Custodians of Spirit: Leading with Essence

“A leader is someone who holds the space for the brilliance of others.” — Marianne Williamson

The Delicate Dance of Essence Stewardship

When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he faced a daunting challenge. The once-dominant tech giant had lost its way under previous leadership, with declining relevance, infighting between divisions, and a culture that had become insular and defensive. Microsoft’s essence—its foundational purpose of democratising computing—had become buried beneath bureaucratic layers and a defensive fixation on Windows.

Nadella’s approach wasn’t to invent something new but to reconnect with something enduring—Microsoft’s original purpose of empowering people through technology. “Microsoft exists to build products that empower others,” he reminded the organisation. Yet he also understood that expression of this timeless essence needed to evolve dramatically in a world transformed by cloud computing and mobile devices.

This delicate balance—maintaining connection with foundational purpose while evolving its expression—represents the core challenge of essence leadership. It requires simultaneously holding two seemingly contradictory ideas: that something must remain unchanging while everything around it transforms.

As Nadella wrote in his book “Hit Refresh,” “I needed to lead the company with my own distinctive point of view rather than trying to be a ‘clone’ of Bill [Gates] or Steve [Ballmer].” He recognised that his task was fundamentally about understanding “what made Microsoft, Microsoft” while bringing his own leadership approach.

This essence stewardship challenge isn’t unique to tech giants. Every organisation’s leader, from startup founders to corporate executives to non-profit directors, faces this same fundamental tension: How do you maintain what makes your organisation distinctively itself while adapting to changing circumstances? How do you know what to preserve and what to evolve? How do you transmit the irreplaceable core to new team members who never experienced its origins?

These questions cut to the heart of leadership’s most important responsibility—not just achieving results today but ensuring the organisational soul that makes those results possible continues through inevitable transitions and transformations.

The Essence-Performance Tension

One of the most challenging aspects of essence leadership is navigating the perceived tension between essence integrity and performance demands. Market realities, investor expectations, competitive pressures, and operational constraints create continual push-pull between “doing what’s right” and “getting results.”

This tension is particularly visible during difficult periods. When faced with missed targets, shrinking margins, or competitive threats, leaders often face immense pressure to compromise essence for short-term results:

The technology company that sacrifices privacy protections to meet data monetisation targets
The food producer that reduces ingredient quality to improve margins
The service organisation that cuts customer-centric practices to increase efficiency
The professional services firm that takes on misaligned clients to meet growth expectations

These moments reveal whether essence truly operates as a core operating system or merely represents marketing language.

The False Dichotomy

The essence-performance tension is often presented as an either/or choice: either maintain essence purity or achieve business results. This framing creates an artificial conflict that makes essence seem like a luxury during challenging times rather than the foundation of sustainable success.

In reality, the most successful essence leaders reject this false dichotomy. They understand that essence isn’t opposed to performance but foundational to it. The question isn’t whether to prioritise essence or results, but how to achieve results through essence rather than despite it.

Consider CVS Health’s decision to stop selling tobacco products in 2014. This move eliminated approximately $2 billion in annual revenue—a significant short-term performance sacrifice. Yet CEO Larry Merlo framed this not as choosing values over performance but as aligning performance with a deeper purpose: “Simply put, the sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose—helping people on their path to better health.”

What seemed like a performance sacrifice actually represented essence alignment that created long-term advantage. The decision reinforced CVS’s position as a healthcare company rather than merely a retailer, enabling strategic transformation that has driven substantial growth since then.

The Integration Mindset

Effective essence leaders adopt an integration mindset rather than seeing essence and performance as competing priorities. This approach views essence as the foundation for sustainable performance rather than its opposition.

Southwest Airlines demonstrates this integration mindset in its consistent refusal to charge for checked bags despite the billions in revenue their competitors generate from such fees. This isn’t framed as sacrificing revenue for values but as expressing a fundamental essence—democratised air travel—that creates customer loyalty, operational simplicity, and competitive differentiation worth far more than the foregone fees.

As founder Herb Kelleher repeatedly emphasised, “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.” This simple statement captures the integration philosophy perfectly—strategy isn’t separate from essence but directly expresses it.

