Leverage Maps: Mental Models For Making Systems Move

Preface

This book grew out of two threads: lessons from navigating my own career challenges and my background in systems engineering. Along the way, I also drew inspiration from works like The Software Engineer’s Guidebook, The Staff Engineer’s Path, and An Elegant Puzzle. While I started reading self improvement books in high school, it wasn’t until my time at Sparx Engineering that I started reading more blog posts and career advice writings tailored for software engineers.

During my career as a software engineer across blockchain, embedded, consulting, and aerospace work, I started to see patterns that I had missed before: hidden feedback loops, invisible scaffolds, quiet levers of trust and influence. These patterns started to come into focus when I stepped back for a sabbatical in June 2025.

This book is a collection of those patterns. Though many insights come from personal experience, it isn’t a memoire. It’s a tactical handbook meant to help you see and shift the systems around you. It’s for engineers, managers, builders, and independent thinkers. If you’ve felt the drag of misalignment, the exhaustion of invisible work, or the frustration of being the ‘glue’ that holds everything together, this book is for you. It’s for those that want to lift themselves and others up.

Each chapter is meant to stand alone. Start with whatever chapter sounds most relevant to you, or read it from start to finish to see the arc from personal to organizational to career focus. Each chapter ends with a summary with actionable suggestions for you to make the most out of this book as someone that can help improve the systems around them.

Systems are everywhere, whether we name them or not. Once you see the patterns clearly, you can move them.

That’s leverage.

Cheers, Gilberto Guadiana