Thanks to Tom Critchlow’s writing, I’ve had maps on the mind. Compared to text, maps expose connections and provide a method of visualizing how components intersect. His own blog map provides a great example.

Then, I listened to Crystal Widjaja on the Unsolicited Feedback podcast. She likened her process of joining a new company to exploring the map on a strategy game like Civilization or Warcraft. Coming in, you have your own “fog of war” map—mental models based on your past experience. These are your default assumptions and heuristics.

When you join a new company, it’s akin to being dropped in a new map. The entire thing is blacked out; you have to “explore” the map to make it visible. Through exploration, you begin to understand what metrics are important, what teams care about, how decisions are made, and where gaps exist. You’re incorporating this into your priors and updating your map as you go. You have to revisit areas of the map to prevent this understanding from going stale.

This is a fascinating analogy, and one I’ve been running with in my head ever since. If we think of the default topology of a business, what is the default map I’m bringing to the table as a starting point for exploration?

You could base the map on functional areas—Marketing, Customer Support, Finance, etc. I don’t think this accurately reflects the complexities and intersections inherent in running a business, though.

My “default map” now has three distinct buckets:

• Business: Everything from vision to funding strategy, financials, decision making, and operational cadence.
• Product: The manifestation of our vision in our strategy, bringing our competitive advantages to life.
• Customer: Understanding the lifecycle of the customer journey, market positioning, brand/product awareness, and metrics.

Here’s how they intersect:

(Coincidentally, these three areas overlap well with the three pillars of product ops defined by Denise Tilles and Melissa Perri.)

For example, the Business and Customer buckets intersect to help answer the question of org structure. Are we going after an Enterprise customer segment that necessitates an outbound sales team or are we using a PLG motion (which then impacts Product)? Similarly, the Customer segment influences Product processes. Are we pursuing a higher end consumer that necessitates a polished experience (e.g. Apple) or can we experiment and iterate quickly with a few bumps along the way?

You can’t truly succeed in one bucket without the others. For example, Product and Business without Customer is lack of product-market fit. If you have Product and Customer without Business, you end up running out of money.

As I get ready to start my next role, I’ll continue noodling on this idea. It will likely be the topic of future writing. In the meantime, Customer, Business, and Product define my base map to fill out through exploration. By exploring these three buckets, you can get a fundamental grasp of how the business operates.