth considering as part of our long term strategy.”

CTO: “We’ve already examined the subject. Cloud just means virtualisation of the data centre. The latest research I have says that virtualisation has entered the plateau of performance and provides an extremely efficient mechanism of infrastructure provision over our existing data centre technology. Our technology partners have virtualisation based products in this space that we should consider buying.”

CIO: “Excellent work. Well let’s look at getting this up and running. There’s some business interest and I’d like to tell the CEO we’ve been using cloud if it comes up in conversation. We don’t want to be left behind in this technology war. Any thoughts Simon?”

It sounded so simple but it was so wrong, my heart always sank. To explain why, I’m going to perform a mental translation that I started to do by converting IT speak into military speak. For some reason, I just find it becomes easier for people to understand.

Captain: “All the new cannons arrived. We installed them and fired them this morning.”

Colonel: “Excellent. Apparently the latest thing is bombing hills, hence I’ve asked Simon to come along. According to General’s weekly then numerous successful military leaders are considering future campaigns that might use it. We should look into it and whether it’s worth considering as part of our long term strategy.”

Captain: “We’ve already examined the subject. Bombing hills just means using mortars. The latest research I have says that mortars have entered the plateau of performance and provide an extremely efficient mechanism of killing compared to our existing technology. Our technology partners have mortar based products in this space that we should consider buying.”

Colonel: “Excellent work. Well let’s look at getting this up and running. There’s some military interest and I’d like to tell the general we’ve been bombing hills if it comes up in conversation. We don’t want to be left behind in this technology war. Any thoughts Simon?”

There seemed to be an overwhelming predilection towards copying others, technology faddism and buying pieces of kit rather than dealing with the problems at hand. There was no discussion of the users, the landscape or how it was changing. When I would raise how cloud was simply an evolution of an existing act from product to more industrialised utility models and as such it was more of change of business model rather than buying some tech … well, it was almost like I had spoken heresy in gobbledygook.