How I learned to 'cross rivers by feeling stones' the hard way

Marcus Guest

Experience: Country Director (multi-national), CEO (professional services), Business Unit Director (holding company), and Strategy Director (Big Four consultancy).

Select clients: Alfa-Bank (Russia), Telecomm Regulator (Bahrain), Toronto Research Chemicals (Canada), SierraCol (Colombia), Filuet (Eurasia), IFRC (Europe), Glen Dimplex (UK) and numerous technology start-ups.

As a senior leader, I watched plans fail to survive contact with reality, time after time. The organisations that thrived weren't the ones with the best plans. They were the ones who could see what was changing early, and adapt fastest.

Later, advising organisations globally, I saw the same pattern. The best strategic thinking wasn't happening in planning sessions far from the action. It was happening amongst teams who were close to end users, understood what was changing and where their next best moves were.

That's when I found Wardley Mapping: a way to build shared situational awareness at organisational scale.

Now I help leaders and teams develop the capability to see their business landscape clearly, understand how it’s changing, and identify the emerging opportunities and threats they can exploit. I don't do this by creating dependency on me, but by developing your ability to think and act strategically with the aid of maps.

If seeing more clearly and adapting quicker than rivals is the capability you're after, let's talk.