‘When a Butterfly Flaps its Wings…’
Ecosystems, impacts, and the ripple effect of change
We’ve all been there.
Your organization needs to change.
You have an incredible strategy: detailed timeline, solid comms plan, a business case with exciting value projections.
You plan, you iterate, you drive to a successful launch – but something’s missing. Something fell through the cracks:
People are unhappy
Processes are caught between old and new
Financial impact doesn’t quite match projected value
What happened? Chances are, you accidentally left people behind. You forgot about the butterfly effect of change.
It’s not enough to just listen to your stakeholders: the sponsors, drivers, and end users directly involved in change. For a change to succeed, you also have to engage your broader ecosystem: the hidden web of interdependent people and processes directly and indirectly impacted by change.
Zooming Out
We use the term ‘ecosystem’ intentionally. It means something different than ‘sponsors’ or ‘stakeholders.’
In our experience, ‘stakeholders’ are siloed and independent. Members of an ecosystem, on the other hand, are connected within a shared change network, intertwined via overlapping workstreams, and united behind a collective investment in the future state.
Why is it important to explore your change from an ecosystem point of view?
At TSI, we find it’s useful to use the following analogy:
Imagine that your local high school begins the day at 7:30 A.M. Concerned that their children aren’t getting enough rest, a group of parents petition the school board to move the start time back by one hour.
That sounds like an easy change, and it benefits everyone involved:
End users (students and teachers) get an extra hour of sleep
Sponsors (parents) feel their children are learning in a healthier way
Designers (school board members) can help build a better education system
But that’s only one slice of the pie – that’s just the stakeholder view of the change.
When you zoom out to the ecosystem view, you realize that the local high school doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are hidden links between it and the surrounding community, and pushing the start of school back by just one hour would have a considerable trickle-down effect on the entire high school ecosystem.
Before school: bus drivers would have to change their schedules, and commuters would experience an increase in traffic and travel time
During school: cafeteria workers would have to change their meal prep routine, and janitors would begin and end their shifts later in the day
After school: students with jobs would have different availability, and students who take care of younger siblings might have to make new arrangements
This is just a sampling of the hidden impacts, but the point is clear: no change happens in a vacuum. Even the smallest change - the smallest flap of the butterfly’s wing - can cause a ripple effect downstream.
Everything changes something.
That’s not to say change leaders are responsible for solving every single ripple effect a change causes. They can’t be – nothing would get done. But you can see how important it is to know about the ripple effects, understand their impact, and decide how to address them.
Without a strong understanding of the hidden dependencies within and around a high school, a school board could implement a well-intentioned, human-centered change – and it still could go disastrously wrong for so many people and processes.
The same is true for you. But with an ecosystem view, you can approach your change with a much more nuanced understanding of what’s at stake. You’ll craft better messaging, cultivate a more empathetic engagement plan, and ultimately drive more successful and sustained outcomes.
Discovering Your Ecosystem
So how do you zoom out? How can you make sure you don’t leave people behind? Every change is unique, and every ecosystem is unique - there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to discovering and engaging the people involved in your change. That said, after 20+ years designing and delivering human-centered strategies, we’ve pinpointed a few best practices.
Build time for ecosystem exploration
You don’t know what you don’t know. Learning about an ecosystem isn’t something you can do in a day – you need time to ask questions, follow unexpected insights, and discover the network of dependencies link by link. Allotting specific time in the roadmap for ecosystem discovery and analysis will give you the space you need to understand the full breadth of who is impacted by your change.
Tap into the cycle of ecosystem and impacts
Change doesn’t happen without people. Even in the most technical and process-oriented projects, they are always involved in and affected by change. So if you know what is changing, you can think about who is experiencing it. Follow the trail of shifting processes, operations, handoffs, data point journeys, etc. All the people you meet along the way? They’re part of your ecosystem.
Visualize your ecosystem
An Excel spreadsheet or contact sheet is a fine way to document who’s involved in a change. But as far as generating insights and deeper understanding, you might need something more innovative than a long list of names. Plotting your ecosystem on different views (affinity clusters, influence/interest matrices, community maps, etc.) will help you visualize connections in new ways, create shared understanding among your design team, and make sense of complex networks and relationships.
Include ecosystem early and often
Once you have a sense for who is in your ecosystem and how they are related, you can begin to engage them. Ideally, you’d start talking to people even before the change is officially decided – to get a sense of what the ecosystem believes should change. If that’s not possible, you can still benefit from engaging your impacted people throughout change design and delivery. No matter when you bring them in, it’s important to remember that 'engage' is a verb, and it means more than sending an email. The most successful change is co-created – sponsors, designers, end users, and ecosystems doing their part to design and deliver sustained outcomes.
Without a robust understanding of your ecosystem, you will overlook vital partnerships, misunderstand critical impacts, and omit essential elements from your change journey.
But an ecosystem view gives you the ability to think differently. With it, you can expand your view of who is involved in change, draw new insights about how to communicate and engage, and shape the experiences of those deeply impacted by change.
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We use school start time as a metaphor to explore ecosystems and impacts. How do you make sure you’re capturing everyone in change? Let us know in the comments below.