The integration mindset requires:

Longer time horizons: Recognising that essence-aligned decisions may create short-term costs but long-term advantages
Different metrics: Measuring not just financial outcomes but essence expression impacts
Systems thinking: Understanding the interconnection between essence integrity and sustainable success
Strategic patience: Allowing time for essence-aligned approaches to demonstrate their value
Narrative skill: Articulating how essence creates rather than impedes performance

When Microsoft’s Nadella shifted from “know-it-all” to “learn-it-all” culture, from Windows-centricity to cloud services, and from closed to open development approaches, he wasn’t abandoning performance for philosophical reasons. He was reconnecting performance with Microsoft’s essence in ways that ultimately tripled the company’s market capitalisation.

The Leadership Transition Challenge

One of the most critical tests of essence leadership comes during leadership transitions. These handoffs represent moments of both great vulnerability and great opportunity for organisational essence.

The Founder-to-Professional-Management Transition

The transition from founder leadership to professional management represents a particularly sensitive essence juncture. The founder typically embodies the organisation’s essence so personally that their departure creates significant essence vulnerability.

Consider Starbucks under Howard Schultz’s first departure as CEO in 2000. The coffee company continued growing rapidly under professional management, but gradually lost connection with its essence of “coffee romance and theatre.” As Schultz later described in his book “Onward,” focus shifted from coffee experience to efficiency and expansion metrics. Subtle decisions—replacing hand-pulled espresso machines with automated ones, introducing breakfast sandwiches whose smell overwhelmed coffee aroma—represented essence drift rather than deliberate evolution.

When Schultz returned in 2008, his first memo reflected essence reconnection rather than strategic redirection: “We have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have led to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.”

Successful founder-to-professional transitions require several key elements:

Essence Documentation: Capturing the often-implicit understanding of organisational essence in explicit form
Selection Prioritisation: Prioritising essence understanding in successor selection above other qualifications
Transition Rituals: Creating ceremonial handoffs that emphasise essence continuity
Founder Evolution: Redefining the founder’s role as essence guardian rather than operational leader
Early Reinforcement: Supporting the successor in making visible essence-aligned decisions

Walmart demonstrates one of the most successful founder-to-professional transitions through its deliberate custodianship approach after founder Sam Walton’s death in 1992. Rather than allowing essence to fade with the founder, Walmart created systems to maintain its distinctive cultural spirit—an approach we’ll explore in depth as we examine The Keeper archetype.

Mailchimp’s 2021 transition from founding CEO Ben Chestnut to professional leader Mark Waddon exemplifies this approach as well. Chestnut spent years documenting the email marketing company’s distinctive essence and values. Successor selection heavily prioritised essence understanding. The transition involved careful handoff of not just operational responsibility but essence custodianship. And Chestnut moved to a board role focused specifically on essence preservation while empowering Waddon to make operational decisions.

Professional-to-Professional Transitions

While founder transitions represent particularly sensitive essence moments, professional-to-professional handoffs also create significant essence vulnerability. Without deliberate essence focus, successive professional leaders can gradually drift from original purpose through incremental decisions that individually seem reasonable but collectively create substantial essence dilution.

Gap Inc. illustrates this pattern. Founded by Donald and Doris Fisher with a clear purpose—making it easier to find jeans that fit well—the company maintained strong essence connection under early professional leadership. Yet through successive CEO transitions, each making sensible business decisions for their time, Gap gradually lost its distinctive positioning. Without explicit essence stewardship, professional-to-professional transitions often optimise for current market conditions rather than enduring identity.

Effective professional-to-professional transitions require:

Essence Audits: Assessing current essence expression before transition
Transition Frameworks: Explicitly including essence understanding in transition protocols
Board Involvement: Engaging directors in essence stewardship during transitions
Leadership Selection: Evaluating candidates specifically for essence alignment
Documentation Systems: Maintaining essence understanding through leadership changes

Acquisition and Merger Transitions

Acquisitions and mergers represent particularly challenging essence transitions because they involve integrating potentially different organisational souls. Without careful essence navigation, these combinations often lead to cultural disaster regardless of strategic logic.

