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| The secret of our success |
by Bart Van Coppenolle
Founder - President & CEO Metris
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At Metris we believe that there exists such a thing as “the secret of our success.” Although we refer to it as our secret, we don’t want to secretly hide it. We want to clearly articulate it and live it so we can become more successful. The secret of our success is called “Metris Company Values.”
Our company values are the rules of the economic game we play on a daily basis. Although we understand there are many more dimensions in life than just the economic one, we particularly value the economic dimension of life to which we dedicate a considerable part of our time and creativity. After all, it allows us to develop ourselves and brings us recognition from a broader group of people such as colleagues, customers, shareholders and society in general.
These company values are not externally reinforced, but internally projected and aimed at achieving certain mental attitudes that make us win the game. These mental attitudes are not in themselves particularly valuable. They are valuable because they actually work: they make us win the economic game. They help us to create value for our customers and shareholders and they bring us personal realization while connecting to other people. They make us a free and responsible part of society.
Besides the core value, which is passion, we see two groups of three values that we cherish, each group having its own motive1. The motive of the first group of three values is freedom (or also autonomy). These values help us shape our right brain hemisphere and nurture the entrepreneur within ourselves. The motive of the second group of three values is different: it is responsibility (or also group connectivity). They help us shape our left brain hemisphere and sharpen our managerial skills. The right brain hemisphere houses the seat of our creative, divergent, holistic, intuitive and individualistic thinking and behavior. Similarly the left brain hemisphere houses our skillful, convergent, deductive, analytical, group oriented thoughts and behavior. Left and right brain hemisphere is a powerful metaphor which might turn out to be scientifically correct or not.2
The right brain values can be associated with entrepreneurship while the left brain values can be associated with managerial skill. We believe there are no two distinctive groups of people in Metris: entrepreneurs and managers, we believe that everyone at Metris is entrepreneur and manager at the same time. Therefore the metaphor of two hemispheres being part of a single brain is well chosen, as each individual embodies both sets of attitudes.
Figure 1: Metaphorically mapping the company values to the left and right brain hemisphere
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The core and central value is Passion. Passion for our customers and passion for our team drives the creation of value for our shareholders and prosperity for our families. Passion is much more than just a value; it’s the very engine of life, an engine that is fueled by our innate desire for social recognition, recognition that we get from people we meet in our daily life, particularly in the economic dimension. Passion is characterized by a certain duality: it not only includes desire but also fear, not only love but also death; therefore at Metris it also refers to failure not only to success. Passion means persistence after failure until we eventually succeed. As failure forms an integral part of freedom we encourage it. However responsibility commits us to success and therefore failure is ultimately not an option. That’s why we both love and hate failure at Metris.
The entrepreneurial values aimed at shaping our right brain hemisphere are Openness, Honesty and Boldness.
Openness makes us genuinely listen to other people’s ideas and opinions and therefore creates respect for people. It encourages us to perceive facts rather than our own expectations. Openness is about attempting to cross our own mental barriers, such as dogmas, blind spots, power reflexes and last but not least the biggest barrier of all: ‘No we can not”. Openness helps us break through the typical barrier of “No we can not” or “This is how we have always done it, so why should we do it differently now”. Change is always somewhat uncomfortable and is sometimes even perceived as immoral. The blind spot mental barrier means that great opportunities are potentially lost because we simply don’t see them, since we consequently follow the same thinking path, leaving regions in our mind untapped. We can see all right but actually are blind for a particular truth: that’s why we call it a blind spot. Playing the power game typically blinds us as well. Power is important in politics and politics are important in society, but not at Metris.
Honesty is about personal integrity. Although we recognize that moral values may differ across all Metris’ worldwide geographic presence, we should never act against our own conscience. Never act against your own moral judgment. Honesty is also about being honest to yourself, about having the courage to recognize the inconvenient truth, to look into the mirror and say: “This is not right!” After all we never know for sure whether a certain vision is true; however we can eliminate non-truth by using our own honesty to judge the difference.
Boldness means daring to be open and honest. Speak frankly about your vision and judgment. If we have to choose between the risk of hurting people and to speak the truth, we should choose to speak. Going from frankness to boldness is putting your actions where your mouth and convictions are, always concerted with your own team, but not necessarily aligned with the outside market. As a little child we all did things our parents did not approve of. Let’s do that again, without breaching law, our own conscience or our corporate social responsibility.
