From map to scenario: what happens if you push somewhere

2026-07-17

A theme map answers the question: what is this actually about, according to the group itself. That is a lot, but it is not an answer to the next question: if we do something here, what happens further along?

For that you need to add something the map does not contain, namely direction.

What a map does not know

On a map two themes lie next to each other because participants often sorted them together. That means: they belong together in the group's experience. It does not mean that one causes the other, and certainly not which way that influence runs.

That distinction between association and cause is continually skipped in practice, with decisions built on sand as the result.

Having direction indicated

The solution is to ask the group explicitly. For each pair of themes: does one influence the other, and how strongly? Participants fill this in as a matrix. Where the group agrees on a relationship, a strong arrow appears; where opinions are divided, a weak one.

What you end up with is a network of influences, made by the people who know the system from the inside.

A map says what is at play. A network says what carries through.

Running it forward

With such a network you can do something a map cannot: follow an assumption through. Raise one theme and see where that effect lands. This technique comes from fuzzy cognitive mapping, in which effects travel step by step through the network until the picture stabilises.

The outcome is often counter-intuitive. The theme with the highest score is not always the theme with the most reach; sometimes the point of leverage sits with something more modest that happens to have many outgoing connections.

What it is not

This is not a prediction. The model computes what the group believes is connected, not what happens in reality. If the group is mistaken, the model is mistaken with it.

The value therefore lies elsewhere: it makes the group's assumptions explicit and testable. A scenario that looks illogical leads to the question of which assumption is wrong there, and that is exactly the conversation you want to have.

Such scenarios are part of the full version; what that involves is set out under Pricing.

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