Orgforward is founded on the idea that social benefit arises from the collective action of people, hence the ‘Org’ part of the name. ‘Forward’ draws on the belief that we are not there yet - we have yet to create and sustain a world in which everyone and the environment are thriving.

Grounded in these two beliefs, Orgforward embraces a commitment to curiosity and sensemaking that truly supports people designing, adapting, and sustaining organizations that foster the decision-making and behavior that aligns with building and sustaining thriving communities for everyone.

This perspective is the foundation for Orgforward’s efforts. The tools and resources developed by Orgforward are intended to help build peoples’ competence, comfort, and confidence around leadership and decision making that is grounded in community benefit and change. This approach leads to frameworks that explain and build understanding at a conceptual level and tools that help people feel grounded in decisions that guide design, strategy, and ongoing work.

For those who are involved in coaching, educating, writing, design - really anything generative or creative - you are likely to have developed both approaches and tools that define what you do and how you do it. Orgforward has been on a 15-year path of sensemaking and supportive practice for people working within social-benefit organizations. It has been a privilege to have the space to work directly with people, helping support their leadership and organizational success AND reflecting and learning together along the way.

There have been ups and downs and many iterations of resources along the way as some things work and others slowly age buried in a file directory on a cloud storage site never to be clicked on again. The Fiduciary Capacity Model™ and The Integrity Profile™ are the culmination of the journey so far and specifically address the question; how do we bring integrity and consistency to decision making and behavior across an organization.

The Fiduciary Capacity Model™ is a conceptual piece that provides a narrative and visual representation of a social-benefit organization. It illustrates the various structural capacities that come together to make up an organization and is described in the first section that follows.

The Integrity Profile™ is the primary tactical tool. It serves to articulate the key criteria that drive behavior, decision making, strategy, and assessment within an organizational context and is unique to each organization. This paper focuses on explaining the core elements of the profile. An overview of the actual development and deployment process can be found in the Integrity Profile Toolkit.

To be clear up front, these are not breakthrough frameworks, nor are they considered proprietary to Orgforward. We spend our lives taking in what is around us learning from others, mixing ideas, and having aha moments along the way. Sometimes these aha’s are parallel evolutions of thought where multiple people come to the same point through unique and separate paths. Other times, and usually more common, we are building off the ideas of others that directly influence the conclusions we come to that we then reframe based on our experiences.

This is to say that both the Fiduciary Capacity Model and the Integrity Profile are truly mosaics. They have pieces that many of you will find familiar and others that may seem new or peculiar. They represent one way of organizing things. If it is helpful, please use it and make it your own. The only ask, is that you acknowledge Orgforward and its contribution to your thinking.

The following pulls together essays, blog posts, and process explanations in an attempt to provide an overall understanding of the background, perspectives, and approaches behind both the Fiduciary Capacity Model and the Integrity Profile.

What’s an Organization Anyway?

Organizations are about organizing people. While there are a lot of systems, structures, and any array of ‘things’ involved in the work people do and the ‘functions’ an organization fulfills, really, at the end of the day, it is people making decisions and taking action that moves organizational work forward. Without behavior there is no organizational output.

This may appear overly simplistic, and many may argue that a lot can happen within an organization that does not involve people doing things (think automation, and more recently Artificial Intelligence). True, not all organizational activity is directly linked to specific individual action. However, at some prior time, there was a decision point when a person made a choice and took action to put those processes in place. Additionally, these processes and systems usually affect someone’s behavior down the road, AND there is usually an ongoing assessment process people do that determines whether these systems are effective and efficient and should be changed or stopped. So even the non-people systems affect people’s behavior.

It may seem obvious to many that organizations, at their core, are the sum total of the behaviors of the people they organize and affect. However, the talk and theorizing about organizations often separates or distracts our thinking from this simple truth. It is not uncommon to lose sight of the fact that organizational design and development and growth are fundamentally about the design, development, and growth of human behavior.

Grounded in this perspective, Orgforward has adopted a behaviorist lens on leadership, strategy, and organizational design and development. At its root, this focuses us on people as the centerpiece. People are who believe, feel, and act. Therefore, organizational work is rooted in people and their behavior. It is the combination of individual behaviors that enables an organization to do stuff.

Organizational Integrity

‘Doing Good’ is the generally excepted norm of social-benefit organizations. So much so, that mere association with something bad can tarnish the reputation of an organization, even when the event or the person associated with the bad acting wasn’t doing so in direct relationship to the organization.

Trust is at the heart of this expectation. Social-benefit organizations are, by definition, fiduciary entities. They serve as stewards of community assets and resources[1] for the benefit of the community. Even the technical language for a member of an organization’s Board of Directors is ‘trustee’ in many state statutes. So, maintaining trust and ensuring that an organization effectively ‘does good’ is essential.

In short, social-benefit organizations must act with integrity.