The managerial values aimed at shaping our left brain hemisphere are Diligence, Discipline and Team spirit.
Diligence: work hard when appropriate. Dedicate your time and effort, but also your perception and creativity: contribute transpiration and inspiration. Don’t be satisfied with less than sheer perfection. But stop just before the cliff of addiction to work and guilt for being imperfect. Use your honesty to recognize lack of quality and to eventually accept quality.
Discipline: follow structure. Use the right form and structure to work. Colleagues, management and the broader society offer structure in the form of agendas, directives, procedures, IT infrastructure, management programs, education, etc. Use the available structure to successfully execute, don’t reinvent the wheel, and welcome tradition.
Team spirit: define yourself as your position in the team. Don’t seek your own personal success but empower your team. Don’t ask what the team can do for you, but ask what you can do for your team. To manage is to enable and support. To lead does not mean to rule but to serve. The moral concept of duty fits into this value: to do your duty is to take up your role.
Passion, Openness, Honesty, Boldness, Diligence, Discipline and Team spirit are our company values. Mapping those seven values to the structure of the brain is as such not very essential to what we believe is the secret of our success. However aiming three values towards freedom and autonomy and another three towards responsibility and group connectivity is essential. Autonomy and freedom are key in enabling innovation and entrepreneurship. Being entrepreneurial is essentially being innovative. Being innovative presumes being different from the crowd. To some extend being innovative includes a form of individualistic and incorrect behavior. Thinking out of the box, going where no one has gone before is essentially unsocial behavior. This kind of behavior is necessary to define “the right thing to do” which by definition can’t be what everyone else does. Responsibility and group connectivity are essential to build a team in order to successfully execute and to integrate that team in society in order to truly succeed. Best practices, procedures, collaboration are aspects of socially preferred behavior very necessary to “do things right”, which by definition means not alone. Therefore an alternative way to express the two sets of three values is more than just a metaphor: “Do the right thing” and “Do things right”.
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Figure 2: How the values can be interpreted as: “Do the right thing” and “Do things right”
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In order to do the right thing we believe we have to be open, honest and bold. Open your mind, perception and creativity to discover any imaginable thing. Be honest so you can recognize the inconvenient truth that a certain thing is not right. Be frank to speak about things that are right (and wrong) and be bold to take actions according to your vision. Striving for these mental attitudes is what makes us believe we get to do the right thing.
In order to do things right we believe we have to be diligent, disciplined and team oriented. Work hard when appropriate, do things without compromising quality. Discipline makes us do things in the right form and therefore makes us achieve our targets. Team spirit essentially makes us do it together, which is the key to success.
By passionately doing the right thing right, we believe we positively and successfully participate in the very important dimension of life called economy. That’s how our values help us to create value. That’s the secret of our success!
Download: Metris Company values (PDF file)
About Metris
Metris (Euronext – MTRS) designs, develops and markets a unique range of 3D hardware and software inspection systems servicing design and manufacturing industries.
The company’s reliable and innovative metrology solutions cover the full range of measurement volumes required by automotive and aerospace customers, in both fixed and portable configurations and with optical and touch sensors.
Metris Headquarters are based in Leuven, Belgium, with additional production and development centers in Belgium, UK, Italy, US, China, India and Bulgaria. Metris provides a worldwide network of sales and support offices located in Europe, Asia, and the US.
Bart Van Coppenolle (°1970), Chief Executive Officer, founded Metris and heads the company as President and CEO since its inception. He was also chairman of the board of directors until the IPO of Metris in 2006. He holds degrees in production engineering and philosophy.
Contact
Renaat Van Cauter – Metris – marketing@metris.com – Tel +32 16 74 01 01
More information on Metris can be found on www.metris.com
1Since essentially virtues are internal mental strengths that are aimed towards reaching a certain value, a more correct terminology would replace throughout this text the word ‘motive’ with the word ‘value’ and the word ‘value’ with the word ‘virtue’. However I have chosen not to overload the text with this purism, since defining company virtues instead of values is a less generally accepted practice.
2Although I was inspired by a National Geographic documentary featuring the neuroscientist Prof Allen Snyder, right brain and left brain hemisphere should not necessarily be interpreted scientifically, but can also be interpreted purely metaphorically, such as Daniel Pink does in his book “A whole new mind”.
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