The 9 Box Concept
Have you ever been 5 minutes into a conversation and realize you’re using the same words but talking about VASTLY different things?
Tony Ticknor and I devised the 9 Box of Quality and Complexity* at a time when we were both using the same words to describe the work that we did, while meaning wildly different things, and needing to make sense of that so we didn’t go insane.
*No, we’re not talking about that HR thing, everyone knows that’s garbage. This is the new hotness and it’s not the same at all.
How did we get here?
In 2021, I owned a small SEO and Web design agency, and Tony Ticknor was helping run a 30 person agency.
We were both saying “website” and “Design” and while we were thinking of similar end results for our customers, we also both meant wildly different things, process, tools, customers, and most importantly, pricing. He was charging $20-40k just to have a conversation, we were charging $10k for our largest projects.
And somehow in both cases, our (very different) customers were getting the better/best versions of exactly what they were looking for – which didn’t seem possible.
We needed to understand the incongruity, so we got together for multiple working sessions. A lot of the time was spent saying “Can you show me what you mean when you say X?” and comparing our two completely different definitions, and then figuring out what the differences were and why.
Our agency could not do work for their agency – and their agency could not do work for us.
My favorite example was the “Branding Guide”, which varied from a single text doc with some font styles and hex codes for colors, to something with over a hundred beautifully crafted pages.
We realized we were thinking about what we did as “linearly” different, with one of those things being “better” and one being “worse”, but that didn’t hold up since we agreed that “Best” depended on the situation.
The fog started to clear when we both agreed that there were situations where that single page text doc would be the BEST deliverable for the situation, and the hundred page thing would be a huge burden.
The only way for all of this to make sense, is if the idea that “things get better linearly” wasn’t true.
The whiteboards and spreadsheets were reconfigured, and from there, we came up with the 9 box concept, and we’ve been utilizing it to create clarity across so many conversations and so many people, that we’re finally putting it here for reference.
9 Box of Complexity and Quality
What are the basic rules behind the concept?
- Complexity and Quality are not the same.
- Things do not increase/decrese “linearly”, they are step-changes.
- What got you here won’t get you there.
- What you use there often won’t work over here.
- Bigger is not better, it’s different – Bigger typically means it’s harder to keep things and people in alignment.
If you read the book Positioning by Jack Ries and Al Trout, you’ll recognize this as a variation on their theme; a basic X-Y axis with Quality on the X (horizontal) axis, and Complexity on the Y (vertical) axis.
Explaining the rules a bit
1. Complexity and Quality are not the same.
One of the most common conversations we have is around businesses of different sizes.
In the 9Box, we typically anchor to the idea shown here,
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T3: Corporate
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T2: Small – Mid
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T1: Solo-Micro
Notice that “Quality” does not go UP as the size of business gets larger, which is a common belief.
Complexity increases because you have more people to manage moving together – but that does not mean they’re doing that WELL.
Size of organization does not mean they’re producing a high quality product, either.
“I’ve talked to a lot of corporate escapees who think they are going to come into small businesses to impart wisdom and enterprise solutions. But people who come from larger organizations often have deep expertise in a few areas, but struggle to navigate the nuance and resources of a smaller company. They don’t have the chops to move in a fast, iterative, and versatile way.” – Summer Miller Ed.
2. Things don’t increase and decrease linearly, they are step changes.
Lots of things in life increase linearly, like counting, 1, 2, 3, 4. We can fit a lot of the human experience into that idea.
Like doing push ups or having a birthday – one more, one more.
However, much and more of the human experience happens in huge step changes, like going from crawling to walking.
Most things that increase in complexity don’t increase like 1, 2, 3, they increase in powers, like 1, 10, 100.
Doing one “clapping push-up” is not twice as hard as doing one “normal push-up”, it’s at least 10 times as hard.
When doing a project, the effort it takes to keep 1 person “on track” and knowing what needs done over time is hard. Keeping 2 people on track and knowing what needs done over time is AT LEAST 10x as hard, probably 100x as hard.
“This would be good stuff for aspiring/new fractional execs or solo/boutique consultants who come from large corporate roles or big four firms. It’s an area in which they need to shift their mindset and approach before missing the mark with a prospective client. People often need help to scale up or down their approach to match the needs of clients, but this isn’t intuitive for many practitioners.” – Summer Miller Ed.
2.1 What got you here won’t get you there
The tools and effort you need to do a single push up are not the same tools and effort you need to do a clapping push up. You need to engage entirely new groups of muscles, and use the familiar muscles in brand new ways – it’s almost a whole new experience.
You basically have to start learning from scratch, just being happy that you have some strength built up in some of the key areas.
It’s the same with communicating
Communication with yourself is fundamentally different than communicating with 2 people, or 10 people. You probably need completely new tools, and/or to use your old tools in entirely new ways. You basically have to start learning from scratch, just being happy that you have some strength built up in some of the key areas.
2.2 What you use there, probably won’t work here
When you move up in complexity, It’s not “better”, it’s just more complex.
You’re really restarting the “quality” conversation entirely – since moving up in complexity means most of what you were doing, won’t work anymore.
This is an incredibly common mistake in different sizes of organization.
Someone inside a corporate business will step outside of it, and attempt to bring all of their knowledge and tools to small businesses, thinking that their “large org” experience is “better.”
Actually, what you used there probably won’t work here at all.
If you’re a gymnast who is used to engaging ALL your muscles to do your movements, and then you try to tell a person who is doing a basic push up to follow all the same rules… you’ll ruin the push up. The push up literally does not need or ask for all the things you’re trying to force onto it.
Similarly, the ways we abstract information to keep 1,000 distributed people moving forward together are unwieldy and a waste for a 3 person team who can meet in person at a coffee shop. What’s the value of that complex stuff when you can just talk to each other? Trying to utilize those complex tools actually makes things WORSE for less complex orgs.
It’s literally bringing a commercial wrench to a job for a kitchen sink. It might be worse than unwieldy, the tool itself might actually make the job impossible because it can’t become small enough.
3. Bigger is not better, it’s different
Properly sizing the tool for the job seems obvious. If you want to plant a flower, you would want a hand spade, and if you want to dig a foundation for a house, you would want an excavator.
“Bigger” is not better – bringing an excavator to dig the hole for a flower is somewhere between egregious and impossible – but it’s easy to lose this thread when we equate size (or complexity) and quality.
Actually, the more complex something is (often the “bigger” it is), the harder it is for the output it creates to be of high quality, as it becomes harder to keep things and people in alignment.
To get many people and tools to stay pointed in a single direction over time is one of the most difficult things in the whole world.
I did not say complicated – I said difficult.
Finally, adding people or tools doesn’t scale difficulty or complexity linearly either, it scales exponentially. (Like compound interest)
