Steps to unlocking real value in your business

He treats an ecosystem as a specific alignment of many stakeholders who all need to work together for a singular purpose.

The purpose involves generating value that shows up in the real world through impact and/or profit in the pockets of shareholders.

That mental shift in how to view ecosystems matters. It moves the focus from who is connected to whom to instead what activities must be lined up, in what order should they be, and with which handoffs so that customers receive the benefit intended.

Viewing ecosystems through this lens is simple and very practical. Start off with your value proposition. Then list all your activities that must happen so that the promise to customers becomes real.

Next, identify the internal stakeholders who will do those specific activities. Mark their positions in the process maps and flow charts.

In so doing, map the links where information, materials, money, or influence must move between them.

When you as an entrepreneur or leader do this, you can see whether internal stakeholders and partners are merely present or actually aligned. Being present is easy.

Attending meetings or committees is easy, but often does not add value. Alignment, on the other hand, is the hard part that makes or breaks the outcome of most organisations.

Ron Adner points out that true ecosystems become multilateral. Firms do not exist merely as many separate one-to-one relationships between individuals that is difficult to manage in isolation.

A change in one part of an ecosystem can quietly and quickly undo agreements somewhere else. That is why managers frequently get surprised when a plan looks solid in each bilateral contract yet still stalls out in the field with the clients. The hidden cause is misalignment across the whole chain of activities within an ecosystem.

In as much, two practical risks show up often. The first involves co-innovation risk, which is when an internal stakeholder or partner may want to help but still needs time, tools, or talent to deliver their part. Then the second incorporates adoption chain risk.

An internal stakeholder or partner can deliver but may not see enough selfish benefit to make your priority match with their priorities.

A good ecosystem strategy specifically and overtly names such priority alignment risks early and then budgets time and support to reduce them. Think about your current role. How often does such a discussion occur in your management meetings?

Roles also greatly matter. Every firm needs its own ecosystem strategy that says exactly how it will approach internal stakeholder and partner alignment and secure its place in the system.

Sometimes you lead and set the sequence and rules while other times you follow a credible lead and win by moving fast inside a clear plan. Either way, success depends on willing followership across the stakeholders and partners that sit off your direct path to the customer.

While critical individuals may not report to you, yet their choices decide whether your customer promise lands or fails.
Such an ecosystem view is different from platforms, supply chains, or simple networks.

Platforms only focus on access and governance around a hub, while supply chains focus on reliable bilateral flow, and network maps focus on who is tied to whom.

The ecosystem as a structure view focuses on the activity blueprint that creates value, across many parties, where no single hub controls all the organisation’s moves. It is a complement to classic competitive strategy and corporate strategy.

Where competitive strategy hunts for advantage, ecosystem strategy hunts for alignment and is tragically left out of most strategy documents and planning.

Here is how our leadership teams in Kenya can put ecosystem ideas to work. First, write the value promised to customers in one clear sentence that a customer would recognise and find pleasing.

Read: Why success favours the seemingly more competent

Second, sketch the activity map mentioned above from left to right. List the individuals and departments who must act, including those who are not your suppliers or buyers but still gatekeep the outcomes.

Third, highlight and mark the fragile links where a yes from one party depends on a yes from another party. Those are your organisation’s adoption chain risks.

Fourth, name the role you will play and who must follow you on down the chain. If leadership is unclear, then convene a short alignment session that sets sequence, responsibilities, and proof points for each party.

Then thereafter manage the work within the ecosystem with objective realism. Fund the stakeholder and partner tasks that unlock the next gate, not just your own tasks.

Share simple dashboards that show progress on joint activities across multiple individuals and department, not only your own internal milestones on the dashboard.

Then stage launches so that the pieces that rely on outside adoption come online only after downstream readiness is real and not just assumed will be there like how many entrepreneurs optimistically think.

Reward your team for moving external partners into position within the ecosystem, not only for building internal features.

In summary, the payoff for ecosystem thinking involves fewer ugly surprises and faster time to get real impactful work moving.

When you treat the ecosystem as a structure to align and not just a community to sit back and count, then you see the work that actually creates value for your customers. You give your teams a plan that matches how the world outside your walls really works.

Have a management or leadership issue, question, or challenge? Reach out to Dr. Scott through @ScottProfessor on Twitter or on email [email protected].