Strategy Map: Does Your Strategy Actually Connect?

Loading Company Context

Before starting, look for a company-context.md file. Read it if available, focusing on: current strategy, the Strategy map section, the Resources that matter table (from VRIO), External forces (from Environmental Radar), Market position data, and the Session log.

If you find context with existing strategy map data:

• Reconstruct the two chains from whatever's recorded — bottom-up and top-down.
• Note the last-validated date. Strategy maps older than 3 months should be treated with suspicion. A lot can change in a quarter.
• Check whether other skills have updated context since the last strategy map run. New VRIO results, environmental shifts, or market position changes all affect the chains.
• Use existing data as the starting point. Don't rebuild from zero unless the user asks for it.

If no context is available, ask:

• What business are we looking at, and at what level? (Whole company, a business unit, a product line?)
• What's the strategic question on your mind right now?
• What time horizon matters — 12 months, 3 years, longer?
• Who are the key stakeholders whose expectations you need to meet? (Investors, board, customers, regulators?)

Additional documents that add value: strategy deck, financial targets, business plan, investor commitments, customer research, operational KPIs, prior strategy work from any of the other Eterdis skills.

Determine the Mode

Ask: "Are we doing a full diagnostic, a quick review of an existing map, or setting up alert triggers?"

If company-context.md has no strategy map data, default to Diagnostic. If it has existing chains, suggest Review unless the user says something major has changed.

Then follow the appropriate track below.

Mode 1: Diagnostic (Full Session)

Time guidance: Budget 45-60 minutes for a proper run. This is the skill that ties everything else together — it's supposed to be uncomfortable. If you finish in 15 minutes, you probably skipped the hard part. The best strategy maps are the ones where the user goes quiet for a while because they've just seen a gap they can't explain away.

Strategy is supposed to be a bridge. On one side: what you have and what you can do. On the other side: what you need to achieve and who's expecting you to achieve it. A coherent strategy connects those two sides with a structure that bears weight. An incoherent strategy is two disconnected piers with a nice PowerPoint where the middle should be.

This diagnostic builds the bridge from both ends and finds where the spans don't meet.

Before You Begin

Get three things nailed down before touching the chains:

1. What level are we working at? Whole company? A business unit? A product line? The chains look different at different altitudes. Don't try to map everything at once — that's how you get a diagram that means nothing.

1. What time horizon? The chains you build for "survive the next 12 months" are different from the chains for "win over 5 years." Pick one. You can run it again for the other later.

1. What's the specific question? Not "is our strategy good?" — that's too vague to be useful. Something like "can we actually deliver what we promised investors?" or "why are we growing revenue but losing money?" or "where should the next million go?" A sharp question makes a sharp diagnostic.

Chain 1: Bottom-Up (What You Have -> What You Get)

This chain starts with reality — what you actually have — and traces it upward to see what results it can plausibly produce. No wishful thinking. No "if everything goes perfectly." What does the machine you've built actually generate?

Think of it as reading the blueprint of the bridge from the left pier: foundation, columns, span. What does this structure actually support?

Step 1: Resources — What Do You Actually Have?

What are the real assets, capabilities, and resources this business can deploy?

If VRIO has been run, pull the resources table. Those have already been tested. If not, build a quick inventory:

• People: who, how many, what skills, what's in their heads that isn't written down
• Money: cash, credit, runway, investment capacity
• Technology and infrastructure: what you've built or bought
• Relationships: customers, partners, suppliers, regulatory positions
• Knowledge and IP: what you know that others don't
• Brand and reputation: what the market thinks of you (not what you think of you)

Be honest. This is an inventory, not a wish list. "List what you have, not what you plan to acquire. We're testing what's here, not what might be here someday."

Step 2: Delivery Capability — What Can You Actually Do?

Given those resources, what can this business actually produce and deliver?

This is where resources become activity. Probe:

• What products or services can you deliver at a quality level the market accepts?
• At what scale? At what cost? At what speed?
• What are you genuinely good at executing, and what do you struggle with?
• Where are the bottlenecks — the places where capability is thinner than the strategy assumes?

The gap between "what we say we do" and "what we actually do reliably" is where most strategies start lying. Push here. "Forget the brochure. If I followed a customer order from start to finish, where would I see the wobble?"

Step 3: Customer Value — Why Would Anyone Buy This?

Given what you can deliver, what value does a customer actually receive?

