The Map Is Not the Territory
"The map is not the territory" is one of those phrases that sounds obvious until one tries to live by it. Nobody confuses a paper map with the landscape it describes. Yet in subtler forms, the confusion is everywhere: we routinely mistake our descriptions of the world for the world itself, and then are surprised when the world refuses to cooperate.
Every useful map is useful precisely because it leaves things out. A subway map that showed every curve of every tunnel would be accurate and useless; its value lies in its ruthless simplification. The same is true of the mental and statistical models we rely on. A budget, a job description, a medical guideline or an economic forecast each captures a few features of reality and ignores the rest. The danger arises not from the simplification, which is unavoidable, but from forgetting that it has taken place.
Consider the familiar case of targets. An organisation wishing to improve a hospital measures waiting times and rewards departments that reduce them. Before long, waiting times fall, but partly because patients are reclassified, or because the clock starts later than it used to. The number, which was meant to describe the territory, has become a territory of its own, to be managed for its own sake.
The remedy is not to abandon maps. Without them, we would be overwhelmed by detail and unable to act at all. The remedy is a certain habit of attention: periodically stepping away from the model to look directly at the thing it represents. A manager who reads reports should also walk the floor; a policymaker who studies indicators should also listen to the people those indicators count.
Maps are among the most powerful tools we have. But their power depends on our remembering, especially when they are most convincing, that they were drawn by someone, for some purpose, and that the land itself may have changed since.