Enterprise Ecosystems: Building the Vision Together

What is a Vision?

First, let’s be clear what we mean by vision. A vision for your enterprise ecosystem project is a clear articulation of the purpose and goals of the work you will do together. It’s not technology, it’s outcomes. “We’re going to use this CMS” is not a vision. “We will streamline our tools to enable collaboration, increase efficiency, and elevate the quality of our digital assets to improve the user experience and support our mission” is a vision.

In other words, it’s your product roadmap. It shows where you’re heading, how you’ll get there, and key stopping points along the way.

A useful roadmap must be:

• Aligned to institutional strategy
• Documented for clarity and shared understanding
• Regularly reviewed and reaffirmed throughout the project.

Above all, a vision must be shared. Collaboration and communications are vital to creating and maintaining clear alignment. Through early cooperation and shared goals, you can create a sustainable, iterative plan for your digital ecosystem transformation.

Commit to Collaboration

Don’t expect people to sign on to and support a vision that they had no part in creating.

“It’s easy and dangerous to assume that keeping people informed is the same as collaborating with them,” says Elisabeth Reinkordt, OHO Senior Digital Strategist. “You need to make sure you’re ready to meaningfully engage, to listen, and then to either act upon what you hear or respectfully and constructively explain why something that is important to one of your collaborators can’t happen or is changing.” Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that if you include people in a discovery session, and they say their piece, then you can check the box and say collaboration happened. Instead, stakeholders need to be involved in co-creating solutions and managing whatever changes are happening.

But what does this look like? You may say it is inefficient to include so many people throughout the process. Design by committee is rightly maligned, and too many cooks spoil the broth. But Reinkordt points out that professional kitchens do in fact have many cooks: “A well-oiled, fully-functional restaurant does have a lot of people who are bringing in their own expertise and they have specific roles to play. It’s important to delineate what those roles are and know when to engage them.”

Shared vision doesn’t mean shared ownership. For collaboration to be successful, roles and responsibilities need to be clearly defined and understood by all.

“A kitchen does have an executive chef. That might be you. It might be that you’re the chef de cuisine and your executive chef is the provost. You don’t have everyone weigh in on everything,” says Reinkordt. But everyone must contribute their own expertise at the right time to make it all work. Knowing who your collaborators are and what knowledge and experience they can contribute is essential to the success of a large transformation project. Defining and sharing these roles and responsibilities, such as through a RACI matrix, ensures everyone understands the part they have to play.

Focus on Outcomes

For a large-scale transformation, you need continued partnership at various levels across the institution. But how do you get those partners on board? Building a shared vision means identifying and acknowledging the needs and goals of many, not just the core project group or end users. By articulating the tangible positive impacts of the work for all, you can secure committed partners.

As you consult with different stakeholder groups, find out what is most important to them. Understand what challenges can be addressed by your transformation project and make sure the solutions to those challenges are documented in your roadmap.

Institutional partners that see their concerns reflected in the outcomes will be more invested in the successful execution of the project. A roadmap that includes outcomes relevant to their needs also becomes a useful tool for partners to secure support and resources within their own areas. You may need leadership from different areas of the institution to sign off on major decisions or provide support to enact transformation. Relevant outcomes that show the tangible impacts on their areas help make the case for why a major transformation project takes so much time and effort–and why it’s all worth it in the end.

Set and Share Milestones

An ecosystem transformation is a marathon, not a sprint. It can be hard to get people on board with a transformation project that will take years and may not actually impact their day-to-day work for years to come. Setting and sharing milestones helps build faith in the project and keep spirits up for the long term.
So how do you set milestones and show progress, especially in the early stages when there may not be much tangible change yet?

Start with the big picture.
Where do you want to be in five years? The discovery process should help you articulate the larger, long-term goals of the project, and provide direction for closing the gap between that future vision and your current state.

Don’t share details too far in advance.
Avoid the trap of providing too much specificity for the later states now. If you make detailed promises too far in advance, you risk derailing trust in the project by failing to live up to those promises. Break the project into phases, communicate general timelines for each phase, and make updates as needed.

Use examples from other fields.
A major investment in your ecosystem is like any other capital project. Using analogies from those sorts of projects can help communicate the scope of change and breadth of impact, as well as set expectations. “Where people have a hard time grasping the abstract or seemingly invisible work of web and digital upgrades or alignments, they are more easily able to visualize why repainting a crumbling dorm with a cracked foundation isn’t going to solve the problem,” says Reinkordt.

