The Coherence Advantage: Why Good Organizations Drift — and What Leaders See Too Late

This paper examines why high-performing organizations can appear successful while systematically drifting from their original strategic intent. It shows how strong governance, clear metrics, and consistent execution can mask underlying drift as meaning shifts across decision-making layers. The paper argues that organizational performance can remain stable—even improve—while coherence erodes. As decision criteria, evaluation models, and performance metrics evolve, they reshape how intent is interpreted in practice, often without being visible to leadership. Over time, this creates a structural gap between what organizations aim to achieve and what their decision systems actually optimize. Leaders typically encounter the consequences of this drift only after it has become embedded in routines, metrics, and allocation logic. The paper contributes an interpretive perspective on strategy and organizational performance, demonstrating how alignment can erode under conditions of apparent success. It introduces a framework for identifying early signals of drift in institutional decision-making. This paper is part of the Coherence Programme. Further materials and companion papers are available at: https://thecoherenceprogramme.org/