A good enough map

I'm often asked about whether we can add a new axis onto a map, to be blunt I prefer not to.

When you map, you start by identifying users and their needs. For example, a Tea Shop has users like the business that wants to sell cups of tea to consumers who will hopefully drink it.

You then expand this cup of tea through the capability to make a cup of tea and components required to meet this need. This is a graph, a chain of what is needed.

We then ask "how evolved" each component is. This creates the map.

Formally, we tidy this up by adding a line of evolution at the bottom and an indicator for the value chain. NB. There can be many value chains on a single map; there is, in practice, no y-axis because that is contained within the chains themselves; it's more of a directional indicator, i.e. the further you go down the chain then, the less visible the components become to things higher up the chain.

Onto this map we can :-

• Challenge what we are doing - "Why are we custom building kettles?"
• Add missing components - "Have we thought about staff to make the tea?"
• Add missing users - "What about regulators?" or "What about staff, don't they have needs?"
• Add missing needs - "What about a nice place to sit?" or "wifi?" or "a payment method?" or "How about some biscuits!"

We can use the map to discuss how to manage the system, measure it, how and where the landscape is changing, where we should focus to improve operations, and where we should differentiate. There is an awful lot to be discussed with this simple but imperfect map.

However, that discussion does require thought, communication and challenge. The map, as simple as it is, provides a massive compression of information compared to text. To compensate, it also provides a constraining framework (a strong opinion in both the view of value chains and evolution), which enables discussion despite the huge amount of information. Even with this, I have found in research meetings that two hours per day is the maximum time people can work on maps without becoming mentally exhausted. Mapping may be simple, but it is also mentally hard.

Adding another axis will just increase the effort required and up the potential for confusion. That alone would make them less useful. So, yes, you could add more axes or more colours or more symbols or more of everything. But that doesn't mean the maps become more useful. Stripping away more might be the better path.

For me, the maps are good enough until something better and simpler comes along. Less is often more.