Not what you think the value is. What the customer experiences. Probe:

• What problem does this solve for them? Is it a real problem or one you've convinced yourself they have?
• How would the customer describe what they get from you? (Ask them if you can. You'll be surprised.)
• What would they lose if you disappeared? How quickly would they find an alternative?
• Are you competing on price, quality, speed, relationships, switching costs, or something else? Is that deliberate or accidental?

"Value isn't what you put in. It's what the customer takes out. A Michelin-star meal that solves the wrong hunger is just expensive food."

Step 4: Results — What Does This Actually Produce?

Given the value you deliver to customers, what financial and strategic results follow?

Trace the line all the way through:

• Revenue: from which customers, at what margins, with what growth trajectory?
• Market position: are you getting stronger or weaker relative to competitors?
• Strategic assets: are you building anything durable, or just running on the treadmill?
• Cash flow: does the model actually generate cash, or does growth eat everything?

Write down what the bottom-up chain honestly produces. Not the budget. Not the target. What does the machine actually generate when you're honest about steps 1-3?

Chain 2: Top-Down (What You Need -> What That Requires)

Now build the bridge from the other end. Start with what stakeholders expect and trace downward to see what that demands.

Step 5: Expectations — What Must You Deliver?

What are the non-negotiable results this business must achieve?

• Investor expectations: return targets, growth rates, milestones, timeline
• Board requirements: strategic KPIs, risk thresholds
• Market commitments: customer promises, contracts, service levels
• Regulatory requirements: compliance obligations that constrain choices
• Internal commitments: what you've told your people the plan is

Be specific. "Growth" is not an expectation. "25% revenue growth in the next 18 months while maintaining 15% EBITDA margin" is an expectation. "What number, by what date, would make the people who matter say 'that worked'?"

Step 6: Required Customers — Who Must You Win?

To hit those results, what does the customer base need to look like?

Work backward from the numbers:

• How many customers, at what average value, with what retention?
• Which segments must you win in? Which can you afford to lose?
• What market share does the target imply? Is that realistic given your current position?
• What does the sales pipeline need to look like 6-12 months before target?

"The strategy says you need 200 enterprise customers paying six figures each. You currently have 40. That's not a gap — that's a canyon. Let's talk about the canyon."

Step 7: Required Delivery — What Must You Be Able to Do?

To win and retain those customers, what delivery capabilities are required?

• What products, features, or service levels do those target customers demand?
• At what quality, speed, and cost?
• What does the go-to-market need to look like?
• What does the support and retention engine need to deliver?

Compare this to Step 2. Where the required delivery exceeds current delivery capability, you have a delivery gap. Note every one of them.

Step 8: Required Resources — What Must You Have?

To build those delivery capabilities, what resources are required?

• People: how many, what skills, what experience level?
• Capital: how much investment, over what timeline?
• Technology: what needs to be built, bought, or upgraded?
• Partnerships: what can't you do alone?
• Time: how long will it take to build what's missing?

Compare this to Step 1. Where the required resources exceed current resources, you have a resource gap. This is where the two piers of the bridge face each other across open air.

Finding the Gap

Now put both chains side by side. The power of this tool is in the collision.

The Resource Gap

Compare Step 1 (what you have) with Step 8 (what you need).

• What's missing entirely? Resources you need but don't have and aren't building.
• What's undersized? Resources you have but not at the scale the strategy requires.
• What's misallocated? Resources you have but they're pointed at the wrong things.

"A resource gap means your bridge doesn't have enough material. You can't will steel into existence. Either find it, or build a shorter bridge."

The Delivery Gap

Compare Step 2 (what you can do) with Step 7 (what you must do).

• Where does current capability fall short of what the strategy demands?
• Which gaps are skill gaps vs. scale gaps vs. speed gaps?
• Are you trying to do too many things adequately instead of fewer things well?

The Customer Gap

Compare Step 3 (who values what you do) with Step 6 (who you need to win).

• Are your target customers the ones who actually value what you deliver?
• Is there a mismatch between what you're good at and what the target market rewards?
• Are you chasing customers that require capabilities you don't have while ignoring customers who love what you already do?

"The customer gap is the most dangerous one because it's invisible to people inside the company. You see your product. They see their problem. If those don't match, no amount of sales effort fixes it."

