Over the last two years, I have been to The Wave water park in Coventry more times than any grown man probably should admit. My excuse is that my 7 year old loves it. My reality is that I love it.
It started as a family day out. Now, it is something closer to a tactical mission, a ballet, and an exercise in useless smugness.
The first time you go to a water park, it is chaos. Where is everything? How do you get around? Why are there so many people here? Everyone seems to act like the water in the slides – sloshing and sputtering about. The kids love it, the adults are pretending they are not queuing for a plastic tube like it is the last helicopter out of Saigon. You wander. You hesitate. You join the wrong line.
Repetition breeds familiarity
The second time is better.
By the third or fourth visit, something changes. You begin to see patterns.
Which slides fill up first. Which staircases bottleneck. Which ride looks terrifying but moves quickly. Which one looks gentle but eats half your morning. You start to notice the flow of bodies like a river finding its natural course.
Fluid dynamics is not just about water. It is about movement through constraint.
Crowds behave in ways that are surprisingly predictable. They accelerate towards perceived scarcity. They clog at narrow points. They avoid what looks risky. They follow each other blindly even when a better path sits five metres away.
On my most recent visit, I realised I now have The Wave mapped perfectly. I had entered… The Matrix!
I am Neo. I am The One
The first 20 minutes are a ballet.
We move left, not right. We climb the outer stairs, not the obvious ones. We hit the high-thrill slides first while everyone else is still negotiating lockers. We avoid the lazy river until the mid-morning lull. We do not hesitate. We do not debate.
By minute 20, we are five slides down, and floating in the lazy river just like we planned.
Every major slide completed. No queues worth mentioning. Energy intact. The rest of the session becomes leisure rather than logistics. As Jay from The Inbetweeners would say “Completed it, Mate.”
I am the problem
This is, objectively, ridiculous.
There is something faintly tragic about a man treating a water park like a military campaign, or as the one true saviour of a 90s film. I am aware I might be removing a sliver of the chaos that makes it magical. There is a joy in wandering. In getting it wrong. In queuing with everyone else and rolling your eyes together.
But I would be lying if I said I do not enjoy the smug satisfaction of having a competitive edge.
I like knowing that while others are still stuck on the third staircase, we are already drifting under artificial palm trees, mission accomplished. This is wrong. I know it’s wrong.
This is exactly how I approach businesses. At least there I make money, or help charities, or change the world… just a little bit.
The Lesson.
Most organisations operate like first-time visitors to a water park. They react. They queue where everyone else queues. They add new slides without understanding the staircases. They optimise individual slides without noticing the overall flow.
They experience friction as fate.
Why Business Planning Matters
Business mapping is the act of standing still long enough to see the currents.
Where decisions actually get made. Where authority bottlenecks. Where energy pools. Where customers hesitate. Where teams double back because no one designed the route properly.
Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
You stop treating problems as isolated. You see that the long queue is not because the slide is popular. It is because the stairs are too narrow. You see that the team is not lazy. They are congested. You see that growth is not stalled. It is misrouted.
Fluid dynamics again.
In any system, whether it is water or people, pressure builds where flow is constrained. If you widen the channel, everything moves more easily. If you remove unnecessary turns, momentum increases. If you create clarity at the top, the rest settles naturally. But then you create a drop slide and everyone goes too fast. Mapping is not about removing all the obstacles, it’s about understanding the scenario.
Mapping is seeing, not controlling
Mapping is not about control for its own sake.
It is about removing wasted motion.
Yes, there is a risk that I bring a little too much diligence into places meant for play. I am the man who can see a process in a queue for ice cream. I know this about myself.
But in business, that instinct is not a flaw. It is an advantage.
Because most companies are still wandering around in towels, arguing about which slide to do next, while their competitors are already in the lazy river.
Mapping does not kill the fun.
It earns it.
At The Wave, the reward for early discipline is hours of drifting.
In business, the reward for early clarity is freedom. Freedom to innovate. Freedom to grow. Freedom to make bold decisions without tripping over your own infrastructure.
The competitive edge is not about speed.
It is about sequence.
Do the right things in the right order, and the system carries you.
Get it wrong, and you spend your morning climbing stairs.
I know which one I prefer.