Integrity is simply a ‘firm [or steadfast] adherence to a code of … values.’[2]

Whether we use sayings like “walking the talk”, “do as you say”, or “be true to your word” as expressions of integrity, at its heart, we are conveying the idea that having integrity is equated to a person acting in alignment with some claimed set of values or principles. Integrity often has an air of morality and/or righteousness to it. However, for our purposes, we don’t want to get too caught up in that level of philosophical debate about morals and ethics. Rather, the focus is on sustaining alignment with a stated set of beliefs or values and ensuring the design and work of the organization has efficacy when it comes to advancing social benefit. It is up to the organizational entity to determine what the fundamental beliefs and values will be and then to serve as a fiduciary that ensures integrity to that.

When it comes to organizations, Orgforward encourages people to think about the 3 C’s that can lay the foundation for a strong sense of integrity – Curiosity, Codification, and Commitment.

Curiosity: Inquiry about What Is and What It Takes
Being open, humble, and vulnerable to asking and learning. What does the organization aspire the world to be? What does it take to do that now and into the future? What assumptions and beliefs drive our understanding and approaches? What do we need to value about people and relationships? What roles are there to play within the community?

Codification: Establishing Expectations and Norms
Clarifying and articulating a shared and agreed-upon understanding of what CURIOSITY reveals AND affirming that we will be held accountable to that!

Commitment: Sustaining Alignment and Accountability
Gracious Intolerance of Misalignment – continuously assessing how well our actions, behaviors, decisions, strategies, and systems align with what we agreed to and codified AND taking steps to bring us into better alignment (we are human so expect misalignment to happen and rely on curiosity to navigate through it)

Two key elements of any focus on integrity are (1) the conceptual understanding of the guiding code and (2) the actual doing of things. The three C’s bridge these by focusing first on the inquiry side and then on the alignment of the day-to-day doing that actually gets stuff done.

Organizational Capacity

Let’s delve a bit deeper into how organizations get things done. Capacity is the term often used to capture this idea. It represents the coalescing of systems and actions (or behaviors).

Some capacities will be technical in nature, focusing more on execution of certain day-to-day work functions. Others are more theoretical, framing ideas, expectations, and shared understanding that guide decision-making and judgement. Capacity can be understood as the confluence of both the internal decision-making people engage in and the external actions they take in response to that understanding.

So…, what are the needed organizational capacities?

Given that a capacity is simply an ability to do something, we could easily get overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done on a day-to-day basis within an organization and, given the specific work and focus of an organization, it would be challenging to map out a detailed general model. Without ignoring this, we sidestep it a bit by taking a higher-level design perspective that looks at the core, universal capacities of an organization. Specifically, looking at organizations that are focused on advancing community benefits and the key capacities that contribute to organizational success in that context. By ‘organizational success,’ we mean engaging in work that authentically advances the social-benefit goals of the organization, or, more specifically, advances desired beneficial outcomes within the community (more on outcomes later).

The goal is to understand the broad, and universal, organizational capacities that help paint a picture of how a social-benefit organization is structured. This is the basis for The Fiduciary Capacity Model.

With this approach, we can focus more specifically on developing the structures and systems that support people’s ability to behave in alignment with these capacity needs.

[1] Considering the tax-exempt status of 501(c)3 entities, money that would have normally been contributed to the public good as payment in taxes to the government now gets to stay under the stewardship of the organization. Hence, a clear portion of an organization’s operating money could reasonably be considered public funds.

[2] Merriam-Webster online dictionary; https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/integrity

Let’s start with a clear definition of fiduciary. We often think about it in terms of finance and responsible money management. However, the term is more inclusive of just financials. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary has a specific “Did You Know” callout section with the following note on its page about fiduciary roles:

“Fiduciary relationships are often of the financial variety, but the word fiduciary does not, in and of itself, suggest pecuniary ("money-related") matters. Rather, fiduciary applies to any situation in which one person justifiably places confidence and trust in someone else and seeks that person's help or advice in some matter.”[1]

Below are the definitions Orgforward relies on to explain the breadth of the fiduciary role and capacity:[2]

Noun (the role): a person entrusted with decision making authority over property, assets, or power and how they are used to benefit another

Adjective (the capacity/responsibility): the obligation of a person or entity to faithfully serve as a fiduciary to another person, entity, or community

It is not hard to see social-benefit organizations in this frame. In the United States, social-benefit or community-benefit organizations are granted exempt tax status on a fiduciary basis. What is meant by this is that tax-exempt entities (specifically 501c3 entities) are granted that exemption based on the commitment to use resources to advance at least one of the broad social/community benefit activities identified within the US tax code (that’s actually what is listed in paragraph 501c3 of U.S tax code, hence the terminology we use). If resources are not used for that purpose, they get taxed. So, by definition and charter, exempt organizations are expected to be fiduciaries of community benefits, using the power, property, and assets they are entrusted with to benefit society.

