Mitch Joel’s “Three Little Pigs” (TLP): A Metaphor for Kaplan & Norton’s Strategy Map

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Mitch Joel’s Three Little Pigs (TLP)

“If the Big Bad Wolf of business is disruption — then your house of straw, your house of sticks, your house of bricks … they each represent how you respond. To survive, you can’t just build the straw or the sticks. You need the bricks.” — Mitch Joel (Italics added)

If the “big bad wolf” symbolizes disruption, then the Three Little Pigs are three business responses you need to cover to survive and thrive:

• Pig 1 — Transform: internal change. Make transformation an inside-out function: rethink organizational structure, culture and capabilities so you can meet customers where they are. (Think: change how you operate, not just what you sell.)
• Pig 2 — Innovate: build products, services or experiences that actually connect with people — new tools, features or touchpoints that create fresh ways to engage.
• Pig 3 — Transact: rework how you enable commerce and conversion — the channels, payment flows, and customer journeys that let people buy or interact on their terms.

Why he uses the tale: the fairy tale makes the point visceral: if you only build a “straw” or “stick” strategy (only one of Transform, Innovate, Transact), the wolf (Disruption) will blow you down. You need all three to be resilient.

Pig 1 — Transform: the “inside-out” house-building

• Build capability and culture first. Don’t only redesign products; change how the organisation thinks, decides and moves.
• Focus on skills, structure and processes that let you adapt: cross-functional teams, fast decision loops, data fluency, and an experimentation mindset.
• Make customer context part of every change: measure real customer behaviour (not just surveys) and let that guide priorities.
• Concrete early wins: align one existing team to run a rapid experiment (2–4 week sprint), hire/rotate a digital product lead into a legacy unit, or map your customer journey and remove the top 3 friction points.
• Useful KPIs: time-to-decision, % of revenue from products launched in last 18 months, experiment velocity (number of tested hypotheses per quarter), and Net Promoter Score or task completion rates for key journeys.

Pig 2 — Innovate: Build the house of sticks

“Once you’ve begun transforming internally, you need to create things that people actually want. Innovation isn’t about chasing shiny objects; it’s about connecting better with customers.” — Mitch Joel

Innovation is building new ways for people to engage with your brand, products, or services. It’s the “what we make and how it connects” layer between transformation (internal) and transaction (external).

1. Experiment at the edges – Pilot emerging technologies, formats, and experiences (AR, personalization, voice, AI tools) to see what actually enhances value.
2. Design for emotion – Innovate not only for efficiency, but for meaning: create products, campaigns, or digital experiences that make people feel something.
3. Bridge physical + digital – Mitch calls this “the connected experience.” Every interaction, online or offline, should feel continuous.
4. Iterate fast, retire faster – The wolf (disruption) gets through the “stick house” if you can’t evolve quickly. Kill what doesn’t work early.

Pig 3 — Transact: Build the Brick House

Transformation builds the foundation (Pig 1). Innovation builds the structure that attracts and connects people (Pig 2). But the house of sticks still isn’t enough — unless you tie it to real customer action through Transact (Pig 3 — a house of bricks).

“Transformation and innovation don’t mean much if you can’t enable people to act — to buy, to subscribe, to connect. The strongest companies make it effortless for customers to say ‘yes.’” — Mitch Joel

Transact is about removing friction between desire and action. It’s where all your internal change (Pig 1) and creative output (Pig 2) translate into measurable results — purchases, loyalty, advocacy, or community engagement.

Meet customers where they are.

• Build omnichannel experiences — physical, digital, social, voice, app — that feel unified.
• “The future of commerce is context,” he says: people transact in the environment they’re already in.

Simplify the path to action.

• One-click purchasing, mobile optimization, intuitive onboarding, instant checkouts.
• Fewer steps = more conversions.

Trust and transparency.

• Friction isn’t just usability; it’s emotional. People buy when they trust how their data, time, and values are treated.

Close the feedback loop.

• Every transaction should teach you something. Feed that data back into transformation (Pig 1) and innovation (Pig 2).

Mitch’s Metaphor

1. Pig 1 — Transformation = foundation (get your own house in order).
2. Pig 2 — Innovation = frame and design (what the world sees).
3. Pig 3 — Transaction = solid bricks that make the house stand against the wolf (disruption).

Kaplan & Norton’s Strategy Map

A good example of a Kaplan and Norton strategy map appears in Figure 1. The Parallelsapce Corporation Strategy Map applies the Kaplan and Norton Balanced Scorecard framework to align learning, processes, customers, and financial outcomes.

It begins with a foundation of Learning & Growth — focusing on research, training, people, and best practices—to build organizational capabilities.

These capabilities feed into Internal Processes such as analysis, external publishing, partnerships, CRM, and proof-of-concepts, which strengthen Customer Perspectives of knowledge and solution leadership through design excellence and process integrity.

Ultimately, this drives Financial Results across multiple revenue streams, including content, delivery, training, consulting, and both packaged and custom solutions.

The map emphasizes a cause-and-effect flow from people and process excellence to customer trust and financial growth.

Mapping “Three Little Pigs” (TLP) to Kaplan & Norton’s Strategy Map

Figure 2 is a color-coded layout aligning the TLP’s potential business responses of Transform, Innovate, and Transact with the Learning & Growth, Internal Process, Customer, and Financial perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard framework

The 4th Perspective, Learning & Growth (Cultural Foundation), is an extension of the Pig 1 — Transform response used for Perspective 3: Internal Processes.

Resources

• Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Morgan. Harvard Business Review Press. 2004.