Shitty Maps: The Trojan Horse for Real-Time Sensemaking

Teams talk. A lot. But talk stays invisible—floating, shapeless, misaligned. There’s always this gap between the conversation happening and the shared understanding emerging. Someone has to reconstruct what was actually meant, usually much later, often getting it wrong.

What if the conversation itself could build structure in real-time?

Shitty maps are deliberately ordinary visual tools—six shapes (circle, rectangle, triangle, star, line, arrow) that anyone can draw in 90 seconds. They’re the ultimate Trojan horse: because they take so little time, you don’t need to ask permission. You can frame it as just gaining personal clarity—“is this what you mean?”—but suddenly everyone’s leaning in. The invisible becomes visible. Misalignment surfaces immediately. Understanding builds.

Then they ask for more of whatever that was.

They’re rough enough that everyone feels they can contribute. Fast enough that they don’t interrupt flow. Visual enough that the structure everyone’s been talking around finally becomes something you can point at, test, and navigate together.

This isn’t about making better diagrams after meetings. It’s about changing how teams think together during them.