A company operates in an ecosystem of opportunities, where competitive advantage can be won by “seeing what others are not even aware of” (1).
Examples of three different types of maps: AIDA, Journeys and Systems. Illustration by the author.
Common customer insight models reduce an organization’s ability to take advantage of it’s own unique experience, knowledge and competencies simply because when adding our own insights onto a map we tend to make the brutest simplifications:
Reducing the customer to a manageable objectwithout external influence, to beshuffled down a predictable linear pathtowards an unavoidable goalignoring everything that doesn’t fit into the model’s one-dimensional view.
I’ve observed a few things:
The customer does not operate in a vacuum. They are one part of a larger system. A system with many levers organizations can choose to influence — if we can see them.We usually do. We usually see them and know them. But fail to choose maps of our environment (e.g. market) that allow us to include them limiting our decision-making, strategies, and execution.
Success can be determined by our awareness of the situation we operate in (2). Our ability to work together as an organization on the same map (3). Set strategy, plan, and execute. The map we make will limit or expand the opportunities we see, enabling us to make better decisions than our competition (5), and delivering better outcomes to our customers and ourselves.
Success can be determined by our awareness of the situation we operate in.
And this is where the opportunity lies: the better we are able to map out what leads to what we want, the better we will be able to outperform our competitors and over-deliver to our customers and ourselves.
If we make a map of the world that:
Removes all internal expertise and competencies (what makes us unique)(6) andpaints the same picture of the world as everyone else has (including our competition)
then we will make the same decisions as everyone else, offering the customer the same value as everyone else, competing on price or efficiency alone ( a race to the bottom ). Or to repeat the David Ogilvy quote: “if you got nothing to say, sing it” (7).
If we are in a race to the bottom because of our focus on price or efficiency, then it’s not because that’s the only choice we could make. It’s because it’s the only choice we could see.
But if we make a map of the world that nobody else has, which captures nuances, influences and levers our organization is fit to take advantage of. Then we can set our strategy, plan and execution based on our own strengths, offering the customer relevant value nobody else does, winning in the marketplace (6)(8).
Let’s compare three maps
The first map is the AIDA-model. It’s designed for a media environment anno 1898 and as with other linear or hierarchical models it has been thoroughly debunked (4) as a poor predictor of human behavior. The AIDA model is a reflection of what the organization wishes the customer would do in a simplified universe that only includes the product.
Illustration of AIDA-model.
The second map is the customer journey. Another linear model that is most efficient at removing information. It pretends that people are on “journeys” towards purchasing products. Models like these not only removes vast amounts of insights from understanding what creates a customer, they also tend to silo thinking to only one or a few types of influences coming from only one area of the organization (9).
The third map is a causal diagram (10). Not perfect, but more inclusive and representative than the others. It’s main weakness is that it can only represent known insights and relationships (11), but this goes for all maps.
With a Causal diagram:
Everyone can add their insights to the map.It manages to represent the most significant known forces of influence from across the entire organization and ecosystem (12).It is a shared map. It manages to connect different areas of the organization through the same view of the ecosystem they together are trying to influence.It helps the organization find a shared narrative and language which leads to shared discussions about their purpose, role, and goals (13).An illustrative causal diagram mapping out influences on the decision making of a physician. Made by the author with input from Perplexity.
The immediate challenge with a system map is that people balk at the first impression. But a system map is far easier to understand and use than a statistical or linear model. Because the latter is a distortion: it’s a simple, clean model, but it represents a version of the world that nobody is familiar with and everyone has to “learn” as an alternative to what they already know.
A causal map in contrast represents the relationships and influences we already see and recognize, even as small children (11). It doesn’t create an alternative narrative, it visualizes our own narrative. Once we learn how to read it, understanding it, sharing it, and collaborating on it becomes natural.
The simplest possible way to read a system map / causal diagram. Illustration by the author.
Ps. if you want to make your own system map this is the simplest place to start.
Now Imagine!
Which of these three maps best captures and represents the true environment our offering operates in?
And if we wanted to use a map to identify our best opportunities to have influence, which map would we choose?
Winning is not about making better decisions than everybody else, it’s routed in our ability to see what nobody else sees.
Our decisions follow our insights, not the other way around.
Using the same methodology, models, and simplifications as everyone else sets us up for expensive failure from the start. It narrows our opportunities, removes our unique competencies, and puts us in a competitive space where we are not competing based on our strengths but on universal commodities (hygiene factors) like price or efficiency.
We win by the quality and strength or our strategies, planning and execution. But it’s all rooted in our ability to see (14). Having a map of the world nobody else has helps us see opportunities nobody else does and the possibility to coordinate and compete based on our own unique expertise and strengths.
Having the right map is the springboard to the rest of what we do to win (2).
Sources / further reading:
(1). Gary Hamel, source unkown, https://www.garyhamel.com/
(2). Simon Wardley, ‘Situation Normal, Everything Must Change’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty6pOVEc3bA
(3). IBM C-Suite Study, IBM Study: C-suite Leaders Look to Customers to Steer Business Strategy, https://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/nl-en/2013/10/07/ibm-study-c-suite-leaders-look-to-customers-to-steer-business-strategy/
(4). AIDA-Model, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDA_(marketing)
(5). Helge Tennø, Customer as Competitive Advantage, https://uxdesign.cc/customer-as-competitive-advantage-19a6ede62852
(6). David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad, Can you say what your strategy is, https://hbr.org/2008/04/can-you-say-what-your-strategy-is
(7). David Ogilvy, behance, https://www.behance.net/gallery/1625743/If-You-Have-Nothing-To-Say-Sing-It
(8). Mark Lipton, Walking the talk (really!): why visions fail, https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/walking-the-talk-really-why-visions-fail/
(9). Based on conversations with the CustomerC-community in Norway, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/helgetenno_customerexperience-customer-business-activity-7276133041905766400-n7EW/
(10). HBR Faculty, Causal Diagrams: Draw Your Assumptions Before Your Conclusions, https://www.harvardonline.harvard.edu/course/causal-diagrams-draw-your-assumptions-your-conclusions
(11). Judea Pearl and writer Dana Mackenzie, The book of why, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Why
(12). Donatella Meadows, Dancing with Systems, https://donellameadows.org/archives/dancing-with-systems/
(13). Clayton Christensen, unkonwn reference, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Christensen
(14). Christian Madsbjerg, Look, https://madsbjerg.com/
Competitive advantage comes from seeing what nobody else can was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