The Disney-Pixar acquisition demonstrates effective essence management during complex transition. When Disney acquired Pixar in 2006, both companies had strong but different essences—Disney’s storytelling magic and Pixar’s technical innovation supporting emotional narrative. Rather than imposing Disney’s approaches, CEO Bob Iger created specific essence protection structures: Pixar maintained operational independence, Pixar leaders gained influence over Disney animation, and cultural practices remained distinct while strategic integration proceeded.

As Iger wrote in “The Ride of a Lifetime,” “We didn’t want to purchase a commodity; we wanted to preserve the thing that made Pixar so special.” This essence-first approach enabled successful integration that strengthened both organisations rather than diluting either.

The Four Custodian Archetypes

Effective essence leadership takes different forms depending on organisational context. Four distinct custodian archetypes emerge based on whether the organisation’s essence requires preservation, adaptation, recovery, or fundamental reinterpretation:

1. The Keeper: Preserving Essence During Stability

The Keeper focuses on maintaining essence fundamentals during periods of relative continuity. This archetype is most needed when:

Essence is clear but threatened by gradual drift
The organisation is in a period of business maturity
Competitive pressures create temptation for essence compromise
Rapid growth has strained cultural coherence
Heritage preservation represents a primary concern

Key Strengths:

Clarity about fundamental principles
Consistency in decision-making
Ability to say no to non-aligned opportunities
Strong cultural reinforcement
Effective essence communication

Potential Pitfalls:

Risk of rigidity in changing circumstances
Potential resistance to necessary adaptation
Possible confusion between essence and its expressions
Challenge in distinguishing principles from practices
Risk of using essence as excuse for avoiding change

Example: Don Soderquist at Walmart

Few examples better illustrate The Keeper archetype than Don Soderquist’s leadership at Walmart following founder Sam Walton’s death in 1992. As the retail giant faced its most vulnerable essence moment—the loss of its visionary founder—Soderquist stepped into a role that would earn him the title “Keeper of the Culture.”

Soderquist’s journey with Walmart began in 1980 when Sam Walton finally convinced him to join as Executive Vice President after years of recruitment attempts. Having previously served as CEO of Ben Franklin stores, Soderquist had observed Walton’s distinctive approach from a competitor’s vantage point. This provided him with unique perspective on what made Walmart special—not just its operational model but its cultural underpinnings.

Over the twelve years he worked alongside Walton, Soderquist developed deep understanding of Walmart’s essence: its commitment to servant leadership, operational excellence, respect for the individual, and passionate focus on customer value. When Walton passed away, Walmart faced not only the grief of losing its founder but the existential question of whether its distinctive culture could survive without him.

As Senior Vice Chairman and Chief Operating Officer, Soderquist recognized that Walmart’s essence wasn’t just a nostalgic connection to its founder but the foundation of its competitive advantage. Rather than allowing the company’s spirit to fade as a “Sam thing,” he systematically preserved and reinforced the core elements that made Walmart distinctively itself:

Ritual Maintenance: Soderquist preserved signature cultural practices like the famous Saturday Morning Meetings that Walton had established. These gatherings weren’t merely ceremonial but functional essence transmission systems where leaders would regularly articulate Walmart’s core values. Soderquist famously maintained a microphone on his desk that allowed him to communicate directly with Walmart staff, and during Saturday meetings, he would often select managers to express Walmart culture in their own words—ensuring essence understanding permeated all levels.

Values Codification: Recognizing that implicit understanding needed to become explicit as the company grew, Soderquist led the formalization of Walmart’s values on a foundation of integrity. As current Walmart CEO Doug McMillon noted, “It was Don who drafted our original core values on a foundation of integrity—known today as Walmart’s Values.” This codification created an essence reference point that could guide the organization beyond the founder’s personal presence.

Behavioral Exemplification: Soderquist didn’t just talk about Walmart’s values but visibly embodied them, particularly its commitment to servant leadership. As McMillon described, “Don Soderquist epitomized the term servant leader. He was always thinking of others, provided great feedback and was encouraging to so many people.” This walking embodiment of essence created a living reference point for “how we do things here” that maintained cultural coherence.

