Goal Core · Purpose · Module
Integrity
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.
The idea
How it works
Organisations can hold a purpose sincerely and act against it consistently, without anyone lying. The stated purpose is what people believe governs their behaviour; the enacted purpose is what actually does, and the two drift apart without anyone deciding that they should.
The gap is not usually visible from inside, because everyone inside is reasoning from the stated version. It is visible to customers, to new employees in their first month, and to anyone who left.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Collect decisions, not opinions
Take the last twenty significant decisions and ask what purpose would explain them. That is the enacted purpose.
- 02
Ask people who are new or leaving
Both groups can still see the organisation from outside. Neither can for long.
- 03
Compare, and write down the difference
The point is not to close every gap. It is to know which ones exist and which are being tolerated deliberately.
One level in
The components of integrity
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The external read
What people outside the organisation say it appears to be for — from customers, new joiners and exit conversations.
Learn
A gap knowingly tolerated is a different thing from one nobody has noticed. Only the second is dangerous.
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.
LearnAlignment
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.
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