As a capacity, Orgforward defines it this way:

Organizational Fiduciary Capacity is the ability to continuously assess if an organization is effectively & efficiently acquiring & investing assets to sustainably advance social benefit in a manner that is aligned with stated values

Fundamental to this framing of fiduciary capacity is the clear connection between both assets (which we will use to include resources, power, and property moving forward) and benefits. These are the two sides of the fiduciary coin to understand - the promised or expected benefit to the beneficiary and the manner in which assets are used.

Stewarding both the benefits and the assets associated with an organization involves consideration of a wide array of organizational capacities. It requires clarity around the social benefits provided to the community; an understanding of what it takes to advance those benefits; a well-designed operating structure that effectively does what it takes; and an awareness of the assets required to sustain that structure. The Fiduciary Capacity Model is Orgforward’s illustration and explanation of those capacities and how they fit together.

The Fiduciary Capacity Model™

Each element of The Fiduciary Capacity Model serves to reinforce the overall fiduciary capacity needs of an organization. The model is presented as a flow diagram connecting each capacity in a way that illustrates their interdependence and roles

Organizational Capacities Explained

Intended Social Benefit: the positive, quality-of-life outcomes the organization contributes to in the community

Explanation & Purpose: Fiduciary responsibility is grounded in acting for the benefit of another. This demands clarity around what the specific benefit is and for whom. This is placed at the top of the model as all subsequent capacities are in service to advancing this benefit. Here the organization is establishing its community aspirations (i.e. its vision of the community it wants to see in place in the world).

Organizational Design Capacity: the ability to identify and create a shared understanding of what we value, what we believe it takes to create change, and the perspectives and assumptions about people, systems, and the world that guide our daily behavior

Explanation & Purpose: Once an organization has identified the community aspiration and intended social benefit, the next substantial organizational need is a clear understanding of what it takes and what is required to advance those benefits. This is the most theoretical and expansive of the capacities. Fundamentally, it holds many of the key assumptions the organization is built upon. This is the place where beliefs, values, perspectives, and theories live. Examples of elements that make up this capacity include community aspirations (vision), community role (mission), what is valued (values), approaches (theory of change), and belief systems/ideologies. As this capacity holds most of the ‘thinking’ about what is important to an organization, it is the foundation for culture, strategy, and integrity and the primary source for the development of the Integrity Profile tool examined in further sections.

Program Capacity: the ability to develop and execute efforts that effectively advance community outcomes

Explanation & Purpose: Organizations advance social benefit through programming. It is program delivery that leads to outcomes. The Design Capacity informs the specifics of what types of programming to engage in. This capacity is about ensuring the portfolio of programs is both aligned with what is articulated in the Design Capacity and effectively contributing to the Intended Social Benefits. Program Capacity is the operational centerpiece of the organization and is what all subsequent capacities are in service to. In short, without programs we advance no outcomes and have no need for assets and structures.

Leadership Capacity: the ability to identify desired outcomes (small & large), determine what it takes to accomplish outcomes, and engage people in achieving those outcomes

Explanation & Purpose: In addition to the large-scale design thinking involved in articulating the Design Capacity, there are numerous and ongoing design, planning, and assessment efforts going on across an organization. While managing operations is a part of this capacity, it speaks more to applying an outcomes-oriented lens to decision making and behavior. This involves taking the time for inquiry and reflection to identify desired outcomes of a situation or strategy, determining what it takes to advance those outcomes for those most affected, implementing the necessary changes; engaging those involved; and assessing effectiveness. To clarify, this can happen on large and small scales and may be demonstrated by people across an organization, not just those in traditionally defined ‘leadership positions.’ It is a combination of both dispositions, how we think about things, and behaviors, the actual tactics we engage in.

Additionally, Leadership Capacity is what enables innovation, change, and dynamism within an organization. This is the planning space that, when done well, focuses on what it takes in today’s world to authentically advance desired outcomes. It incorporates the learning and input that comes from the Engagement Capacity to ensure that the structural elements of an organization align with the aspirations of the Intended Social Benefit. Leadership Capacity is also critical to both the development and potential future renegotiations of the Design Capacity.

Engagement Capacity: the ability of community members to engage with the organization to inform and influence the advancement of community outcomes

Explanation & Purpose: Social-benefit organizations are deeply interdependent with the communities they are part of. As a fiduciary entity, understanding who the beneficiaries are and who is most affected by the organization’s work is critical. Engaging those most affected by an organization is the capacity that validates this part of the fiduciary equation. Engagement capacity is what ultimately informs the Intended Social Benefit and how it is understood as part of the Design Capacity. Additionally, programming must also be responsive and aligned with those who are most affected by it.

Asset Capacity: the ability to identify required assets, attract/acquire those assets, and allocate them effectively to advance community outcomes

Explanation & Purpose: Asset Capacity represents the transition to more structural and tangible areas of an organization. Asset Capacity is an umbrella for the Talent, Infrastructure, and Financial Capacities. This collection of capacities is determined by and in service to the capacities above it. In short, the Asset Capacity represents all the things that are necessary to effectively enable Leadership, Engagement, Program, and Design Capacities.

