SOSX®, AI-enabled systems thinking, for any sector.
The SOSX book series
A Map of Your Own
Systems thinking for mentoring, coaching and career growth
Written for people who want to grow, the mentors and coaches who help them, and the HR development leads who support both. It accompanies SOSX Mentor.
The newest book in the series, in preparation for release.
The companion to Seeing the Whole System for a working life. It starts from a simple observation: a good mentoring conversation can change a career, and what it rarely leaves behind is anything the person can carry. The book's answer is a map, with the person at the centre and everything they carry, the people around them and the openings ahead drawn around them.
Part I reads a career as a system rather than a ladder: skills as stocks that practice fills and disuse slowly drains, the people who open doors, the loops that make growth compound and the ones that stall it. Part II is the practice, and all of it runs on a sheet of paper: the first map, evidence graded by what supports it rather than by who judges it, opportunities traced to their sources, gaps attached to the openings that need them, pathways compared criterion by criterion without a score, a ninety-day plan built from the map, and a diagnostic that points at the structure of a stall, never at the person. Part III is the machine, SOSX Mentor, and it comes last for the same reason it does everywhere else in this series.
It is written for people who want to grow, for the mentors and coaches who help them, and for the HR development leads who support both. Its worked example is Alex, an invented composite. It stands on its own; you do not need the central book first, though the two are better together.
Inside the book
Part I, The career as a system
Chapters 1–7. A career is a system, not a ladder; what you carry, as stocks and the flows that fill and drain them; the people around you; the loops that make growth compound and stall; what sits below the surface; learning from experience; and a long, many-stage working life.
Part II, The practice
Chapters 8–19, all of it doable with a sheet of paper. The first map with the person at the centre; evidence in your own words, graded in four rungs; opportunities from four sources; gaps drawn as gaps; pathways ranked without a score; the ninety-day plan and its commitments; where am I stuck?; watching growth over time; the mentor's session with a map; development for HR, coaches and recruiters; mapping without a mentor; and relationships on purpose.
Part III, The machine
Chapters 20–22. SOSX Mentor, the map carried by a machine: proposals from session notes that the person approves one at a time; outputs computed from the one map and worded, not decided, by the AI; a map the person owns and takes with them; and the lines it holds, development only and never judgement.
Part IV, One spine, many domains
Chapter 23. The same discipline in engineering, story worlds, research, business, investment, utilities and the circular economy, closing with an invitation: bring us a real map.
Plus a glossary and further reading in the appendices.
From the series’ shared figure library, the same illustrations you’ll find in the book.
And for the whole argument in one place, start with the central book: SOSX: Seeing the Whole System.