“The Map is not the Territory” — Alfred Korzybski
For generations, the German village of Mödlareuth lived as one.
A narrow brook — the Tannbach — trickled through its centre, technically dividing Bavaria from Thuringia. But for the people who called it home, it was simply a stream. They crossed it daily to attend school, share meals, marry neighbours, and bury their dead. The border existed on the map — but not in their minds. Then came the end of World War II.
Bavaria fell under American control and Thuringia under Soviet rule. By 1966, a concrete wall, lined with floodlights and watchtowers, carved the village in two. Mödlareuth became known as “Little Berlin” a symbol of the divide between East and West.
The people hadn’t changed. The stream hadn’t changed. But the map had changed and that changed everything.
The lived reality of community was fractured by a line imposed from a distance and drawn with strategic intent, but without regard for the territory it bisected. This is what happens when strategy is shaped too far from the ground.
And yet, just over two decades later, that same wall would fall. Mödlareuth would reunite — not through redrawn lines, but through changed conditions. And with the wall’s collapse came not just reunified villages, but unexpected openings in the territory itself.
One of them lay just two hours northwest, in a place few strategists had marked on their corporate maps: Eisenach. And there, General Motors would discover what happens when the ground rewrites the plan.
Eisenach: When the Ground Rewrites the Plan
“The words on paper may not have changed, but the strategy of GM did.” — Joseph Bower
Just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, General Motors faced a decision. From its headquarters in Detroit and Zurich, the global map dictated that new factories should be built in low-wage countries like Spain. East Germany — with its crumbling infrastructure and political uncertainty — wasn’t even on the radar.
When Louis R. Hughes, head of Opel, GM’s German subsidiary, was asked for a strategic plan for East Germany, he broke away from the prescribed corporate map. That map carried all the usual assumptions — same systems, same biases.
Hughes commissioned new market research focused on recent East German emigrés. Armed with insight into what the market actually wanted, he began negotiating directly with local officials. He built a fresh distribution network by mobilising independent entrepreneurs — many of whom ran auto repair shops that hadn’t seen a new car under their roof in decades. They loved the idea of becoming distributors.
With that foundation in place, Hughes launched local television campaigns. Most controversially, he ignored corporate guidance and pushed forward with plans to revitalise the struggling Eisenach plant. There was no “Eisenach option” on GM’s strategic roadmap — until Hughes created one.
HQ resisted the move, but Hughes’ boss, Jack Smith, backed him — and overruled the criticism.
By October 1990, just three days after reunification, Chancellor Helmut Kohl was driving the first new Opel off the Eisenach line. GM’s formal strategy hadn’t changed. But the allocation of resources had.
And that changed everything.
Just as Hughes chose to act locally and redraw the map, sometimes a company stumbles upon a treasure map of sorts — a moment of opportunity hiding in plain sight. That was also the case in another story Joe Bower shared.
Timken: When a Tactical Move Becomes a Strategic Pivot
In 1995, The Timken Company — a heavyweight in premium industrial bearings — made what looked like a minor move: it acquired a small plant in Poland. The rationale was tactical. The acquisition blocked a competitor (SKF), added much-needed capacity, and offered a modest entry into Eastern Europe.
But what began as a sideline decision quietly rewired the company’s strategic logic.
The Polish facility operated with a different manufacturing process — less premium, but cheaper and efficient. Local Timken managers, under pressure to utilise capacity and meet local targets, began selling output to mid-market customers like Peugeot. It was not part of the plan. In fact, it directly contradicted corporate guidance.
But it worked. And once it worked, Timken had a choice: enforce the map or follow the ground. They followed the ground.
Headquarters adapted, post rationalized and now the company:
Accepted ISO 9000 standards for broader market access
Launched a second-tier brand to serve mainstream carmakers
Shifted from a high-end, product-differentiation strategy to a cost-competitive, dual-brand approach
Moved from a locally responsive manufacturing model to global integration
And eventually partnered with international competitors like Japan’s NSK
A small acquisition, made for conventional reasons, ended up redirecting Timken’s strategic centre of gravity. What was intended as protection became transformation.
Like GM in Eisenach, the original map didn’t call for this. But the allocation of resources rewrote the story.
What Strategy Really Looks Like
This is the heart of Bower’s insight: Strategy is not what we declare — it’s what we do. It’s what we fund. What we protect. What we tolerate. What we enable.
In one example, a corporate comptroller discovered that a factory had been quietly built without central approval — hundreds of small work orders used to circumvent the capital budgeting process. The division believed the business needed it, even if HQ didn’t.
In another, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, naval commanders forced a Russian sub to surface — against the Secretary of Defense’s orders — because it was the right call on the ground.
In both cases, the people closest to reality overrode the formal directive — and in doing so, redirected strategy.
The structure of resource allocation reveals what an organisation truly values. Not what’s printed in the vision statement — but what gets acted upon.
As the saying goes:
“Your values aren’t what’s written on the walls, they’re what lives in the halls.”
The same is true for strategy.
Strategy is not what you write, it’s what you walk.
We launch our brand new series on The Resource Allocation Process, with strategy legend Joe Bower.
Also huge thanks to our new sponsor of The Innovation Show Kyndryl
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The Map Is Not the Territory: The Real Shape of Strategy was originally published in The Thursday Thought on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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