Growth-Culture Integration: Under Soderquist’s essence stewardship, Walmart expanded dramatically—growing from a large national retailer into the world’s largest company. Rather than allowing rapid expansion to dilute culture, Soderquist integrated essence maintenance into growth strategy, ensuring that new stores, divisions, and international operations understood and expressed Walmart’s fundamental spirit.

Knowledge Transfer Systems: Recognizing that essence preservation requires systematic transmission, Soderquist established formal and informal knowledge transfer mechanisms. His approach to leadership development focused not just on operational skills but on cultural understanding—ensuring a pipeline of leaders who would maintain Walmart’s essence through future transitions.

The impact of Soderquist’s essence custodianship extended well beyond his retirement in 2002. His systematic approach to cultural preservation established patterns that continue to influence how Walmart maintains connection to its founding spirit even while evolving its expressions. After retiring, he founded Soderquist Leadership, a center dedicated to developing values-focused leadership that has trained over 50,000 people—extending his essence stewardship impact beyond Walmart itself.

Soderquist’s book “Live Learn Lead to Make a Difference” further articulated his understanding of essence-driven leadership: “In order to lead effectively, a person must first know how to live to make a difference in their own life, learn how to make a difference in other people’s lives, and most importantly lead to make a difference through ethics and integrity.” This philosophy captured his fundamental belief that essence provides the foundation for performance rather than competing with it.

What makes Soderquist such a powerful example of The Keeper archetype is not just his preservation of existing practices but his systematic approach to making cultural essence self-sustaining. Rather than merely maintaining a museum to Walton’s leadership, he created living systems that could preserve Walmart’s spirit through continuous evolution—demonstrating that effective essence keeping isn’t about rigidity but about maintaining a consistent soul while its expressions naturally develop.

2. The Translator: Adapting Essence During Context Shifts

The Translator focuses on evolving essence expressions while maintaining core purpose during periods of significant market or technological change. This archetype is most needed when:

Market or technological contexts are shifting significantly
Current essence expressions are losing relevance
Customer expectations are evolving
The organisation is entering new markets or segments
Planned product/service transformations are underway

Key Strengths:

Ability to distinguish essence from expressions
Creativity in finding new manifestations
Balance of heritage and innovation
Clear communication connecting past to future
Sensitivity to relevance and resonance

Potential Pitfalls:

Risk of inadvertent essence dilution during translation
Challenge of maintaining authenticity during change
Difficulty bringing all stakeholders along
Balancing transformation pace with essence integrity
Potential confusion between evolving and compromising

Example: Satya Nadella at Microsoft exemplifies The Translator archetype. Facing a dramatically changed technological landscape dominated by cloud computing and mobile devices, Nadella needed to translate Microsoft’s essence of democratizing computing from a Windows-centric approach to a fundamentally different expression.

Nadella clearly distinguished Microsoft’s unchanging purpose from its dated expressions. In his book “Hit Refresh,” he noted that Microsoft’s essence was about empowering people through technology—not about any specific product or platform. This clarity enabled him to make dramatic changes that would have seemed heretical just years earlier: embracing open source, prioritizing cloud services over Windows, and ensuring Microsoft products worked seamlessly on competitor platforms like iOS and Android.

The Translator’s challenge is maintaining authentic connection to heritage while enabling necessary evolution. Nadella navigated this by explicitly connecting new directions to founding purpose in his communication: “We create technology so others can create technology.”

3. The Archaeologist: Recovering Essence After Dilution

The Archaeologist focuses on rediscovering and revitalizing essence after periods of drift or disconnection. This archetype is most needed when:

The organisation has drifted from founding purpose
A series of essence-neglecting leaders have created disconnection
Performance challenges stem from identity confusion
Mergers/acquisitions have blurred organisational identity
Competitive advantage has eroded due to market sameness

Key Strengths:

Skill in uncovering original purpose
Ability to distinguish fundamental from superficial
Talent for reconnecting organisation with roots
Capacity to shed non-aligned accumulations
Gift for storytelling that brings essence to life

Potential Pitfalls:

Risk of romanticizing past rather than revitalizing purpose
Challenge of balancing recovery with needed evolution
Difficulty discriminating between valuable heritage and outdated practices
Potential resistance from those invested in current state
Complexity of rebuilding systems around rediscovered essence

Example: Howard Schultz returning to Starbucks in 2008 exemplifies The Archaeologist archetype. After years of rapid expansion, Starbucks had lost connection with its founding purpose of creating “coffee romance and theatre.” Schultz’s famous memo “The Commoditization of the Starbucks Experience” signaled his archaeological focus—recovering the essence that had become buried beneath operational growth.