Likewise, communications for major capital projects can set an example for how to communicate about your ecosystem project. You don’t start a new building by picking out the paint colors and choosing tiles. You begin by defining functional goals, which end up influencing the surface-level decisions later on. What is the purpose? How does renovating or rebuilding help us achieve our goals? How will this project change how our audience perceives us? These are all important messages to hone and share early on in order to gain broader understanding.

Be clear about timelines.
With a long-term, multi-phase project, it’s key to help people understand why the project will take so long and when they will be asked to contribute or see changes in their work. If it’s not now, explain why. Your roadmap can be a useful tool here. For example, showing that department sites will be updated in phase 3 of a plan can reassure them that while changes aren’t imminent for them, they will be consulted and informed when the time comes.

It also helps mitigate fear around change if people can not only see when the work comes their way, but influence that timeline as well. For example, you probably won’t get an admissions team to be very engaged in a redesign in the first two quarters of the calendar year, when their focus is on application review, acceptances, and yield. 

Invest in Continuous Discovery

In a multi-year ecosystem project, discovery is an ongoing practice—one that keeps your roadmap relevant and aligned to evolving needs.

Discovery at the outset sets direction and builds shared understanding; it also uncovers issues you didn’t know existed. Your agency partners will bring outside perspective and pattern recognition from working with many institutions. As Elisabeth Reinkordt notes, internal teams often become so accustomed to their environment that they no longer see the chaos or inconsistencies that outsiders catch immediately. Speaking with stakeholders beyond the core team, conducting audits, and reviewing inventories all help surface these blind spots.

But discovery isn’t a single phase; it’s a continuous input. As the project progresses, new questions will emerge, assumptions may shift, and additional research will be needed to validate decisions. A long-term transformation should plan for ongoing listening, investigation, and refinement.

Most importantly, continuous discovery means refining—and communicating—your vision as new information surfaces. A living roadmap strengthens trust, keeps stakeholders aligned, and ensures the project evolves alongside the institution.

The Communications Challenge

Major change naturally creates uncertainty—and proactive communication is the best way to reduce it. Because an ecosystem project affects many people in different ways, you’ll need to communicate clearly across phases, audiences, and channels. Effective cooperation relies on meeting people where they are and keeping them informed throughout the work.

Finding Expertise Outside Your Team
Internal communication requires a different skillset than external marketing. If your institution has change management or internal comms specialists, bring them in early. You can also learn from other large campus initiatives—HR or payroll system upgrades, major capital projects—to understand what communication approaches worked well and which fell short.

Your core team may be accustomed to speaking to external audiences, but this project asks you to think of internal stakeholders as a distinct audience with their own needs, concerns, and decision-making pressures.

Understanding the Needs of Internal Stakeholders
Good communication isn’t one-size-fits-all. Different groups require different levels of detail, formats, and timing. Some updates warrant a broad email; others are better suited to small-group discussions or targeted outreach. The goal is to keep people informed without overwhelming them, tailoring messages to each audience’s level of engagement and impact.

Case Study: Yale University Ecosystem Project
Yale University understood that the success of its ecosystem project relied on an equally large and complex internal communications project. The Yale community itself is large, and the people who use the affected platforms represent a broad range of backgrounds, areas of expertise, pressures, learning styles, and communication preferences.

They identified key internal audiences: site editors, site builders, lead administrators, and communications partners. OHO collaborated with the Yale project team to understand these audiences through a number of discovery activities. We identified how the transformation affects each audience differently, due to different roles,responsibilities, and points of engagement. Articulating each audience’s needs, concerns, and communications preferences was essential for developing an effective communications plan for their major ecosystem transformation.

Together, we developed a strategic plan that included key messages, best formats for different types of updates and different audiences, and proper timelines for disseminating important information. A mix of approaches, from emails to meetings, group communications and individual outreach, was critical to the project’s success.

Collaboration for Communication
Internal communication is most effective when it’s shared. Identifying enthusiastic partners across campus can help extend the reach of your messaging through informal networks as well as formal channels. Early adopters can also act as ambassadors—sharing their experiences, supporting colleagues during migrations, and providing valuable feedback to the project team.

In Summary

Building the vision together isn’t the start of a project—it’s the foundation of an ongoing roadmap for digital maturity. A shared vision provides direction. A roadmap turns that vision into sustained progress. Collaboration keeps the work evolving and valuable for every stakeholder.