Your mission keeps drifting
Every leadership transition erodes what you stand for. The founding vision gets diluted. New leaders reinterpret the mission until it's unrecognizable. This isn't bad leadership—it's structural forgetting.
The outcome we're working toward:
Purpose that persists across leadership changes—embedded in governance, not just culture.
You're experiencing this if:
These aren't failures of commitment—they're symptoms of structural amnesia.
The Diagnosis
Institutional forgetting isn't cultural—it's structural.
Purpose lives in people. When people leave, purpose leaves with them. Mission statements are too thin to carry intent across time—they get reinterpreted by each new leader according to their own understanding.
The problem is that authority cycles (how long leaders stay) are decoupled from mission cycles (how long it takes to achieve purpose). A 4-year CEO tenure can't steward a 50-year mission.
The Framework
What we've developed and want to test.
Stewardship Continuity Schedule
A governance framework that explicitly manages the handoff of purpose across leadership transitions. It defines what must be preserved, how it gets transmitted, and what mechanisms ensure fidelity across time—not just succession planning, but succession architecture.
Status: Framework developed. Seeking pilot implementations to test and refine.
What piloting involves
- Mapping your authority cycles and mission cycles
- Identifying where and when purpose erodes
- Drafting a Stewardship Continuity Schedule for your context
- Testing the framework through a leadership transition or strategic review
What we need from you
- An organization experiencing mission drift or succession challenges
- Leadership commitment to the pilot process (3-6 months)
- Access to institutional history and key stakeholders
- Honest feedback on what works and what doesn't
Good pilot candidates
The Research Behind This
Working papers that develop these ideas in depth.
Interested in piloting?
If you're facing mission drift or succession challenges and willing to test our framework, we'd like to talk. No fees for pilots—just commitment and honest feedback.
Explore a Pilot Partnership