Write your company's purpose as rules an AI can follow

Most mission statements are written for a wall. They inspire, or try to, and they decide nothing. Once software starts making decisions on the company's behalf, purpose has to do real work. It has to tell a system what to do when the instructions run out.

Three layers

First, what is forbidden. Hard limits, written so a system can check a proposed action against them: never share customer data outside the contract, never commit the company above a set amount, never make a promise the terms of service do not allow. When a limit is hit, the system refuses, records it and tells a person.

Second, how to choose. Most decisions are trade-offs: speed against quality, cost against impact, keeping a customer against winning a new one, margin against growth. Write down which way the company leans, and by how much. Two systems reading the same priorities should reach the same decision.

Third, who we are. What binds people to the company when work is no longer held together by a shared office: why people stay, what their work makes visible, and, just as important, who the company is not for. A purpose that includes everyone holds no one.

Three tests

Could a system, given only this document, make a decision your leadership would agree with? Could it decide what not to build, when building has become cheap and the temptation is to build everything? Could a talented person, reading only the third layer, say why they would stay and who would not fit?

If any answer is no, the purpose is still a poster. Rewrite it until it can be used.

← Blog