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Finally took some time over past month to learn Wardley mapping. Still a technique I’ve rarely seen “in real life”, but glad that @mipsytipsy.bsky.social mentioned it a few times online in ~2018 and I’ve finally caught up 😂 lethain.com/learning-war...

I don’t think “not seeing IRL” is particularly remarkable fwiw, it remains surprisingly rare to see any documented strategy of any kind in any company. (Even rarer for the strategy to make much sense.)

Wardley mapping adds a lot of clarity to ideas, but also seeing your ideas so naked is hard. such clarity can be emotionally difficult

Absolutely, I think only a subset of strategy practitioners care about their strategy working (as opposed to compliance with the strategy, whether or not it works), which is a hard starting place for any technique ime!

as long as you don't evaluate if it actually works, you can lean on "true [x] has never been tried". I will only speak for myself but its easier to reject failure in that in context 🙃

I've had some really good chats with @cedricchin.bsky.social about this in the context of "being data driven". the endgame of data analytics is that its up to you, the Manager, to influence change in the metrics. If you cannot do it, skill issue, a new manager is needed.

Super interested in this point. Is this because a data or analytics team manager is the right organizational node to understand both the details underlying metrics and the levers that could affect them?

Haha sort of. It’s more that the mechanism to understand the causal model of your business is analytics. The people making the decisions (not analytics people) in general prefer less visibility on the causal model than they should, for political reasons.

Why? Because if you understand the causal model of your business you can’t just make up reasons why your product line / team / company isn’t performing. And if everyone (other execs) has visibility to it, it’s doubly true. Very tough dynamic if it doesn’t come from the CEO downward.

I def don't fully understand this, at least in part thanks to my limited experience with those types of managers, and with org politics in general. If the broader org is bought in to being analytics driven but there are managers blocking adoption, what's the path thru? Prove value where you can?