The journey map is not the strategy
A journey map becomes strategy when it identifies the decisions that move an audience and tells the commercial system what to do next.
Teams inherit touchpoints the way cities inherit roads — one launch at a time, each rational on its own map, none of them agreeing on where the city is going.
A journey map can inventory that mess. It cannot invent the spine.
When the work starts with stages and channels, you get a diagram that flatters the org chart. When it starts with the engagement frame — who we move, what we own in market, what we refuse to measure — the map becomes evidence that the strategy was written, not a substitute for it.
That distinction is the difference between CX theater and CX strategy.