Designing Systems To Carry Your Why

Throughout history, there are some societies that move forward while others struggle to keep up. Some collapse under their own weight. Others find ways to rebuild. Across centuries of war, innovation, migration, and upheaval, one question continues to surface among scholars and leaders:

Why do some societies succeed while others fail?

This isn’t just a question for historians. It’s a question for founders, leaders, and company builders. Because the same forces that shape nations shape companies. And if you’ve been building for a while, you’ve seen the pattern: One organization keeps progressing, adapting, and gaining momentum as another begins to lose its way. Same market, same Stage of Development, maybe even similar goals.

So what makes the difference?

The conventional answers — geography, culture, luck — only get us so far. The real answers are built into the systems we design, the beliefs we reinforce, and the behaviors we reward (or overlook).

In the last part of the Why Series, I wrote about causal thinking: the discipline of moving beyond simply recognizing patterns to understand what’s actually driving results. But there’s another piece to this puzzle. To successfully scale, you have to understand the architecture — the structures, habits, shared beliefs, and incentives that shape behavior over time.

That brings us to the next level of Why: the systemic Why. These are the elements that either carry your purpose forward or steer it off course. Let’s talk about why you need systems designed to support your Why so you can build a company that not only works today but endures tomorrow.

A Strong Purpose Needs Strong Systems

If you want to understand why some companies last while others stall or even backslide, start with their institutions.

Economists Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson make a clear case in Why Nations Fail that the best predictor of long-term success isn’t talent, geography, or timing — it’s the design of the systems. Thoughtfully designed institutions that promote inclusion and adaptability create more opportunity, support innovation, and protect the flow of feedback. But systems that centralize control and resist change do the opposite. In fact, they just wear people down.

This same dynamic plays out in companies.

When I talk about institutions in this context, I’m talking about the foundational systems that shape how your organization functions day in and day out. That includes your:

• Structures: How Seats are defined, how teams are organized, how authority is distributed
• Agreements: How decisions are made, how accountability works, how issues get addressed
• Norms: What behaviors are encouraged or tolerated, what gets rewarded, what people accept
• Processes: How you meet, plan, communicate, hire, promote, and adapt

Over time, these elements will either carry your Why forward or replace it with something else. That’s why simply declaring a purpose isn’t enough. It has to be embedded into your systems, into how your company actually runs (especially when you’re not in the room).

Because without the structure to support it, even the strongest Why gets lost in the chaos of building, running, and scaling a business. That’s exactly the kind of system-building we focus on at Ninety — helping teams align their structures with their purpose so they can scale with clarity and intent.

Narratives Carry Your Why

Yuval Harari, a historian best known for his book Sapiens, argues that large-scale human cooperation depends on shared stories. He calls them “fictions,” but not in a dismissive way. They're the invisible frameworks that allow millions of people to coordinate around things like justice, money, rights, and identity. Though these narratives aren't tangible, they’re real in the way that matters most: They shape belief, which shapes behavior.

The same is true within organizations. It’s not enough to have your purpose posted on your website or in an onboarding slide deck. If your Why can’t be explained, remembered, and believed by your Ideal Stakeholders, it won’t last. It has to live as a story, one that’s simple enough to repeat, strong enough to withstand pressure, and real enough that people want to carry it forward.

Because companies with a strong Why that's embedded into their systems don’t just align around strategy or goals. They align around meaning. They build a shared narrative that turns goals into commitments and work into something worth belonging to. And that story holds people together, even when the outcomes your working toward take time.

Your story doesn’t have to be flashy. But it does have to be honest. Because if your people don’t believe your narrative, they’ll create an unofficial one. And once that alternate story becomes more compelling (or more accurate), you start to lose their trust.

Incentives Translate Purpose Into Behavior

If institutions set the structure and narratives shape belief, incentives are what turn purpose into action. They’re where your Why is either reinforced or replaced.

This is where things fall out of place for a lot of growing businesses: They claim to value innovation but punish people when things don’t go as planned. They encourage feedback, but those who speak up face consequences. They say they promote transparency, but key decisions are still made behind closed doors.

When this happens, people start to figure out the behaviors that actually get rewarded. And more often than not, that reality competes with the story being told.

That’s why purpose can’t just be a story. It has to be designed into your systems. That means creating a culture where alignment with your Why is supported. Where people don’t have to choose between protecting themselves and doing meaningful work.

It means:

• Backing behaviors that align with your Why, even when outcomes take time
• Making space for disagreement when it comes from shared commitment
• Being clear about what’s out of bounds, even if it delivers short-term wins

Because when incentives point in a different direction than your purpose, trust is harder to maintain. People go along with the stated values but follow the system that actually determines success. And over time, that disconnect becomes the culture.

On the other hand, when incentives support your purpose, everything aligns. Your people trust that they can act with integrity and still succeed. They feel safe to take risks, speak candidly, and choose the harder right over the easier wrong. And when that happens, purpose isn’t just something you talk about. It’s something your teams lives out, every day.

What History Teaches Founders

If you pay attention to history — not just the events but the patterns that emerge over time — you start to see the same forces at work again and again.

Societies (and companies) don’t collapse overnight. They start to lose direction when feedback stops flowing, when short-term gains take priority over long-term purpose, when the systems stop reinforcing what matters.

That’s why I keep returning to thinkers like Diamond, Frankl, Harari, Acemoglu, and Pearl (read more in Part 3 of the Why Series). Not because they all agree with one another, but because each one sees a different layer of causality. They remind us that outcomes are shaped by more than effort or intent. They're shaped by systems.

And when you start seeing the world that way, you gain something powerful: pattern recognition. You notice early signs of misalignment. You catch the disconnects before they cause irreparable damage. You see how decline happens — not as a single failure but as one small compromise at a time that slowly pull you away from your Why. 

But you also know what it takes to course-correct: a willingness to confront the truth and redesign your systems so they serve your purpose again.

Build Around a Systemic Why

If you’re serious about building something that lasts, you can’t just focus on your Why in isolation. You have to understand how everything connects back to the systems you’re creating. That’s the work of the systemic Why.

It’s about building the kind of systems — structures, narratives, incentives — that reinforce that purpose over time.

Ask yourself: What future are we building, and how will our systems protect it? What stories do our people actually believe, and why? What behaviors do we reward, and what does that say about what we truly value?

The founders who build enduring companies don’t just inspire with their words. They inspire by design. They lead with clarity and build with intent so their company keeps working and growing, even when they’re not in the room. That’s what it takes to build something great.

In the next piece, we’ll look at what happens when leaders stop asking Why and how that mistake can pull even the most promising companies away from what they set out to build.

The more focused you are on your Why by building systems that reflect it, the more likely you are to create a culture that endures and a legacy that matters.