Ego-systems to Eco-systems
An ego-system rewards you for protecting your part. An eco-system rewards you for the health of the whole. Most organizations run the first and describe themselves as the second.
Why it matters
Brilliant people in well-intentioned teams keep producing fragmented, wasteful experiences. Not because they are incompetent, but because every local incentive is working exactly as designed. Each team hits its targets. The system fails anyway. Naming the two states lets you argue about the structure instead of the people.
Run these three questions
- If you followed one customer request end to end, how many handoffs would it cross, and who owns it between them?
- Where is someone rewarded for behaviour that creates dysfunction somewhere else?
- Which of our constraints are genuine business requirements, and which are just habits nobody has retired?
Worked example
A company with 23 customer touchpoints across 8 teams. Every team was hitting its targets; satisfaction was falling. Mapping the real path showed an average of 4.3 handoffs to resolve a simple request, between systems that did not talk to each other. The customers were doing unpaid work to navigate the internal structure. The fix was not more coordination between the silos. It was reorganizing the functions around customer outcomes, so that marketing, sales, support and product became contributing capabilities to one shared measure.