When strategies diverge, values decide

Building an ecosystem means accepting an uncomfortable truth: not all ventures will need the same thing at the same time. Some will be in expansion mode. Others will be focused on optimisation. Some will move fast. Others will slow down deliberately. And the real question is not how to make everyone move in the same direction.

The real question is how to make sure those differences don’t break the group.

Alignment is not proven when everyone agrees. It’s proven when real friction appears.

The classic mistake: confusing alignment with uniformity
As ecosystems grow, a familiar temptation emerges: centralise in order to “create order”. A single strategy is imposed, priorities are standardised, and control feels closer at hand.

In practice, this often comes at a hidden cost: context is lost. And when context is lost, decisions may sound coherent in a meeting room but fail where the work actually happens.

Aligning strategies is easy. Aligning decision criteria is hard.

What values really do
This is where values stop being slogans and become operational.

Values do not exist to eliminate disagreement. They exist to prevent disagreement from turning into chaos. They function as a shared operating system: they don’t dictate a single route, but they define where decisions come from, what is protected, and what is non-negotiable.

When two ventures choose different paths, the key question is not whether those choices look similar. It’s whether they are made in the same place.

Values don’t remove friction. They make it productive.

The real test: different decisions, shared coherence
In any group, it’s normal for decisions to look contradictory when viewed from the outside. What sustains coherence is not similarity, but the logic behind those decisions.

The maturity of an ecosystem shows when it can hold different strategies without fragmenting, because there is a shared foundation holding everything together: how people think, how they prioritise, and how responsibility is assumed.

Strategies can change. The principles that guide decisions should not.

Follow the journey. Join the movement. Be part of YOUNG.