Talent Capacity: the ability to identify and engage the people with the competence, confidence, and comfort required to meet the Program, Leadership, and Engagement capacity needs

Explanation & Purpose: As mentioned earlier, an organization fundamentally organizes people and their behaviors. It is people who exhibit leadership, deliver programs, and facilitate engagement. Additionally, people are almost always the most abundant and most costly assets and, therefore, represent the most crucial asset to align with organizational design.

Infrastructure Capacity: the ability to identify, put in place, and consistently employ the resources, systems, and processes that support people’s ability to act in alignment with design

Explanation & Purpose: Infrastructure exists to support people and their behaviors. If we had no people, there would be no need for infrastructure. Therefore, we look at infrastructure capacity as the full collection of resources, policies, and systems that best facilitate the success of the talent capacity.

Financial Capacity: ability to identify and engage the financial and in-kind revenue sources and strategies that fully support the overall asset capacity needs

Explanation & Purpose: Having sufficient and effective talent and infrastructure most often requires money to secure those assets. Organizations need to develop both reasonable and sustainable strategies and practices for securing the needed revenue as well as effective systems for financial management and assessment that support the fiduciary responsibility of ensuring assets are effectively and efficiently advancing an organization’s social benefit goals.

More on Design Capacity – The Foundation for Culture, Strategy, and Structure

By nature, social or community benefit organizations are deeply contextual and interdependent within the larger society they operate. The Fiduciary Capacity Model highlights that the ultimate outcome of the organization is to benefit the world. This is a benefit that is externally defined by the world itself. It is people in society who ultimately determine what is beneficial and desired when it comes to quality-of-life outcomes. So, an essential part of a social-benefit organization’s design, the intended community benefit, is not really determined by or under the control of the organization itself. Hence the reason for defining the organization as a fiduciary entity. This external, community-defined outcome is the driver of all other organizational designs and structures.

The interdependence between the organization’s design and the broader community goes even further than just an articulation of what the intended social benefits are. To understand the conditions that need to be in place to achieve the quality-of-life goals the organization aspires to is heavily influenced by external factors. That determination about what it takes to advance that intended social benefit requires grounding in people’s lived experiences and a concerted effort to unpack the reality of the world people live in. It is with this understanding that an organization determines the role it will play.

Identifying and articulating this role is where the lens changes focus on the external context to the actual design and identity of the organization. This is where the ‘we’ and ‘I’ language lives. It is where an organization establishes what needs to be valued, what needs to be understood, what needs to be assumed, and how we think things will happen in order to fulfill the role the organization establishes for itself. This is an organization’s Design Capacity.

Design Capacity is where organizational leadership identifies the organization’s role and what it believes are the key conditions that need to exist to effectively support the advancement of the intended social benefit. The Design Capacity articulates the key criteria that people within the organization rely on to drive their decision-making, interpersonal behavior, and assessment. While the organizational structures like programming, policies, systems, and org charts frame the overall day-to-day work (aka the ‘doing’), the Design Capacity houses the ‘thinking.’ As such, it contains many of the elements that we associate with an organization’s identity – the answer to who we are versus what we do.

Design Capacity is the space where mission, values, desired organizational outcomes, theories of change, approaches, frameworks, lenses, ideology, dogma, beliefs, etc. all live. As such, it serves as the driver for organizational culture, strategy, and structure.

With regard to culture, the Design Capacity articulates what the organization values in terms of behavioral and experiential norms as well as the core assumptions and beliefs that shape understanding and perspectives. In terms of strategy, you have the building blocks of outcomes, theories of change, and approaches. Finally, to support structure, the Design Capacity establishes the criteria with which to align operations (i.e. programs are designed to achieve outcomes in line with a theory of what it takes; policies reinforce behaviors that are necessary and valued; systems engage and focus people in ways that best facilitate effectiveness and integrity, etc.)

It is in the development of the Design Capacity and the subsequent commitment to align thinking and behavior with it that we get the intentionality around strategy and culture that ensures they work in tandem. It is not that strategy drives culture or culture drives strategy. Both culture and strategy reveal underlying assumptions and beliefs about behavior. Ideally that set of assumptions and beliefs are aligned with those articulated in an organization’s Design Capacity (more on this later).

Critical to this examination around capacity, and specifically Design Capacity, is awareness and intentionality. Some capacities, especially operational ones around talent, infrastructure, programming, and finance, present themselves and can be easily observed and described. Design Capacity is not so.

Much of what constitutes an organization’s Design Capacity is disposition, mindset, and thinking. And there is often an assumption that everyone just knows these things. The outcomes and values are obvious and the reasons for why we do things the way we do are generally understood. Unfortunately, that assumption around a truly shared understanding and appreciation for a common set of design elements is often incorrect.

