More than 1 year of Mapper Club 🥳

A small reflection on the last year and what’s coming up

I discovered that I’ve been writing here for over a year — Yes, time flies!

💖 The most important

Thank you for reading this, giving me feedback, forwarding articles, and discussing topics. Alone for the interactions I have with you, every minute of thinking and writing is worth it.

I started this small writing endeavor to reserve time to think more about product work and visual mapping and, yes, also to motivate more people to start mapping in their work.

Reading through my first post, where I explained why I’m doing this — it still feels accurate. Too many teams are stuck in talking, planning, discussing, and even fighting without a shared understanding and missing a method to lean into creation instead of discussion. I feel there are many things to explore regarding mapping as a better approach to collaboration.

When I started, I published one small article every day. However, after a short period, I discovered that even if it is possible to write this way, it isn’t the best way to consume this writing. I started to write small series, but navigating through these articles, keeping them connected, and creating valuable content was challenging for the reader and myself.

Additionally, I wanted to spend more time exploring topics, creating material for an article, and even developing methods to share here. Publishing every day was not enabling this. Consequently, I switched to an irregular cadence and now publish when ready.

How much did I write?

As a result, my posting frequency varies. I published 55 articles here in the last year, roughly once a week. Recently, I slowed down the frequency because I’m cooking up a few things in the background (more details below), and I’m lucky to travel more than usual.

Top articles

I was looking at the top articles — You all like to read about new methods and see visual representations of books.

#1

The top article is my Visualization of Marty Cagans (et al.) book Transformed.

This is by far the most-read article, and I was surprised. I mapped the book, wrote the article pretty quickly, and posted it without much thought and — bang — it resonated.

#2

The second most-read article is about Reveresed Impact Mapping to shift to an Outcome-based direction.

I see this approach as an easy way to change the conversation without running around and preaching product lingo. I’m happy this resonated well.

#3

Number three is a real-world story about preventing teams from over-building using maps.

#4

Followed by a visual template …

#5

… and a workshop I created.

What’s coming up?

Currently, I’m putting together a couple of things for Mapper Club (besides client work).

Fundamental Methods articles

I want to expand on the series of basic mapping methods. I published articles on Assumption Mapping and KPI-Trees and a small series on Impact Mapping.

I wrote a bit about Service Blueprints, Wardley Maps, and a couple of other methods, but I would love to write more about them. The next foundation article will likely be on Service Blueprints because it is one of the most powerful techniques, but I don’t see them used that often.

To refine my thoughts on this, I would appreciate hearing your questions, headaches, experiences, and comments on Service Blueprints. Please comment below or message me with everything related to Service Blueprints.

MAPPER Method

Yes, I’m working on packaging my visual approach for creating products into a method (or meta method). The method is still in its early stages. To get a first glimpse before anybody else into my thinking, please request the Mapper Method Guide Preview.

Visual Book Overviews

Since I read a lot and love to summarize what I learn from a book — and it seems people find these useful — I would love to make more of this public.

Reach out if you would love to have a reference for a book you often look into. It would be interesting to collaborate on these.

Where is Mapper Club heading?

I don’t approach this writing with a big plan. Writing here is mostly for fun, and it combines well with my coaching and consulting work.

I would love to expand this further to include more of the club aspect. Should I do public training, regular calls with like-minded mappers and guests, or create more templates (in Miroverse?)

The goal is to be helpful here. If you have a suggestion, please comment or send a message.

One last ask

I’m doing some research and looking for people who have engaged an external consultant, workshop facilitator, or similar in the last 12 months. If this sounds like you, I would love to talk to you (pinky swear — this won’t be a sales call).