The Integrity Brief

In my previous edition, I ended with a question: how does a leader take responsibility for the state they are in, and for the state of the organisation they lead?

That question is the invitation to write about something I have carried for years and rarely tried to put into so few lines: integrity.

My own work with integrity began, once again, with a book — this time Till We Have Faces, a novel by C.S. Lewis (yes, the same author as the Narnia books). I was drawn into the dilemmas of its narrator, Orual, who tries so carefully to do the right thing all the way through — only to discover, when she finally sees the wider perspective, that her careful efforts had not given her the life she expected.

Reading her, the weight of my own habit arrived all at once: the constant evaluating of my actions and my judgement. And I saw that the habit had been starting from the wrong place. The work was never to evaluate my judgement more closely. It was to make sure I was in a condition — in brain and in body — that allowed me to make the long-term choices: to choose love before money, to choose peace of mind before the struggle of the calendar. That responsibility can be carried by no one but me. It is my responsibility to be in a condition where I can truly feel and see my own needs, as well as the needs of the people around me. Before reaching that state of mind, I never really had a chance of choosing wisely in this crowded world of ours.

That realisation became the definition I have worked with since. Personal integrity is the ability to create and maintain a mental condition in which you can be the person that you — and the people who depend on you — need you to be.

This matters because of what the condition makes possible. When you are in a state of trust, safety, and energy, you can meet whatever arrives around you with clarity and full awareness. When you are stressed, afraid, or depleted, your judgement narrows. Each day spent with narrowed judgement carries you a little further from integrity, and each strained choice leaves consequences that make the way back harder.

Keeping your integrity intact asks for discipline and awareness. It is a personal responsibility — and it is also a source of agency. I believe every person already holds what they need to live the life they want, once they move from fear and strain toward trust, safety, and integrity. This is as true for leaders as for anyone.

Integrity is worth distinguishing from authenticity. Authenticity, as I understand it, is the ability to appear as a person of integrity. That has its own value. But appearance without the underlying condition becomes hard work over time. A sincerity held up from the outside asks for constant maintenance; a sincerity that rests on the actual condition simply holds.

Sustaining this condition of sound judgement — at work and in private life — asks for constant awareness and, just as much, constant forgiveness. We live in a steady current that tempts us toward short-term decisions, and at times we will follow it. The real cost comes afterward, in thinking less of ourselves for having followed it. That habit of self-diminishment is what carries us further away from integrity.

Here I have made a strange observation. Most of us spend a good part of each day quietly telling ourselves that we are falling short. We do it because it seems to produce motivation. Yet I have come to believe it costs us the lasting enjoyment of the life and the time we have been given. In my experience, a calm and consistent self-confidence carries us further — and always closer to the person we hope to become.

The question that interests me now is whether the same holds for organisations. This is where the idea of systemic integrity becomes useful.

Imagine a company with the capacity to regulate itself the way a thriving person does. Such a company could meet the world as it actually is, rather than as it was planned to be. In a time of genuine unpredictability, that is a deeply practical capacity.

Systemic integrity gives us a way to see the dynamics that emerge inside a company as its inner competencies meet outer challenges — and a way to keep the pace of progress aligned with the real condition of the organisation.

I have many thoughts on how this kind of integrity can emerge and be sustained, and I look forward to refining them through your reflections.

Thank you for reading, responding, and sharing. My previous edition opened conversations I keep returning to, and more than 20,000 of you now read and pass on these reflections. I am grateful for that.