Every organization has a design that could be mapped out. However, doing so may reveal that the outcomes being pursued, what is valued, and/or what assumptions people are working under may not be what the organization intended or may not be consistent across the organization. A lack of tangible artifacts that clearly articulate what the key Design Capacity elements are leaves people making their own inferences and assumptions. This creates space for differences in understanding about what is most critical to guide people’s decision-making and behavior within the organization – often the root of disagreement, confusion, or feeling unfocused or stuck.

The phrase ‘getting everyone on the same page’ comes to mind here. It’s usually what folks raise when asked why they feel a need to engage in strategic planning or governance development or culture improvement or program alignment or …

What Orgforward has found is that the call to ‘get everyone on the same page’ is often an indication that the organization’s Design Capacity is not well understood. When attention and intention are directed at this organizational capacity and it is fleshed out and articulated, we can literally have that page in hand. Once in hand, the Design Capacity provides the basis for decision-making, planning, and ultimately behavior that holds people accountable to their fiduciary obligations across the entire organization.

For this to happen, people need some form of reference that explains the values, beliefs, assumptions, and perspectives in terms that are agreed to and understood by everyone. The more precise the language is, the more likely people will have that common understanding. This demands that organizations invest the time and thinking required to articulate and validate the Design Capacity and create an artifact people can continually access and reference. Literally, when we say we need everyone on the same page, we need to agree to what needs to be on that page and then actually produce it as an artifact as opposed to an idea or concept.

[1] Merriam-Webster Dictionary (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fiduciary)

[2] Modified definitions based on LegalDictionary.net (https://legaldictionary.net/fiduciary/) and Merriam-Webster Dictionary (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fiduciary)

The need to have a shared understanding and articulation of an organization’s Design Capacity is the foundation for The Integrity Profile. It is the tool that brings all the ideas and conceptual elements together in one place (a.k.a. “the same page”).  When we think of the question, ‘integrity to what?’, the Integrity Profile provides the clear, accessible answer. It is the resource anyone can access to inform and assess decisions, plans, systems, structures, and behaviors.

Integrity is doing and committing to things that are aligned with the contents of The Integrity Profile – which is the organizational articulation of the Design Capacity.

The breadth of elements that make up an organization’s Design Capacity will vary from organization to organization. This will, in turn, affect what is included in The Integrity Profile. The intent with both resources is to identify and clarify the key ideas and assumptions that define the organization.

The template that follows includes the most common elements that appear on The Integrity Profile. There is no strict order when it comes to developing an organization’s profile, although most organizations do start with the defined social benefit (what shows up in the template as Community Aspiration) and Community Role. After that, some organizations prefer to focus on what is valued and believed while others will emphasize outcomes first.

The Integrity Profile Template

Community Aspiration: A simple, declarative statement describing an equitable, quality-of-life vision of the community

Community Role: A short description of the specific role the organization plays within the community that illustrates its contributions to advancing the Community Aspiration

Outcomes (Areas of Focus & Targeted Outcomes): An articulation of the outcomes the organization specifically works to advance in the community. These are generally descriptions of specific quality-of-life characteristics people experience and/or qualitative descriptions of how systems or structures should work. This section can be organized into different areas of focus depending on the breadth of impact an organization takes on (see below for more about outcomes and their framing)

What is Valued (aka Behavioral Expectations): A list of the core behavioral and expectational norms that describe how people engage with one another both internally and externally across the organization. Generally expressed as statements that illustrate behavior in action (think verbs as opposed to nouns and adjectives)

Guiding Perspectives & Beliefs: A listing of the frameworks, social perspectives, belief systems, thinking models, etc. that guide decision-making, action, and assessment. Sometimes referred to as ‘lens’ the organization applies to its work and understanding of the world

Methodology / Approaches: A list of the general methodology the organization uses to advance the above listed outcomes. Rather than a simple list of programs, this section illustrates more about an organization’s theory of change and the types of work it does.

Programs (optional): Some organizations will list the specific programmatic efforts that align with the above stated Approaches section. Given that programs and organizational activities can change more frequently than the overarching approach (which is often a bit more theoretical or expansive in nature), many organizations opt to leave programming off of The Integrity Profile so that there is less need for updates as program capacity changes within an organization.

Where are Vision, Mission, and Values

For a tool that captures an organization’s key design elements, it may seem peculiar that the industry standard labels of Vision, Mission, and Values are missing. While the underlying concepts are captured, there is an intentional shift in language used within The Integrity Profile.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these commonly used terms. Rather, given their long-term usage, they carry a lot of assumptions or anchoring biases[1] which tend to predispose people to think or react to them in particular ways. Additionally, the content of these statements is often word-smithed in ways that focus more on public relations, including language that is either resonant with trends or overly broad. While useful in the public communications context, it can make traditional Vision, Mission, and Values statements less effective as decision-making criteria.

