Customers
- Who uses your products or services?
- Who pays for them?
- Who has complained about you?
- Who loves what you do?
Facilitation method
Ecosystem Mapping
A bird’s-eye view of the interconnected world inside and around your business, drawn by the people who work in it.
You are here
Map key
- You are here
- Every team that touches the outcome, in one room
- The circle
- Your relationship ecosystem, inside and outside the business
- Time on the map
- About two hours, often followed by Open Space
- You leave with
- One shared map, the value that flows, the roadblocks, and a one-year picture
The trouble lives between the teams
Ecosystem mapping is a facilitated, visual way for a group to see every team, partner, and customer in its system, and how they relate to each other.
Ask any team how it improved this year and you will hear great answers. But improving one team in isolation often just shifts the problem somewhere else in the system. A lot of the opportunity sits in the space between teams.
An ecosystem map makes that space visible: who works with whom, what value moves between them, and where the relationships are strong, forming, or in conflict. Then when you make a change, you improve the whole system, not just one part of it.
How the map is made
Built one layer at a time
Draw the circle
“This circle represents your relationship ecosystem. To succeed, it needs to be healthy.”
Place every team, in silence
One person from each team puts its name on the map and moves it until it feels right. Two rules: no talking, and everyone makes at least one move. Who is at the heart? Who sits close, and who is far away?
Add who isn’t in the room
Customers, regulators, suppliers, competitors, partners, and the goals and major events that shape the year all go on the map too.
Draw the relationships
In breakouts, each team draws a line to every entity it works with: forming, average, strong, or in conflict.
Name what flows, and what blocks it
Sticky notes on each line show the value exchanged, like money, services, or information, and the top roadblocks to working together.
Draw it one year from now
Each team redraws its part of the map the way it would like it to be in a year, then presents it to the room.
Legend
Read the lines
Every relationship on the map gets one of four lines. Teams agree which one fits, out loud.
Forming
Dotted. A relationship that is new, occasional, or still finding its shape.
Average
Solid. Steady and working, without much to celebrate or worry about.
Strong
Double. Trust, frequent contact, and value moving both ways.
Conflict
Jagged. Friction, competing goals, or a history the group needs to talk about.
Along each line, what flows
- Money
- Goods and services
- Information
- Decisions
- Referrals
Roadblocks
The top things getting in the way of working together, written on the line where they happen.
The edge of the map
Don’t leave them off the map
The people who aren’t in the room still shape the system. Before anyone draws a line, we ask who else belongs on the map.
The outside world
- Who regulates you?
- Who delivers the experience?
- Who represents your brand?
- Who competes with you?
Forces on the map
- Which goals pull the system?
- Which major events are coming?
Field notes
A real map from the room
The circle
The edge of the relationship ecosystem the group agreed to look at.
Dashed lines
Relationships still forming, often between business lines that rarely work together.
Double lines
The strongest relationships on the map.
Pink notes
Roadblocks to collaboration, written straight onto the map.
Outside the circle
Regulators, communities, and industry players who were not in the room but shape the work.
The last layer
Today, and one year from now
An illustrative example. Each team draws its own.
Where the map led
From one map to an afternoon of action
Business development professionals from four business lines at a national environmental services provider spent the first half of the day mapping their shared ecosystem: municipal services, industrial water treatment, chemicals, and hazardous waste. The map surfaced overlapping mandates, gaps, and places to connect. In the afternoon, those opportunities became the topics for Open Space.
Read the case study- Net Promoter Score
- 44
- Average experience rating
- 8.4/10
Check the terrain
When ecosystem mapping fits
Good terrain
- Several teams or organizations affect the outcome
- Dependencies and handoffs are poorly understood
- People use different language for the same system
- The group needs to find leverage points and relationship work
- Someone will keep the map current as new evidence arrives
Rough terrain
- A precise technical, legal, financial, clinical, or safety model is required
- Key affected groups cannot take part and their absence would be hidden
- The sponsor wants the map to validate a reorganization already decided
- Sensitive identities or relationships cannot be protected
- No one will own testing the assumptions after the workshop
The map is not the territory.
A facilitated ecosystem map records the group’s current view of its system. It can leave people out, reflect who holds power in the room, or mix perception with fact. That’s why we treat it as a starting point for better questions. Material technical, financial, legal, clinical, safety, environmental, or Indigenous-rights decisions need the relevant evidence and qualified authorities, beyond the workshop map.
Sample agenda
The route for the day
A full day that pairs ecosystem mapping with Open Space. We shape the stops, timing, and breaks with you.
- Mapping line
- Open Space line
- 9:00Welcome and purpose for the day
- 9:10Warm-up in pairs: “The conversation we need to have today is…”
- 9:25Each team shares its world in a few minutes
- 10:50Draw the circle and place every team, in silence
- 11:10Add who isn’t in the room
- 11:25Breakouts: lines, value, and roadblocks
- 12:00Lunch
- 12:45Teams present and draw one year from now
- 1:25Open Space marketplace: topics from the map
- 1:55Three rounds of participant-led sessions
- 3:35Harvest and next steps
Folded up and taken home
What you’ll leave with
The map itself
Photographed and written up, so it lives on after the whiteboard is wiped.
A shared language
Forming, average, strong, conflict. Four words teams keep using long after the day.
Value and roadblocks, named
What each relationship gives and gets, and what is getting in the way.
A one-year picture
How each team wants its corner of the system to look by next year.
Opportunities to act on
The gaps and overlaps worth a conversation, ready to become next steps.
Next destinations
Where the map can take you
A map shows you where the opportunities are. These methods help the group act on them.
Questions we often hear
How long does ecosystem mapping take?
The mapping itself takes about two hours, including time for every team to present. We often pair it with Open Space in the afternoon, so the opportunities on the map turn into conversations and next steps the same day.
Who should be in the room?
At least one person from every team or business line that touches the outcome. People who can’t attend still go on the map: customers, regulators, partners, and anyone else the system depends on.
How is this different from an org chart or a stakeholder map?
An org chart shows who reports to whom. A stakeholder map usually puts one organization in the middle. An ecosystem map shows how everyone relates to everyone else, what value moves between them, and where the relationships are strong, forming, or in conflict.
Where does the method come from?
It comes from Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC), a toolkit for improving how relationships work across a system. Our facilitators hold the ORSCC credential.
What happens to the map afterward?
We photograph it and include it in a summary report. The most useful next step is to pick a few relationships or roadblocks to work on, give each one an owner, and look at the map again once you have new evidence.
Let’s draw your map
Tell us which teams, partners, and customers make up your system. We’ll help you design the session and decide what the map should help the group act on.
Book a discovery call