Three maps: money, authority, who loses

Reconnaissance ends with three maps, and the order is fixed: where the money flows, how authority actually runs, and who loses. The order is not a formatting preference. Each map supplies the denominator for the next one, and drawing them out of order produces documents that look complete and predict nothing.

Map one: the money

Four things go on it: which budget line the money comes from, who approves against that line, what the ceiling is, and what happens when the ceiling is exceeded. Not "who has budget" — that question returns a name and nothing else. A project funded from a departmental operating line and a project funded from a transformation programme have completely different ceilings, and the ceiling decides whether the thing can grow after it works.

The interview route runs through finance, not the sponsor. Follow one invoice or one purchase order, for something comparable to what is being proposed, all the way through, and ask who signed at each threshold. It is dull work, and it is the only map that survives contact with procurement.

Map two: authority

Two layers. The formal layer is the reporting line; it is what goes into the project charter and the approval email. The real layer is the person who decides, and what their authority rests on — position, budget, technical veto, or the plain fact that nothing moves without them.

Draw the formal layer from documents and the real layer from three recent decisions. Ask two different people the same question — who decided this — and compare the answers. Where the answers diverge, the real layer is visible. Question one of the seven questions hands over the approver's name directly; the authority map is where that name gets a reason attached.

Map three: who loses

This is the only map that predicts feasibility, and the one most often skipped, because it is uncomfortable to ask and easy to answer vaguely. Each row is a post, not a department, and every row carries the same fields.

Field	Why it has to be there
Post	A department cannot lose anything; a person can
Hours currently spent	The size of the loss, before any argument about it
Whether it goes to zero	The difference between a change and an insult
Share of other duties	A post with plenty of other work can absorb the change; one whose job is almost entirely this cannot
Risk level	What the person can do: approve, delay, or quietly not use the system
Response action	What happens before go-live, not after

A deployment with a technically sound design and a loser who holds a veto is not feasible. A deployment with a loser whose affected hours go to zero but who has plenty of other work is survivable, provided the response action is designed early. The map converts resistance from a personality problem into a quantity, and quantities can be planned around.

It is also the input to change management rather than a risk register. The three groups that matter are supporters, influencers and the damaged. The damaged group needs an exit designed in advance, and the move is to turn a gatekeeper into a coach rather than to route around them. A gatekeeper who has been routed around is the person quietly not using the system in month three.

Why the third map decides feasibility

If the loser cannot be found, one of two things is true. Either the change is too small to matter, in which case the project has no reason to exist, or the described process is being shown instead of the executing one. Every project that changes how work is done takes something from someone. A map with no losers is not evidence of a harmonious organisation; it is evidence that the interviews stopped at the people who like the project.

This is where the three maps connect to the rest of reconnaissance. The who-loses list is drawn from question three and checked against questions five and seven. The money map is drawn from question one and checked against finance. The authority map is drawn from recent decisions and checked by the divergence between two accounts.

The order is not negotiable

Money, then authority, then who loses. "Who loses what" cannot be asked before knowing what the change is funded to do — the money map sets the size. Whether a loser can stop the project cannot be judged before knowing who can stop anything — the authority map sets the veto. Drawn in that order, every row of the third map has a denominator. Drawn first, it becomes a list of people who dislike change, which is everyone, which is no information.

What finished looks like

Three maps, and on the third at least one named post. Then the person in that row has been spoken to. If the third map has no name on it, reconnaissance is not nearly finished — it has not started, and the client has been reciting the version it tells itself.