How to use Business Battle Maps with Strategic Navigation

Henrik Mårtensson

8July,2009

Abstract

Thispaper proposesthat havinga battleﬁeldmapisasimportanttobusinessstrategistsand change agents as it is to military strategistsand commanders.Anetworkbattlemapiseasytomake,andcanhelpdeterminesystemboundaries,and serve as input for gap analysis. It is also a valuable presentation aid, and usefulwhen looking for solutions to complex problems.This paper outlines how to use network battle maps with Strategic Navigation,afast paced business strategy method combining Maneuver Conﬂict and The LogicalThinking Processfrom The Theory of constraints.

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Contents

1. Why Use Business Battle Maps? 22. Battle Mapping with StrategicNavigation .. .. .. .. .. .. 33. Battle Maps and the OODA Deci-sion Loop .. .. .. .. .. .. 54. Showing Pervasive Inﬂuences .. 75. Layered Battle Maps .. .. .. 76. Sub-maps .. .. .. .. .. .. 77. Battle Map on the Wall .. .. .. 78. Battle Maps and the 36Stratagems .. .. .. .. .. .. 89. When Not to Use Battle Maps .. 8

References

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. 9

1. Why Use Business Battle Maps?

Business strategy is a complex game withmany players making concurrent moves.Many business strategy games are playedlike blind chess,with the playerskeeping thegame board in their heads. Imagine the ad-vantage you can get by makinga simple mapof thebattlefield:It’slikebeingtheonlyplay-er with a chess board and pieces at a chesscompetition.A battle map is a kind of network dia-gram showing the field of battle. It depictsimportant entities on the business battlefield,and

the relationships between them

.A battle map makes it easier to do thefollowing things:• Think through the relationships be-tween different stakeholders in the sys-tem you want to change. This will helpyou come up with an overall strategicplan.• Communicate important informationabout power and information structuresthat is otherwise likely to be communi-cated in a disjointed manner, or simplyforgotten until it is too late.• Determine where you need to allocateyour resourcesfor maximum effect dur-ing execution.• Visualize a desired future state. Whendoing a gap analysis it can be useful tovisualize a desired future state in termsof powerandlinesof communication.Anetwork battle map, even a simple one,provides a more accurate view than anorganizational chart.What should a battle map look like? Forstarters, what are the important entities, andwhat relationships should the battle map de-scribe? And at what resolution?The entities you need to put on the mapare the stakeholders in the strategic game. Iwill not go into how to identify stakeholdersin this paper. Sufﬁce to say that a change inpart of an organizationcanhavesystem widerepercussions.For example, introducing Agile soft-ware development methods like Scrum oreXtremeProgramming,maybe seenasdeaththreat by the Project Manager Department,because these methods do not have or needprojectmanagersinthetraditionalsense.Theway software development services are soldmay have to change, because Agile methodscan speed updevelopment,and sellingdevel-opers by the hour may no longer be a viableoption.Five times faster development wouldmean one ﬁfth the revenue…Theeffectsof makingchangestopartof an organization are often quite predictable,and yet, the effort to understand the implica-tions of a change is rarely made. Making anetwork battle map can make it easier to un-derstand how the organization as a whole isaffected by a local change.There are many kinds of interactions in

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Interpersonal Positional/Situational

Legitimate

: Power derived from formal au-thority

Resource:

Control over material ﬂow, phys-ical resources, or special access to informa-tion sources.

Reward:

Power to reward behavior. (Oftenmisused to reward

results

even if the resultsare not due to the behavior of the entity re-warded.)

Decision-making

: Inﬂuence over decisions,or selection of which decisionsare made.

Coercive:

Ability to punish. (Often misusedto punish

results

even if the results are notdue to the behavior of the entity punished.)

Information:

Control over or special accessto knowledge or data by virtue of position.

Expert:

Knowledge and skills that are irre-placeable,or difﬁcult to replace.

Referent:

Personality,charisma.

Table 1.

Types of Power

an organization.Mapping them all is neitherfeasible, nor useful. What are the most rele-vant relationshipsto map?Usually, the most relevant relationshipsare relationships of power, including materi-al flow.Table 1on page 3 shows eight differ-ent types of power that may be important[2].Of course, a map showing all power rela-tionships would become too messy to read,and to unwieldy to update. The map shouldshow only the most important relationships.It isnecessarytohavesomewaytofilterdata,so that the map does not become overloadedwith information.Business strategy deals with organiza-tions, which are complex systems, and in-teractions between the organization and cus-tomers,competitors,allies,andsociety.Therearemany,complexinteractions,butrelativelyfewdegreesof freedom.Asa result,thereareusually only a few strategicleverage points.Given a method for locating lever-age points, it would be possible to use thismethodtolocatethoseareasof thebattlefieldwhere a detailed battlemapwillbe most use-ful.Therestof thebattlemapcanbeleftpret-ty sketchy, until there is reason to focus on anew area of the strategicbattlefield..There are several methods for locatingthe leverage points in complex systems, butthispaperwillfocusonTheLogicalThinkingProcess(TLTP).TLTPcanbeusedasastand-alone toolset for solving complex problems,butitisalsoapartof theStrategicNavigationtoolkit.

2. Battle Mapping with StrategicNavigation

Strategic Navigation is a business strate-gy method created by William Dettmer[2].The method is a powerful synthesis of John Boyd’s Maneuver Conﬂict[1][8][7] and William Dettmer’s The Logical ThinkingProcess

[4] (TLTP). Strategic Navigationalso uses an extremely powerful method of gathering data and brainstorming, CrawfordSlip[3].TLTP is a powerful tool for solvingcomplex problems,formulating strategy,and