Your Business Isn't a Machine, It's a Living System.

By Elias Franz|
Your Business Isn't a Machine, It's a Living System. cover image

Your Business Isn't a Machine.

For decades, we’ve been taught to think of business as a machine. We talk about "levers to pull," "cogs in the system," and "efficient functions." This industrial-age mindset worked for offering services when markets were more predictable and positions more static. In today's world of constant change, the machine metaphor is breaking down when it comes to going to market with the right portolio of service offerings.

Machines are rigid and follow a fixed set of instructions. While research into generative AI does explore machines that can learn or adapt, you’ve likely seen your favorite model “hallucinate” and respond with a comically unusable image or paragraph. When the environment changes unexpectedly, machines struggle to adapt; they instead tend to break.

What if there's a better way to look at it? Instead of a machine, think of the portfolio of what your team or business offers as a living system, like a tree. A tree doesn't just survive storms, changing seasons, and obstacles; it adapts to thrive amidst them. There is some certainty in the tree's basic mechanics yes, but there is something more abstract, more natural, in the overall shape of its growth. Adopting this mindset is the first step toward building a truly resilient and adaptive portfolio.

What It Means to Think of Your Portfolio like a Tree

Shifting your perspective isn't just a mental exercise. It changes how you lead, plan, and grow. Leaders who observe and adopt a strategy that emulates the way trees thrive can transform their business.

  1. It Balances its Reach with its Roots
    A tree can't grow branches that its roots can't support. This balance is critical in business. We see this as two key functions within any organization:
  • The Reach: This is your market-facing side. It’s how you anticipate customer needs and present what your organization can offer. This is your sales, your marketing, or your liaisons. Your branches reaching for the sun.
  • The Roots: This is your internal capability and resources. It’s how you prepare and supply what you bring to market. This is your operations, your people, and your technology. The strong root system that makes all growth possible. When these are out of sync, you run into problems. You have teams making promises that your operations can't deliver on. Or you have incredible internal capabilities that the market never sees. A healthy business keeps both in careful balance.

  1. It Manages Complexity Through Simple Rules
    A massive oak tree is incredibly complex, yet it doesn't grow from a thousand-page blueprint. It grows based on a simple set of principles encoded in its DNA. In the same way, your business can overcome complexity by applying simple steps that scale. Where rigid and detailed processes shatter under pressure, adaptive organizations use guiding principles. These principles empower your teams to make smart decisions and adapt in uncertain situations, keeping everyone oriented toward the same outcome.

  2. It Senses and Responds to its Environment Holistically
    A tree constantly senses its environment, turning its leaves toward the sun and growing its roots toward nutrients in the soil. A business must do the same. Thriving organizations have built-in feedback and alignment loops. They don't just push offerings out; they listen to the market, sense shifts, adapt their strategy, and align their teams in response. The machine model is about execution of steps; the living system model is about adaptation and alignment towards a purpose.

  3. It Positions its Branches to Provide & Thrive
    A tree starts each new branch with decisions and systems that give it a chance to succeed. Leaves point where sun shines and more branches sprout where they are best supported. Strategic decisions continue and are replicated further down the limb, reaching sunlight in a shape not at all resembling a straight line. Innovation doesn’t come from strategic ideas or decisions being perfectly genius at the start. True innovation occurs when the branch makes continuous ‘choices’ to wind and grow while reaching toward the sun.

Are You an Arborist for Your Portfolio?

When you see your portfolio as a living system, your role as a strategic leader changes. You're less of a mechanic and more of an arborist, a cultivator of growth. You start asking different questions:

  • Is our tree shaped to achieve its purpose? (Are teams aligned to goals & strategy?)
  • Are we growing branches that provide fruit? (Do we offer what the market needs?)
  • Are we pruning the branches that no longer see sunlight? (Are we scaling back offerings that lack market traction?)
  • Are our roots deep enough and strong enough to support the new growth we're planning? (Is our operational capability ready for our strategic goals?)

Viewing your organization this way helps you focus on creating the conditions for health and growth, rather than just trying to control every outcome. This shift in mindset is the key to building a business that doesn't just survive market shifts, but actually thrives in them. It's how you shape ideas into offerings, change with your market, and grow your business.