The alternative language used in The Integrity Profile is primarily meant to re-focus thinking. As mentioned, potentially unfamiliar terms will interrupt the assumptions people hold about these common labels. So rather than focusing on whether something aligns with ‘best practices’ or people’s notion of what a good or bad mission statement is, people can focus on the purpose of the statement and whether it conveys what the organization wants people to understand and use as decision-making and behavioral criteria.

The specific changes are as follows:

Vision Statement >>> Community Aspiration

Vision statements can often be self-referential and either focus on a vision of the organization or a narrow vision of community based on an organization’s approach and target beneficiaries. Additionally, statements can often be phrased in terms of problems (eliminating bad) or casting some people in the community as having a deficit.

Community Aspiration is intended to focus attention away from the organization and onto the community as a whole. It is a bold statement about the type of thriving community everyone should experience and one that the organization is committed to contributing to, today and into the future. It is phrased in terms of the positive quality-of-life characteristics people experience as opposed to the lack of a bad or negative factor condition.

Mission Statement >>> Community Role

Community Aspiration statement focuses attention on the community as a whole as opposed to the organization. There are many conditions and capacities needed within the community to make the community aspiration a reality. The Community Role statement describes the specific conditions the organization is designed to affect.

The Community Role statement is similar to a traditional mission statement in that it broadly describes the methods an organization uses to contribute to the community aspiration. It often includes who the organization engages with, what broad community level outcomes it focuses on, and how it goes about advancing those outcomes for those people.

Values >>> What is Valued (aka Behavioral Expectations)

The primary shift from Values to What is Valued is the focus on behavior as opposed to abstract adjectives and nouns. This is meant to be a clear articulation of what it looks and feels like for people to exhibit the values in action. It is where we can illustrate what it means to walk the talk so that everyone associated with the organization has a shared understanding of what to expect in terms of their own behavior and the interactions with others. What is Valued is the articulation of culture expectations.

More On Outcomes - To What Ends

Regarding the idea of outcomes, Orgforward’s behaviorist approach demands that goals, results, impact - or any other word we use to communicate what we hope something leads to – be contextualized in relationship to people and their lived experience. Outcomes are quality-of-life measures articulated in terms of what people are doing, experiencing, believing, feeling, or having.

Outcomes are about something that is actually going on in and around a person and how they are in relationship to that thing. For this reason, there is a concerted effort to avoid framing outcomes as potential or opportunity to do something but rather focus them on the doing. For example, ‘accessible quality education’ is not the outcome for a person, ‘accessing quality education’ is. You will notice that outcomes use action verbs (see this blog about kinetic v. potential energy and outcomes).

At first blush, using quality-of-life as the definitional criteria for what makes an outcome may compel us to think outcomes must be grandiose, or even pollyannaish. Perhaps our brains naturally jump there when we hear the phrase ‘quality of life.’ But outcomes come in all shapes and sizes. They may be as small as a person knowing a specific fact or having the right tool for the job. And, they can be as big as everyone breathing healthy air or feeling like they have a place to call home. What makes it an outcome is that it is an identifiable experience in a person’s life – a quality of their life.

Going back to framing organizations as things that organize behavior, we need to start with clearly defining the desirable outcomes for the people affected by an organization. Then, we identify the behaviors that lead to those outcomes for those people and ultimately design the systems and structures to support those behaviors. Accountability is to the outcomes and integrity is alignment of design and action with what it actually takes to make those outcomes a real, sustainable possibility for the people affected. (*for more on this way of structuring design and decision making, please visit Creating the Future and explore the Catalytic Decision Making™ model here)[2]

(Special note on the natural world: While the above is person-centric, it also applies to the living world around us. There is latitude in this approach to draw other living systems into the outcomes language. We can talk about quality-of-life outcomes in terms of healthy ecosystems - thriving lives for plants and animals and other living things. You will notice that Orgforward’s own Community Aspiration statement includes the outcome of “vibrant, healthy communities” which, while a broad, sweeping statement, is intentionally inclusive of both people and planet.)

On Equity, Inclusion, and Outcomes

Another noticeable piece of Orgforward’s work is the prevalence of the term people in how both personal and organizational outcomes and values are defined. The word people is deliberately inclusive. When considering the beneficial outcomes and values that align with what constitutes a thriving, rewarding community for everyone, what is true is true. If we believe anyone should be valued and/or experience a beneficial community outcome, then everyone should.

The social benefit and support sector (what we often refer to as the nonprofit sector) has a tendency to focus on the populations it serves as opposed to the population we are all collectively a part of. We see this in mission, vision, and values language that identifies the specific characteristics or demographics of a targeted subset of the population an organization hopes to benefit. This subset is then used as the target subject of the organization’s outcomes and values (i.e. We want those experiencing poverty to be treated with dignity OR We want those from under-resourced neighborhoods to have the opportunity to…). Unfortunately, this descriptive language is often problem- and/or deficit-centric. It either intentionally or unintentionally ‘otherizes’ our community into those who have and have not. This is another reason why The Integrity Profile avoids the mission, vision, and values labels as mentioned above.

