Organizations can be high-performing and systematically wrong. Targets are met, dashboards remain green, and decisions appear justified—yet what gets funded and prioritised can drift away from the institution's original purpose. This paper examines how that drift becomes embedded in governance systems as strategic intent is translated into criteria, metrics, and allocation rules that gradually replace the intent they were meant to represent. Rather than treating misalignment as an execution problem, the paper argues that drift originates earlier: at the point where intent becomes measurable and decision-relevant. It introduces the Translation Trap as a structural condition in which institutions optimize for representations of success while continuing to appear aligned. The paper's central contribution is a practical governance diagnostic for detecting translation drift before it becomes locked into funding decisions, capabilities, and institutional incentives. Using existing artefacts—dashboards, scorecards, decision criteria, and recent allocation decisions—the framework enables leaders to trace what the system is actually selecting for, identify where meaning shifted, and test whether current decisions still reflect institutional intent. Built around tools such as the Executive Stress Test, Drift Snapshot, and Coherence Group Audit, the method is designed for direct use in governance and allocation contexts. The paper contributes to the broader Coherence Programme, which studies how institutions drift not because they stop functioning, but because systems gradually learn to succeed on translated definitions of success.
Robin Edgard Ulrik Mertens (2026) studied this question.