Connecting the nine dots

The world used to be simpler. Businesses in the 20th and early 21st centuries experienced the world as one-dimensional, because in many ways, it was. As a company, what mattered was to be financially healthy. Even better if you could replace ‘healthy’ with ‘wealthy’. Just as long as the profit was big enough to keep the shareholders happy, you could be fairly sure not to get in trouble.

While this uncomplicated view sufficed for a long time, it no longer does. This paradigm we’ve been on about has already started shifting. Paradigms don’t wait, they tilt whenever there is a relevant amount of weight to push them over. Likewise, companies are becoming more complex too, these days. Their basic components have grown more complex, and it is no longer enough to sit on heaps of cash, nor is it to pat your stakeholders’ backs, while rubbing bellies.

Looking for ways to navigate in this new environment, we’ve pointed at the metasystem as a possible solution. Not as the ultimate solution, but more as the next stage en route to Making Things Better. One that allows for freedom in choosing how we act and who we work with, but also one that increases our wingspan, so that our efforts to unstick what is stuck don’t remain in vain. A rather simple solution, precisely because it is one that must stay afloat in a very complex new reality.

We’ve pinned down nine dimensions you should work on if you’re going to run a company willing to thrive in this multi-dimensional, messy reality. Together, these nine dots are the fundamentals you’ll need to shape your own business. They form a model we’ve dubbed the Metasystem Wheel: the operating system of any organization aspiring to make it to the next decade by engaging in a metasystem. If you want to be part of such a metasystem, you will need to make sure you own business is up to par before talking to others.

Why we needed to reinvent the wheel
(and you do, too)

The nine dimensions we will expand on in the following pages are, to us, the main elements a company should adopt if they are aiming to become a metasystem company.

Chances are you already excel in some of these domains. Just like Tesla, you may be ‘collaboration oriented’, putting your patents out there, up for grabs and taking the open-source approach when it comes to sharing innovations. However, just like with Tesla, being transparent in itself doesn’t necessarily translate into a “more than for profit” strategy. And a metasystem, in its heart, is always about way more than profit.

Doing well in one or even a few of these areas isn’t enough. You’ll have to give it your all on all nine fronts. Compare it to being a sustainable company. You cannot manufacture sporting goods and avoid using plastics if in the meantime you neglect to think about child labor or the chemical components of the glue that keeps your trainers together. Neither can you be all in favor of a positive environmental impact but at the same time discriminate against women. These principles are mutually exclusive. This doesn’t mean you have to score perfect points in each department, but it does mean that not a single one of these areas should escape your attention. They all matter.

We’ll give you three reasons why you should attempt to score on all nine, or else put the metasystem scenario aside altogether. First of all, if you lack any kind of social purpose as a company, if you fail to be relevant to the community at large, you run the risk of being rejected by customers. These days, smart customers have a choice, and this includes casting aside businesses they perceive as greedy or unethical. Those organizations with a tendency to take, but never give back. For companies, it’s not about outperforming all the others anymore. In the age of metasystems, we create room for many more winners. You need a purpose.

Secondly, there is no future for companies who want to do everything on their own. The first part of this book should have made that clear by now. This means you will have to pay attention to all nine dots, as potential partners will evaluate you on these same points. Hence the three dimensions we’ve clustered into ‘the power of collaboration’.

There is a third perk that comes with meticulously working out each of these dimensions for your company: they will become part of who you are. Your DNA. Your company culture. They will exist throughout all different layers, the core, extended core and even in the selection of the moonshots. They are like the coast guard or the border patrol, deciding what actions, people, elements, match your DNA. And, they will help you attract and retain both the right talent and potential partners.

These nine dimensions will serve as a benchmark to find potential partners. Because if you want your partnership to bear fruit, you will have to make sure that your partners find these nine fronts as important as you do. If engaging in courageous conversations, say, is second nature to you and your employees, but your potential partner likes to duck and run in the face of adversity, you will have trouble working together in optimal circumstances. Using The Nine as a guiding light, you will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff when searching for the right partners. Flanked by the right partners in righteous crime, you’ll have a much better fighting chance in facing the future.