Wardley maps - medicine with side effects?

Pharmakon - simultaneously presenting remedy (promise), poison (challenges) and a scapegoat.

When using Wardley maps to challenge assumptions would it be useful to borrow from the concept of pharmakon and think about maps as medicine with side effects?

A side effect can be therapeutic or adverse but is secondary to the one intended.

A Wardley map can reveal all sorts; waste, duplication, lack of awareness, etc. Depending on your position within an organisation and your mindset, you may experience a mixture of emotions upon these discoveries; relief, joy, embarrassment, shame, …

All these side effects can be channelled and defused through the map - the scapegoat.

So, mapping is a form of medicine with side effects. Any thoughts?

There are side effects, and they are not always positive.

What if you are dealing with inertia and you want to sell part of your organisation? What if you realise there is no air in the future for your organisation, and that you can only extract value?
What if you miss something that is not on your map, but will affect your business (climate change?). Maps can give you a false sense of security.

I agree mapping isn’t a panacea. Likewise, there are no guarantees in medicine.

Placebos and snake oil sellers aside, there has to be a certain amount of trust in a team and its capabilities. We must first acknowledge we are unwell, possibly terminally ill. The treatment we are prescribed may be ineffective or have serious side effects.

The analogy mapping is a form of medicine with side effects is about saying we should at least try. Survival is the main priority. We should instead learn to live with the side effects no matter how unevenly distributed the emotional impact is across a team and organisation.

The wise map user is thus a skeptic, ever wary of confusing or misleading distortions conceived by ignorant or diabolical map authors.
Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps