Intent: Hidden in Plain Sight
The Hidden Force That Drives Great Companies
TL;DR:
Intent is your company's hidden, emotional "why"—the true drive beyond formal documents like vision or goals. While powerful, this unseen force needs constant feedback and open systems to avoid becoming toxic and cult-like. Understand it to truly lead.
Every company strives for direction, but what is it actually driven by? Beyond the obvious mission statements and quarterly goals a powerful force is hidden. This deeper concept, which I call Intent, sparked two crucial questions in last week's live Substack call: what is it, how does it differ from traditional strategic terms, and can it ever lead to negative outcomes?
More Than Documents: Intent as Your Company's True Drive
In the complex environment of "company life" and especially of corporate strategy, ambiguous, overloaded terms like "vision," "mission," and "goals" are required elements. They are intended to meticulously lay out what a company aims to achieve and where it's headed. Yet, my conclusion is to position Intent as a concept above all others. I see it as the powerful, dynamic force within the organization, way beyond mere written statements – which are still necessary and very helpful – to define a company's true drive. But what exactly is this "intent," how does it differ, and what separates its empowering influence from a potentially toxic one?
A Step Up From Backstage: Embracing the Elusive Core of Corporate Drive
I see Intent as the more ephemeral and, if you like, emotional aspect, while vision, mission, goals, or even my own "Markers" are more formal and really explicit.
Imagine a musical score – precise notes, rhythms, and dynamics, precise to the note. The composer tries to express what’s in his head and his imagination by use of a very formal language. He knows he can't express everything, but at least the formal “correctness” of what he hears. He knows and suffers from what is missing in his transcription – the intrinsic, unavoidable gap between the formal score and the ephemeral emotions, soul, and creativity it tries to express. While he might be in awe of what a master can create from the sheet, he also fears the limitations of formal notation to capture his full artistic intent and spirit. While a recording would offer ultimate precision, it wouldn’t scale for an orchestra, which requires a more formal, collaborative guide for its sub-elements in the process of “studying” a musical piece. The score is a very conscious choice, a very conscious compromise that is required to make the music accessible to more musicians and listeners. This is akin to a company's vision, mission, and goals: explicit, written, and clear.
Now, imagine the interpretation of that score by a brilliant orchestra, loading it up with emotion, nuance, and a driving purpose that isn't explicitly written on the page. This is where "intent" lives. That intent being ephemeral also makes it so vulnerable.
Thus, in our business context, "Intent" can be defined as:
The Underlying Purpose and Desired Outcome (The "Why"): Beyond the what (goals) or where (vision), intent goes deeply into the fundamental reason why those objectives matter. It’s the core reason why anyone wanted to found this company, to have this impact on the world. It's sheer core motivation, the driving force that fuels all actions.
Aspiration and Ambitious Direction: Intent often points to an audacious, challenging future state (or even better, in idealized design: a better current state) that stretches beyond current capabilities or immediate plans. It's about winning competitive battles, achieving market leadership (winning in Roger L. Martin’s Play To Win framework), or even fundamentally reshaping an industry.
Emotional and Intellectual Energy: Far from a passive statement, intent is charged with commitment and drive. It's the emotional and intellectual force that mobilizes individuals and the entire organization, a deeply held conviction rather than just a strategic declaration.
Implicit Guiding Principles for Action: While vision and goals are explicit, intent often implicitly guides daily decisions. It's the "spirit" of the strategy, allowing for improvisation and adaptation. When individuals understand the core "why," they're empowered to determine the "how."
Focus on Continuous Improvement and Adaptation: An intent-driven company is inherently dynamic. Its underlying purpose pushes it to constantly learn, adapt, and seek new ways to achieve its core objective, even if the specific pathways evolve.
Cultural Depths: Where Intent Hides in Your Organization
This understanding of "intent" finds a direct parallel in Edgar Schein's levels of organizational culture. Schein describes that culture exists on three levels:
Artifacts: The visible, tangible elements (e.g., office layout, dress code, symbols). These are like the explicit "musical score." Consider a company in Hamburg whose outstanding office culture was so drastically expressed in its artifacts that visitors instantly 'felt that difference' upon entering the office. This level of culture, while impactful, in itself doesn't guarantee long-term success.
Espoused Values: The stated beliefs and norms (e.g., mission statements, company values, philosophies). These are the declared interpretations. Required: probably, weak on its own: for sure. Exhibit: Motivational posters in companies are on this level. They can easily come across as very cynical, as soon as there is even a tiny gap between words and action.
Basic Underlying Assumptions: The deepest, often unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that truly guide behavior. These are rarely discussed, are difficult to observe from within, and are the ultimate source of values and actions. This is the realm of the intangible and tacit. Which also leads to myths like “you cannot influence this” or “you can break it by writing it down.” But that’s just bad handling and a weak understanding of this concept.
Because artifacts and espoused values are so explicit, companies often over-index on them, striving for perfection and creating theatrics, while the underlying assumptions remain neglected.
Our definition of "intent" aligns most closely with Schein's "basic underlying assumptions." Like these assumptions, a company's true intent is often:
Intangible, Tacit, and Hard to Describe: It's felt and acted upon more than it's explicitly articulated in everyday conversation.
Deeply Ingrained: It represents the collective, often unspoken, understanding of "how we do things around here" and "why we truly exist."
A Powerful Driver of Behavior: It shapes how individuals perceive problems, make decisions, and interact, even when no explicit rule or value is present. It is the fundamental mental model for how the organization solves problems of external adaptation and internal integration.
Thus, when a company is "driven by intent," it means its foundational, often unarticulated "why" has permeated its collective consciousness, becoming a powerful, almost unconscious, guide for action, even beyond the explicit statements of vision, mission, and goals.
With all the risk of sounding esoteric: the worst mistake you can make is to mistake intent with the more explicit levels of artifacts and espoused values. Intent is the ephemeral, tacit, and intangible part. Dialectically, though, companies need to master the art of artifacts and espoused values (and much more: operations) to help Intent survive.
Beyond Semantics: Differentiating Intent from Goals & Vision
Using our musical analogy:
Vision (The Aspirational Destination): This is the grand, overarching melody or Leitmotiv – what the ideal future (or even better: present) looks like (e.g., "To be the global leader in sustainable energy"). Intent is the passion and conviction behind wanting to reach that destination, the intrinsic drive that makes the vision a compelling, imperative reason to act. Intent is the "I need to see the world like this" of the founder once he imagined the world changed by his idea.
Mission (The Purpose / What We Do): This represents the specific instrumentation and core rhythm – what the company does, for whom, and how it creates value (e.g., "To provide reliable, affordable, and clean energy solutions through innovative technology"). Intent provides the depth and conviction behind the mission, the belief in why this mission is vital and why the company is uniquely driven to fulfill it.
Goals (Specific Targets): These are the individual notes or movements within the symphony – specific, measurable targets (e.g., "Increase market share by 15% in three years"). Intent is the motivational force propelling these achievements, understanding why these goals are chosen and fostering the unwavering commitment to overcome obstacles. If goals are the "what to do," intent is the "why we will do it with everything we've got."
In essence, while vision, mission, and goals provide the explicit blueprint, intent is the dynamic, driving force – the "why," the "spirit," the "unwavering commitment," and the "interpretive guidance" that transforms that blueprint into a living, adapting reality.
To wrap it up: Intent is the tacit, intangible, more emotional force, the drive behind everything. Vision, Mission, Goals, Plans are the expression of that intent. While very small groups might easily align around intent alone (early startup, e.g.), the bigger an organization becomes, it requires strong and disciplined explication to be able to scale. If you have hundreds or thousands of employees, Intent does not scale; the founder cannot reach everyone. That’s why now we need to go for the risk of documenting Intent – knowing that Intent cannot be fully captured (see "The Musical Score"). The explicit documentation is now necessary but not sufficient.
Understanding the Shadow Side: When Intent Turns Toxic
In the call, we also touched the question of “Is Intent exclusively a good thing?” And of course, the answer is a screaming loud “NOOO!”
“The path to hell is paved by good intentions!”
While a shared intent can be profoundly unifying and empowering, it carries a critical risk. For Intent to have a chance to remain helpful, an organization needs at least:
A sensor system connected to the outside world
A sensor system to stay internally connected
Balanced Autonomy & Interdependence: Departments and other units need a balance between being internally focused to 'do their job' and maintaining focused exchange with other units at defined interfaces. This is the crucial balance between Autonomy and Interdependence.
Without these feedback and input systems, the very power of intent can morph into something destructive, having an organization turn into a cult. The difference is the presence or absence of robust, challenging feedback, signaling, and sensor systems. As socially comfortable as it might feel for an organization to avoid internal or external friction, this isolation risks turning it into a tribal, undifferentiated, hyper-aligned system, slowly dying in unawareness of crucial changes.
Healthy intent creates unity, empowerment, resilience, and innovation. Toxic intent, often seen in cult-like environments, turns up when:
Intent Becomes Dogma: The initial healthy, convinced, and fresh core "why" becomes an unchallengeable, absolute truth. What was once new and revolutionary turns static and resistant to challenge, transforming an open system into a closed, reactionary one. Questioning the fundamental intent now isn't tolerated, removing feedback systems to signal if it's unrealistic, harmful, or obsolete.
Blind Obedience: Leadership's interpretation of the intent becomes the only valid one. Employees are expected to follow directives unquestioned, even if they intuitively feel something is wrong or ineffective. "The ends justify the means" becomes a dangerous mantra. "Does this make sense?" becomes a career-limiting thought.
Suppression of Dissent and Critical Thinking: Constructive criticism, diverse opinions, and challenging assumptions are viewed as disloyalty or a lack of commitment. Groupthink dominates, and information contradicting the prevailing narrative is ignored.
Isolation and Us-vs.-Them Mentality: The intense internal focus on intent leads to viewing external stakeholders (competitors, regulators, even customers) with suspicion or as obstacles to the "higher purpose."
Charismatic Leader and Dependent Followers: The intent becomes inextricably linked to a single charismatic leader. Followers become dependent on this leader's interpretation and approval, losing independent judgment.
It’s important to understand and embrace that Intent is a very brittle, sensitive, and potentially transient animal. To maintain it in good shape should be the highest attention of a company’s leadership, and it requires strategy, clarity, discipline, and organizational excellence, the bigger the organization becomes. That’s why I chose Intent as the ideal roof under which all the things I will write about live together and make coherent sense.