Schultz’s archaeological leadership involved concrete actions: closing all Starbucks stores for retraining baristas, reintroducing manual espresso machines, refocusing store design on coffee experience, and eliminating offerings that detracted from coffee aroma. These weren’t nostalgic gestures but essence recovery—reconnecting with the foundational purpose that made Starbucks distinctive.

The Archaeologist’s challenge is balancing recovery with evolution—rediscovering authentic essence without simply recreating past expressions. Schultz navigated this by emphasizing timeless principles (coffee quality, human connection, immersive experience) while allowing their expressions to evolve for contemporary relevance.

4. The Reformer: Transforming Essence During Disruption

The Reformer focuses on fundamentally reinterpreting essence during periods of industry transformation or existential threat. This archetype is most needed when:

Industry disruption challenges foundational assumptions
The organisation faces existential threats to its business model
Essence requires reinterpretation at a profound level
Planned transformation to entirely new paradigm is underway
Established expressions have become fundamentally obsolete

Key Strengths:

Ability to identify enduring principles within changing context
Courage to release outdated expressions
Vision to see essence potential in new domains
Balance of continuity and reinvention
Skill in leading stakeholders through profound change

Potential Pitfalls:

Risk of essence dissolution during transformation
Challenge of distinguishing evolution from abandonment
Difficulty maintaining stakeholder trust during radical change
Potential for creating essence disconnect among long-term stakeholders
Complexity of judging whether essence should evolve or be reimagined

Example: Fujifilm’s CEO Shigetaka Komori exemplifies The Reformer archetype. When digital photography decimated the film market—Fujifilm’s core business for decades—Komori faced an existential threat requiring profound essence reinterpretation.

Rather than defining Fujifilm’s essence narrowly around chemical film, Komori reinterpreted it more broadly around using image and information innovation to enhance human health and quality of life. This reframing enabled transformation from a film manufacturer to a diversified technology company focused on healthcare, cosmetics, and high-performance materials.

Remarkably, this wasn’t essence abandonment but essence reformation. Fujifilm’s collagen technologies developed for film photography became foundations for cosmetics and medical products. Antioxidant research for preventing film degradation translated to healthcare applications. Even the precision manufacturing capabilities developed for film found new expression in optical devices.

The Reformer’s challenge is maintaining identity continuity through dramatic reinvention. Komori achieved this by identifying and articulating deeper principles beneath surface expressions—enabling radical business model transformation while maintaining connection to the company’s technological heritage and purpose.

The Collaborative Custodianship of Industrial Light & Magic

While we’ve examined individual leaders as essence custodians, some organisations demonstrate a more distributed model of essence stewardship. Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) offers a compelling example of how a company’s essence can be preserved and evolved not by a single custodian, but through a collaborative community of stewards who collectively carry the torch.

When George Lucas founded ILM in 1975 to create the revolutionary special effects for Star Wars, he infused it with a distinctive essence: an unwavering commitment to pushing the boundaries of visual storytelling through technological innovation, artistic excellence, and collaborative problem-solving. This essence wasn’t merely about technical capability but about a specific approach to creative challenges—one that embraced the seemingly impossible with a “how might we?” spirit rather than “it can’t be done” resignation.

What makes ILM particularly remarkable is how this essence has been maintained through nearly five decades of industry transformation—from optical compositing to digital effects, from miniature models to fully computer-generated worlds—not by Lucas alone, but by a succession of custodians who collectively preserved and translated its foundational spirit.

Dennis Muren, who joined for the original Star Wars and went on to become a nine-time Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor, became one of ILM’s most significant essence translators. As Muren reflected in his book “Creating the Impossible”: “There was always this understanding that we weren’t just technicians implementing someone else’s vision—we were creative partners pushing what was possible. That core approach never changed, even as everything around us did.”

