One-Page Business Maps

An exec team with a good one-page map or picture of their business, showing how its components work together to build advantage and value, makes better strategic choices 🗺

Maps help a company figure out what's important, and, when done right, change the future of the business (and its past).

At one point, when we felt gravity pulling Propeller in multiple directions, we made a sketch of our business. It was tough to draw, and we had to redo it a few times, but almost immediately it helped us recognize where we were and where we were trying to go.

In our case it brought both parts of our business model into view together. On the one side, we were creating and bundling supply, by partnering with pharmaceutical companies to connect their medicines to Propeller. And, on the other, we were aggregating demand for Propeller by working with the health plans and provider systems 🔄

Not only did the map show us how we’d create value in the middle and shape what kind of business we wanted to become, it also taught us some lessons about what we’d done in the past. We could see where and how we’d made a wrong turn and ended up in a goofy and unproductive partnership.

Maps make it easier to see and make conscious choices about the key decisions that will make your business successful. But pay attention to things you run across that are missing from the map. No matter how well drawn, you’ll find yourself in unexpected situations. These can be the seeds of valuable new ideas and strategies, or they may be parts of the map that you’ve just forgotten to draw. Time to update the sketch and get back on track. 👉