Changeworker Resource

The Ecosystem Map

A proven framework to help your team or stakeholders see beyond the obvious.

This tool is a helpful starting point to better understand the system you are looking at, as well as how the Rules that govern it, the Relationships that define it and the way Resources move through it affect the results it produces.This template will be your ally.

Get now for free or upgraded

Get a better overview over the actors within your ecosystem, affected by or involved in the issue you care about, and how they interact. Gain insights or ideas about who to speak to next, how to collaborate, or even what actions to take to contribute to positive change.

For those who want to go deeper, to understand the key elements of the system you’re seeking to know better and potentially intervene in, the ecosystem mapping tool is a good entry point.

After applying the Ecosystem Map, you will:

Deepen your ecosystem awareness and find possible leverage points
Realise which roles, relationships, rules and so on determine how a system functions
Makes things that may have been invisible or hard to see part of the collective domain and enable engagement with these ideas in a new way
Communicate your seeings and intentions, and situate your action in context with other actions and interventions

Start your Ecosystem Map Today

Use-case examples

Map the actors and relationships in a system you are seeking to understand better, as part of a personal sensemaking process, to inform your next steps and identify who to engage with

Use the map in a stakeholder gathering or Social Innovation Lab to make shared assumptions and mental models visible, and to open a collective conversation about how participants see the ecosystem

Situate your work within a broader context by mapping the actors, roles, and relationships that surround it, so you can communicate your intentions more clearly and identify potential collaborators or allies

"Mapping your ecosystem is an essential step to better understanding it, seeing key relationships (or lack thereof), and identifying possible leverage points. The editable map by Parayma made this process seamless, and the result looks good without us having to put additional effort into it!"

Silvano Lieger, Head of Public Affairs at Planted and Founder of Protein Transition Switzerland

“For people like me who find it difficult to start with a blank slate, the Parayma template really helps to get started, as it guides you through the necessary steps in a simple way so you don’t overthink and get to action. Also, you don’t have to worry about knowing about graphic design, since the template is very easy to use and leads to a beautiful, visual representation of your system.”

Andrea Esteve Pedró, Social Innovation Strategist

"The ecosystem mapping tool gave me a clear, shared picture of my design studio at a moment when we are rethinking our brand and structure. Laying out our actors, resources, rules, and results in one place made the invisible dynamics visible. The biggest advantage is how accessible it is: it turns complex systems thinking into something visual, practical, and immediately useful for strategic and design decisions."

Anna Denardin, decolonial designer & artist

The Ecosystem Map is a practice the systems leaders I know come back to time and time again

I have supported the City of Zürich in convening their stakeholders around the topic of sustainable building, and we mapped the ecosystem together. I have helped multiple sustainability networks in Austria apply it to see how they could collaborate better, and which higher level leverage points they could potentially address if they banded together. I have worked on hundreds of ecosystem maps, from very simple to incredibly sophisticated, with countless systems change leaders across topics and geographies. It never fails - a map done diligently, with sufficient depth, always reveals relevant insights and helps the group going through it together get on the same page. I am really looking forward to hearing what you do with it!

Download the Ecosystem Map Today!