Strategic Coherence Test

Pull it together. A coherent strategy has three properties:

1. The bottom-up chain reaches the top-down expectations. What you have -> what you can do -> what customers get -> the results stakeholders need. If the chain breaks somewhere, you know exactly where.

1. The gaps are acknowledged and planned for. Every strategy has gaps. The question is whether the plan accounts for them or pretends they don't exist. An honest gap with a plan is workable. An ignored gap is a crisis in progress.

1. The timeline is realistic. Even if the gaps are closeable, can they be closed in the time the strategy assumes? Building capabilities takes time. Winning customers takes time. The most common strategic failure isn't wrong direction — it's unrealistic speed.

Rate the strategy:

Closing the Diagnostic

Land the plane. Hit the user with what matters:

1. Where does the bridge break? Name the specific gap — resource, delivery, or customer — that poses the biggest risk to strategic coherence.

1. What's the honest timeline? Given the gaps, how long would it really take to get from here to there? Not the plan timeline — the honest one.

1. What must change? Either close the gap (invest, hire, build, partner) or change the expectation (reset targets, narrow scope, extend timeline). There is no third option. Hoping is not a strategy.

1. What's the one move? "If the strategy has to work and you can only fix one gap, which one? That's your priority."

1. What should you stop doing? Resources going to things that don't serve either chain are waste. Name them.

"A strategy that connects is worth more than a strategy that's ambitious. Ambition without connection is just optimism with a spreadsheet."

Update company-context.md

After the diagnostic, update the following in company-context.md:

Strategy map section: Record both chains — bottom-up and top-down — with the current state of each step. Include the gap analysis and coherence assessment. Date everything.

Add the chain summary:

Bottom-up chain:

• Resources: [summary from Step 1]
• Delivery: [summary from Step 2]
• Customer value: [summary from Step 3]
• Results: [what the machine actually produces from Step 4]

Top-down chain:

• Expectations: [summary from Step 5]
• Required customers: [summary from Step 6]
• Required delivery: [summary from Step 7]
• Required resources: [summary from Step 8]

Gaps identified:

• Resource gap: [from gap analysis]
• Delivery gap: [from gap analysis]
• Customer gap: [from gap analysis]
• Overall coherence: [rating]

Add a row to the Session log:

If the diagnostic raised questions that can't be answered yet, add them to the Open questions section.

Mode 2: Review (Quick Re-Assessment)

Time guidance: 10-15 minutes if the world hasn't moved much. If you find that more than one step has shifted materially, stop and switch to Diagnostic mode. A review that surfaces big changes isn't a review anymore — it's a fire drill, and you should treat it like one.

This is the "since last time" check. Run it monthly or quarterly, or whenever something meaningful changes — a big hire, a lost customer, a missed target, a competitor move.

Steps

1. Load company-context.md. Read the existing strategy map chains, gap analysis, and session log. Note how old the data is.

1. Walk the bottom-up chain:

• Resources (Step 1): Anything gained or lost since last time? Key hire? Key departure? New investment? Budget cut?
• Delivery (Step 2): Has capability improved or degraded? Any operational surprises — good or bad?
• Customer value (Step 3): Are customers still buying for the same reasons? Any feedback, churn signals, or win/loss data that shifts the picture?
• Results (Step 4): Are actual results tracking what the bottom-up chain predicted? If not, where's the leak?

1. Walk the top-down chain:

• Expectations (Step 5): Have stakeholder expectations changed? New targets? Shifted timeline? Additional commitments?
• Required customers (Step 6): Does the customer math still work? Pipeline tracking to plan?
• Required delivery (Step 7): Any new delivery requirements that weren't in the original chain?
• Required resources (Step 8): Has the required resource picture changed?

1. Re-test the gaps:

• Are the gaps identified last time getting smaller (you're building the bridge) or larger (the piers are drifting apart)?
• Any new gaps that didn't exist before?
• Did any gap that was "planned for" actually get addressed, or is the plan still a plan?

1. Quick coherence re-test:

• Does the strategy still connect? Or has drift introduced a break?
• Is the timeline still realistic given what you now know?

1. Update company-context.md with current chain states, revised gap assessments, and today's date. Log the review in the session log.

If the review surfaces something uncomfortable, don't smooth it over. "The point of the review is to catch drift before it becomes a crisis. If you find drift, that's the review working, not failing."

Mode 3: Alert Triggers

These are the tripwires that tell you when to stop what you're doing and re-examine the strategy map. Define them once, update them as the strategy evolves, and check them regularly. A tripwire that fires is a gift — it means you caught something before it caught you.

