Goal Core · Purpose · Module
Alignment
How the purpose is actually used: which decisions are tested against it, at what points, and by whom. Without a mechanism, alignment is an intention.
The idea
How it works
Alignment is a mechanism question, not a communication question. Repeating a purpose more often does not make it operative; attaching it to a specific moment in a specific process does.
The moments worth attaching it to are the ones where something is committed: budget approval, hiring above a certain level, entering a new market, signing a partner. If the purpose is not consulted at those points, it is not aligned to anything.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Find the commitment points
List the moments where the organisation binds itself to something it cannot easily reverse.
- 02
Attach the test
At each point, add one question: how does this serve the stated purpose? Recorded, not merely asked.
- 03
Name who asks it
A test with no owner is skipped under time pressure, which is exactly when it matters.
- 04
Review what it changed
Once a year, look at what the test actually altered. If the answer is nothing, the test is ceremonial.
One level in
The components of alignment
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The cascade record
How the purpose translates into the goals beneath it — the traceable line from purpose to this quarter’s work.
Learn
Alignment fails quietly. Nothing announces that a test has stopped being applied, which is why the review has to be scheduled rather than triggered.
The other modules in purpose
Reason for being
The articulation itself: one sentence saying why the organisation exists, written so that it would still hold if the product changed entirely.
LearnStakeholder rationale
Whom the purpose is for, and what each of them gets from it. Naming them makes the purpose answerable to someone rather than to no one.
LearnIntegrity
The distance between the purpose as stated and the purpose as enacted. Worth measuring deliberately, because the gap is invisible from the inside and obvious from the outside.
LearnCore values
The small set of commitments the organisation will not trade, even when trading them would be profitable — which is the only test that separates a value from a preference.
Learn