I tread very carefully here. It is essential that we acknowledge and name the inequitable quality-of-life different people are experiencing, and that we clarify where we intend to focus organizational efforts – this usually shows up in an organization’s programmatic approach and strategies. At the same time, we need to acknowledge that the outcomes and values that guide those approaches and strategies actually originate from what everyone needs to experience for us to achieve our vision of a thriving world.

Using the term people throughout our outcomes and values statements engages us in an equity dialog around what it takes to thrive. It reminds us that we believe everyone deserves the beneficial outcomes and everyone should experience our values in action. Grounded in this, we can honestly engage in identifying what it takes for a person to achieve an outcome and then work to determine how different lived experiences demand different conditions to get there – an equitable approach.

It is not uncommon to see discomfort within some organizations with such inclusive outcomes and values language. Most often, the discomfort is expressed as a fear of accountability - “we can’t say ‘people’ because we don’t serve everyone and can’t measure whether everyone is achieving that outcome.”  While there are real limits to an organization’s resources and capacity, which often create a sense of scarcity that leads to narrowing the breadth of our work, our commitment to outcomes and values need not be bound by scarcity. Outcomes and values should be universal and inclusive. While an organization often needs to focus its work on a specific population, everyone who is affected by an organization should expect the outcomes and values to apply to them.

On Anti-bad Outcomes

One final caveat to Orgforward’s language around outcomes.

Since outcomes are really conditions that a person experiences in life, we try to avoid outcomes that are couched in the absence of a negative. For example, ‘eliminating poverty,’ ‘preventing abuse,’ ‘stopping crime’ (add in your favorite anti-bad thing goal). These anti-bad outcomes all frame the aspiration in terms of removing something bad – really a double negative.

Every anti-bad goal is truly important. We want to name these bad things and objectively have less of them in our world. And there is usually an implied understanding that these bad outcomes prevent people from having the positive, thriving lives we envision. However, besides the challenges of proving the absence of a negative, defining our outcomes in terms of what they are NOT or what they are AGAINST narrowly focuses our attention on the problem as opposed to the benefit. It tends to hyper-emphasize that the problem is the primary limiting condition (or barrier) to the beneficial outcome. We begin to assume that simply removing a detrimental condition will lead to the desired outcome. We often miss the beneficial conditions that we can create now that would naturally lead to our aspirational goal – perhaps advancing the desired outcomes in spite of the existence of the detrimental condition. It is not unheard of that a ‘problem’ is seemingly removed, but the desired benefit isn’t achieved.

Consider how we talk about housing, and lack of housing in our country, as an example. Being underhoused or without shelter is awful. So, we talk about eliminating homelessness and invest heavily in ways to mitigate and prevent it. Many people do actually avoid ever being homeless and many move from homeless to housed. However, their lives of not-homeless may not be thriving. They are not guaranteed to be homefull (a word that my spell check won’t even recognize). So, for these people, we are eliminating homelessness, but they are not thriving in the realm of homefull. Imagine how the approach and expectations around success change when we say our outcome is ‘homefullness.’ We are forced to define it first in terms of what someone is full of, and then we can consider what conditions DO people have to have to be considered ‘homefull’ and what does it take to make that possible for them.

Oh, And Then There is Culture

Many people have heard some version of this quote about strategy, culture, and organizational success – “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” And, if you are not directly familiar with the quote which is often attributed to Peter Drucker[3], you have probably heard something about the overwhelming influence culture has on an organization. As with many pithy observations, there is both truth and oversimplification in them.

One weakness of this statement is that it has the potential to be interpreted as strategy and culture being two distinct forces within an organization. In some cases, this is true when the fundamental pillars underlying a strategic approach are not the same pillars that underlay the culture. In essence, they are seen as two distinctly different things requiring their own approaches and interventions. When this is the case, culture does have a greater influence on organizational outcomes than strategy.

However, reality is much more nuanced and interconnected than this quote implies. Strategy and culture, when looked at with intention and in the larger context of an organization’s overall purpose, share the same DNA. They both rely on fundamental assumptions and beliefs about desired outcomes and what it takes to advance them. And both are fundamentally about people’s behavior.

This line of thinking about culture and strategy ties directly to the earlier statement that organizations are truly about organizing behavior. Strategy tends to lean into the tactical side, capturing the conditions and behaviors that lay the path to advancing community benefit – a roadmap per se, as strategy is often described. Culture leans more into the conditions that influence day-to-day behavior and decision-making.

When the desired behavior embedded in the strategy matches the behavior shaped by the culture, all is well. We have alignment. Misalignment, and the situation in which culture will overpower or undermine strategy, is when the desired behavior embedded in the strategy doesn’t match the behavior promoted by the culture.[4] So the truth of the quote is that culture does drive behavior, and, if that behavior is not aligned with the behavior needed to enact a strategy these forces will be in conflict.