Setting Up Triggers

Work through each category. For each trigger, define what fires it, what part of the chain it affects, and what to do when it fires.

Gap Triggers (the gap is widening)

The gaps you identified in the diagnostic aren't static. They can shrink (good) or grow (bad). Set tripwires for growth:

• "If the resource gap for [specific resource] hasn't closed by [date], the timeline is blown."
• "If customer acquisition rate drops below [X/month], the customer gap is widening."
• "If [delivery capability] isn't operational by [date], the delivery gap blocks everything downstream."
• "If actual results deviate from bottom-up projection by more than [X%], something in the chain is broken."

Chain-Break Triggers (a link weakened)

Each step in the chain depends on the one before it. If a link weakens, everything downstream is affected:

• "If we lose [key resource], re-test from Step 1 forward."
• "If [delivery metric] drops below [threshold], the delivery-to-value link is breaking."
• "If customer churn exceeds [X%], the value-to-results link is breaking."
• "If [competitor] starts winning deals we used to win, re-test the customer value step."

Assumption Triggers (something the strategy depends on changed)

Every strategy rests on assumptions. The dangerous ones are the ones nobody wrote down:

• "If [market assumption] turns out to be wrong, the top-down chain needs rebuilding."
• "If [cost assumption] changes by more than [X%], the results math doesn't work."
• "If [regulatory/political assumption] shifts, both chains may need re-testing."
• "If [technology assumption] about build timeline proves wrong, delivery gap widens."

"An assumption you've written down is a hypothesis you can test. An assumption you haven't written down is a land mine you'll step on eventually."

Recording Triggers

Add triggers to the Active assumptions table in company-context.md:

When a trigger fires, run either a Review (if it's a single link in the chain) or a full Diagnostic (if the break is structural or multiple triggers fire at once).

Connection to Other Skills

The strategy map is the integrating layer. Every other skill in the Eterdis system feeds into it or draws from it.

VRIO (Resources): VRIO tests the resources in Step 1 and Step 8. If VRIO says a resource isn't actually valuable or rare, the bottom-up chain has a weaker foundation than the strategy assumes. If VRIO identifies an unexploited advantage, the strategy map should show where in the chain it could create value. Run VRIO first, then feed results into the strategy map.

Environmental Radar (External Forces): External forces act on both chains. A regulatory change might invalidate a delivery capability. A technology shift might erode a customer value proposition. An economic downturn might change stakeholder expectations. When the radar detects movement, check which step of which chain it affects.

Market Position (Customer Value): Market position analysis deepens Step 3 and Step 6. It tells you whether the customer value you think you deliver matches what the market actually rewards, and whether your position is defensible enough to sustain the results the top-down chain requires.

Wardley Map (Component Evolution): Wardley mapping shows where the components of your delivery capability (Step 2 and Step 7) sit on the evolution curve. If a component you depend on is commoditising, the delivery capability built on it may be vulnerable — or cheaper to acquire than you thought. Evolution affects what you can build, buy, or outsource.

Playing to Win (Strategic Cascade): The Playing to Win cascade — winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities, management systems — should align with the two chains. If the cascade says "win through innovation" but the bottom-up chain shows resources optimised for operational efficiency, there's a disconnect. The strategy map makes that visible.

Culture (Execution): When the chains connect on paper but results still don't follow, the break is usually cultural. Execution gaps — the distance between "decided" and "done" — show up as mysterious leaks in the chain where capability exists but delivery doesn't happen. If the strategy map says "should work" but reality says "doesn't," look at culture.

Framework References

• Two-directional causal chain: Developed through Eterdis consulting practice. Draws on Kaplan & Norton's Strategy Maps (2004) for the logic of causal chains, Porter's Activity Systems (1996) for the concept of strategic fit and reinforcement between activities, and practical strategy diagnostic methodology refined across multiple engagements.

The strategy map is the integration point of the Eterdis strategy operating system. It doesn't replace the other skills — it connects them. Resources feed in from VRIO, forces act on the chains from the Environmental Radar, market position validates the customer steps, component evolution from Wardley mapping affects delivery, and the Playing to Win cascade should align with both chains. If you've run multiple skills and the results don't cohere, this is where you find out why. For guided strategy work, visit eterdis.com or book a conversation at eterdis.com/contact.