The Strategy CyclePurpose, Landscape, Climate, Doctrine, and Leadership
Simon Wardley describes strategy as a cycle you go round again and again: know your purpose, map the landscape, learn the climate acting on it, apply doctrine, and then lead by choosing where to act. Each time you act, the landscape changes and you learn something, so you go round again. This guide covers each part of the cycle and how it relates to John Boyd's OODA loop.
The Five Parts of the Cycle
Wardley adapted the five parts from the five factors in Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Each one feeds the next, and what you learn by acting can change any of them, including your purpose.
Purpose
Why you are doing what you're doing, and the scope of what you're trying to achieve. It's the reason others follow you. Wardley calls this the why of purpose.
Landscape
The environment you are competing in, drawn as a map: the users you serve, their needs, the components that meet those needs, and how evolved each component is.
Climate
The forces that act on the landscape whatever you do, such as evolution through supply and demand competition and the actions of competitors. You can't choose them, but you can learn them and anticipate their effects.
Doctrine
Principles that work whatever the landscape, such as focusing on user needs, using a common language, and removing duplication. Doctrine is how you organise yourself to avoid unforced errors.
Leadership
The choices that depend on your context: given your purpose, landscape, climate, and doctrine, where do you act and why there rather than somewhere else? Gameplay belongs here.
Where the OODA Loop Fits
The loop itself draws on the OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act), developed by US Air Force pilot and strategist John Boyd. Wardley lines the two up roughly as follows. For more on Boyd's work, see Understanding John Boyd's OODA Loop.
Observe
Look at the landscape and the climate acting on it. Draw or update your map.
Orient
Apply doctrine, so that how you organise and respond holds up whatever the map shows.
Decide
This is leadership: choose where to act, given your purpose and what the map shows.
Act
Make the move. Acting changes the landscape and teaches you something, so you go round again.
What Makes a Map
You can't observe a landscape you haven't drawn. Wardley argues that a diagram is only a map if it has all four of these characteristics. Many business diagrams lack position or movement.
Visual
A map is a picture, not a list or a story. People can point at parts of it, question them, and add what they know.
Context-Specific
A map describes one landscape: your users, your components, and your situation. A diagram that would fit any organisation tells you little about yours.
Position Relative to an Anchor
Things are placed relative to a fixed point, as a geographical map uses north. On a Wardley Map the anchor is the user and their needs, and components sit higher the more visible they are to the user.
Movement
A map shows how things can change. On a Wardley Map, components move from left to right as supply and demand competition evolves them from Genesis towards Commodity (+utility).
Learning Climatic Patterns
Climatic patterns are the forces that act on every landscape whatever you do: the rules of the game. You can't choose them, but you can learn them and use them to anticipate change. Wardley catalogues many of them; three to start with are below. Apply them to your map one component at a time, then browse the full list of climatic patterns.
Everything Evolves
Competition on both the supply and demand sides pushes every component from Genesis towards Commodity (+utility). For each component on your map, ask where it is heading.
Efficiency Enables Innovation
When a component becomes a cheap, standard utility, people build new things on top of it, as electricity did for electrical appliances and cloud computing did for online services.
Success Breeds Inertia
Organisations resist changing whatever made them successful. Expect this in yourself and in your competitors when a component you rely on starts to industrialise.
Applying Doctrine
Climate is about the landscape; doctrine is about you. These principles apply whatever your map looks like, which is why you can adopt them before you know what move to make. Three of the first ones to adopt are below; the doctrine reference lists the rest.
Focus on User Needs
Anchor every map on a user and what they need. If a component does not serve a need, ask why it is there.
Use a Common Language
A map gives people with different skills one picture to discuss, so they can see where they disagree.
Remove Bias and Duplication
Compare maps across teams to find the same thing being built several times, or built when it could be bought or rented.
Leadership: Choosing Where to Act
Doctrine applies everywhere; leadership is specific to your context. With a map, you can see your options and discuss why you would pick one over another, rather than arguing about what to do without a shared picture.
The Why of Movement
A map shows several places you could act. The why of movement is your reason for choosing one of them over the others.
Gameplay
Context-specific moves that change the landscape in your favour, such as using an open approach to speed up the evolution of a component.
Going Round Again
The cycle doesn't end. Each time you act, you learn something about the landscape, the climate, your doctrine, or your own judgement, and your next map is better for it. Two of Wardley's doctrine principles apply directly: strategy is iterative, not linear, and you should move fast, because an imperfect plan acted on today is often better than a perfect plan tomorrow. Share your map so others can challenge it; their challenges are how it improves.
Related
Sources
- Adapted from Simon Wardley, Wardley Maps, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Material adapted from these sources is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.