To understand the force of organizational culture, let’s take a moment to think about what drives behavior. A person’s behavior is generally a result of both their own disposition and the situations they find themselves in.[5]  We are constantly reconciling our internal compass with the external ones we encounter. Depending on the specific moment and the relative strength of our internal influencers versus the external ones, we react in particular ways. Most importantly, we must recognize that the reaction, or behavior, exhibited by someone at any moment is a culmination of those two factors, personal disposition and external circumstances. The behavior is really a person navigating through an external influence.

If we are assessing the cause of a behavior, we must be willing to give attention to both the person and the situation. In fact, this is the root of the idea of systemic and/or institutionalized impact. It is simply recognition that there are organized external factors that consistently have influence on how people behave when they encounter those factors, be they social structures, political structures, organizational structures, etc.

Organizational culture is one of those external influences people are navigating. In the context of an organization, it clarifies what behaviors and underlying decision-making norms are valued in order to be successful within that organization – pointing people in the direction of what should be considered when taking action.

To reinforce the general acceptance of this idea of culture’s influence across an organization, take a look at DuckDuckGo’s artificial intelligence (AI) response to the prompt ‘what is the role of culture in an organization.’  Given that AI draws patterns across thousands of statements about culture, this response can be considered a normed perspective on the topic (which is agreeable in this case)

“Culture influences decision-making and behavior at every level. It sets the tone for how leaders lead and how employees engage with their tasks and each other. A healthy culture promotes transparency, accountability, and trust, which are essential for effective teamwork and sustainable success.”

Based on all of this, Orgforward defines Organizational Culture as follows:

the repeated pattern of situations and experiences people have within an organization that reveals what is valued and rewarded, ultimately influencing their decision-making and behavior over time

When considering whether an organizational culture is strong or weak, the determining factor is how influential and consistent people’s behavior and decision-making are. When people across an organization share a common understanding of what is valued; consistently experience and observe those values in action; and are rewarded for behaving in alignment with what is valued – this would be considered a strong culture. If, on the other hand, there are different interpretations of what is supposed to be valued; people’s behaviors appear to be inconsistent or aligned with a variety of different values and assumptions; and/or there are few consistent consequences to misaligned actions – this would be a weak culture, meaning there isn’t a clearly consistent force that is organizing and aligning decision-making and behavior across the organization.

However, whether described as weak or strong, organizational culture is always highly values-aligned. By this, we mean that the consistent experiences people have over time within an organization do reveal what is valued by those with power and influence, independent of whether this is clearly articulated or aligned with an organization’s stated values. The key is to identify what is actually being valued and expressed through the organizational culture based on what people are truly experiencing, and then determining if that is indeed what needs to be valued to advance the goals and outcomes of the organization.

This all is to illustrate that organizational culture is experiential not rhetorical. It is not a list of words or aspirational statements or open declarations that determine an organization’s culture. It is the actual experiences people have on a day-to-day basis over time. It is how people interact with one another. It is what those with influence and power encourage and reward.

Organizational culture is ultimately how people feel and what people understand based on their experiences. Once people understand what is really valued and what beliefs and assumptions the organization operates on, they will align their decision-making and behavior independent of what any rhetorical representations claim the culture or strategy to be.

Ultimately, the goal is to have alignment between the experience and the rhetoric. The human brain is brilliant at sensing misalignment. Either consciously or unconsciously, people quickly identify the hypocrisy of misaligned experiential and rhetorical culture. In short, we pick up on the hypocrisy and are more likely to turn away from the aspirations of the rhetorical culture as a guide for behavior and decision-making, instead reacting to the reality of the experienced culture.

This is where the Design Capacity and The Integrity Profile come into play. As explained earlier, the Design Capacity is where the values, beliefs, assumptions, perspectives, and theories of ‘what works and why’ all figuratively live. The Integrity Profile is where the literal articulation of these elements exist. With regard to an organization having integrity and/or people within the organization acting with integrity, it is simply alignment between actual behavior across the organization and the expectations established within the Design Capacity and codified in The Integrity Profile.

[1] Anchoring bias describes people’s tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information they receive on a topic. Regardless of the accuracy of that information, people use it as a reference point, or anchor, to make subsequent judgments. Because of this, anchoring bias can lead to poor decisions in various contexts, such as salary negotiations, medical diagnoses, and purchases.”; Scribbr; https://www.scribbr.com/research-bias/anchoring-bias/;

[2] Creating the Future – www.creatingthefuture.org

[3] For about Peter Drucker, visit the Drucker Institute, https://drucker.institute/

[4] For more why culture dominates in this situation and to see a bit more about the shared DNA of strategy and culture, take a look at this post – ‘The Anatomy of Strategy and Culture: Why Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast When These Forces are Misaligned.’

[5] Creating the Future: Behavior Model - www.creatingthefuture.org