Documenting A Business Strategy Map
Illustration © Disney 1957
Imagine you’re beginning to work on a strategic plan*, or a budget, or a marketing plan, or a staffing forecast… or well, anything that involves your entire company. Wouldn’t it be great to first have a giant, birds-eye view of your business? Wouldn’t it be great to know the impact one part of your organization has on another part?
Thankfully, this is really easy to do. We can simply apply (another) lesson from the Walt Disney Company.
In 1957 Walt himself created an illustration of his company (above) that we can learn a lot from. I don’t know the exact process he used to create it, but I can tell you how I use it each year.
I’ve been following this process for almost 10 years. Each time I learn something new and important about the organization. I find this process to be really energizing and a lot of fun - but it’s even more fun if you get a bunch of flipchart paper and lots of different colored markers.
(*If you’re starting a new organization from scratch, I would suggest beginning with a mission, vision, and objectives - or even better, following the Vivid Vision process. )
8 Simple (And Fun) Steps To Create A Strategy Map
Step 1 - Try to compile a list of absolutely everything that your company does. I mean everything. Does it have a fleet of vehicles? Public bathrooms? A movie studio? A store? A newsletter? Manufacturing? Service department? Write them all down in the order that they come to you.
Step 2 - Try to identify THE BIG ONE. The one thing that drives all of your revenue, that makes you famous, or that people associate with your brand. Put that in the middle of a new sheet of paper. This new sheet of paper will be the first draft of your strategy map.
Step 3 - Now identify some secondary things your company does. These things are important, but not THE most important. Place them around the outside of THE BIG ONE.
Step 4 - Take everything that’s left over and try to place them together into a tertiary group, or perhaps just place them near the secondary activity that they support. Continue until your entire list of business activities has a place on the strategy map.
Step 5 - Now the magic starts. Start connecting (with arrows) all the different activities to each other. Be fairly liberal with your associations. If you think they could be connected, draw an arrow. Brainstorm strange questions like:
Are our memberships connected to boardroom rentals?
What impact do our branded vehicles have on sales? Is there a relationship?
Do any of these business items form a sales funnel? How?
The answers to these questions may spur other questions such as these real-world examples:
Can your marketing team use your fleet mechanics to drive sales?
What if your HVAC tech could help shoppers stay in your showroom 30% longer?
Step 6 - Once you have a rough draft, share the messy version with your peers. “Hello, Barbara. This is something I’ve been working on. What do you think of it? What have I missed? What ideas do you have to make it better?
Step 7 - Repeat & Refine. It’s almost a certainty that your team will have better ideas than you had for the first draft. keep refining the map. Maybe it becomes a group strategy session. No team? Take a friend out for coffee and ask them. Ask your family for their thoughts. Survey your customers. Ask your suppliers what they think.
Step 8 - Make a pretty one. Take everything that you now know and create a final copy. Make it big, bold, and bright, and then hang it in your office for everyone to see. Every piece of your business is important. Each division supports the other divisions, and each team member has an impact on the other. Placing the map in a central location where everyone can see it is a constant and positive reminder of that.
Does It Work?
It’s certainly worked for me since I discovered it. And I think it’s pretty clear that it worked for Disney. I don’t know how often they made these maps, but a version from 1967 (just 10 years after the one at the top of the page) is also circling the internet, and it shows how much Disney grew in that time.
Related Links
Harvard Business Review - The Disney Recipe
Flatland Visual Thinking Agency - Flatland Updated The Original 1957 Walt Disney Strategy Map
Cameron Herold - Vivid Vision