Muren’s custodianship exemplified the Translator archetype, continuously finding new expressions for ILM’s innovative essence as technology evolved from optical printing to digital compositing to computer-generated imagery. His leadership during transitions like “The Abyss” (1989) and “Jurassic Park” (1993) helped the organisation navigate fundamental technological shifts while maintaining its creative soul.

Meanwhile, art director Joe Johnston (who later directed films including “The Rocketeer” and “Captain America: The First Avenger”) preserved a different dimension of ILM’s essence—its commitment to design excellence and visual storytelling. “At ILM, the technology was always in service to the story,” Johnston noted in a 2015 interview. “We weren’t creating effects for their own sake, but to transport audiences to worlds they’d never seen before. That principle guided us regardless of what tools we were using.”

A third custodian emerged in John Knoll, who joined in 1986 as a camera operator before becoming a visual effects supervisor and eventually Chief Creative Officer. Knoll (who also co-created Photoshop with his brother Thomas) embodied ILM’s distinctive blend of technical innovation and artistic vision—understanding both the engineering and creative dimensions of visual effects. His dual capabilities helped ILM maintain its essence through the digital revolution.

“What made ILM special wasn’t just technical innovation,” Knoll observed in a 2018 interview, “but the culture of problem-solving. The attitude was always ‘we’ll figure it out’ rather than ‘that’s impossible.’ That mindset remains our secret weapon, even as the techniques have completely transformed.”

This distributed custodianship created a powerful essence transmission system. Rather than depending on a single leader’s vision, ILM developed what might be called a “custodial community”—a group of essence stewards who collectively maintained organisational identity while allowing its expressions to evolve. New artists and technicians were mentored not just in specific techniques but in the ILM approach to creative problem-solving.

The company developed distinctive ritual reinforcement through practices like their unique dailies process, where work-in-progress would be reviewed collaboratively regardless of hierarchy. This created regular essence immersion for team members at all levels. As visual effects producer Lorne Peterson noted, “At dailies, you weren’t judged by your title but by the quality of your ideas. That democratic creativity was baked into how we operated.”

ILM also maintained essence through deliberate story curation—regularly sharing tales of past technical challenges and their solutions. These weren’t just entertaining anecdotes but essence transmission vehicles that communicated “how we approach problems here” to new generations. Stories of how the team created the Death Star trench run in the original Star Wars or the water tentacle in The Abyss became teaching tools that transmitted essence more effectively than any formal manual.

The ILM example highlights several principles of effective essence custodianship:

Distributed Responsibility: Essence maintenance doesn’t require a single heroic leader but can be shared among a community of custodians who collectively preserve organisational identity.
Complementary Strengths: Different custodians can maintain different dimensions of organisational essence, creating more comprehensive preservation than any individual could provide.
Narrative Transmission: Stories of past challenges and how they were approached transmit essence more effectively than abstract principles.
Ritual Reinforcement: Regular practices that embody essence values embed them in organisational rhythm rather than leaving them as stated aspirations.
Mentorship Chains: Direct transmission from experienced to newer team members creates living essence understanding rather than merely documented principles.

As ILM navigated acquisition by Disney in 2012, this distributed custodianship proved particularly valuable. Rather than depending on a single leader’s connection to founding essence, the organisation had developed multiple essence carriers throughout its ranks. This created resilience that maintained identity even through significant structural change.

“What’s remarkable is how consistent ILM’s creative approach has remained through massive technological change and ownership transitions,” observed former Pixar president Ed Catmull. “They’ve maintained a distinctive identity and approach that transcends any individual leader or technical era.”

This collaborative custodianship model offers valuable lessons for organisations of all types. By developing a community of essence stewards rather than depending solely on founder vision or CEO direction, companies can create more sustainable identity preservation. The essence becomes embedded in organisational culture and practices rather than being tied to specific individuals.

For leaders considering essence transitions, the ILM example suggests looking beyond the traditional single-successor model to identify and develop multiple custodians who collectively maintain different dimensions of organisational identity. This distributed approach creates both richer essence understanding and greater continuity resilience.

The ultimate measure of successful essence custodianship isn’t how well the organisation preserves specific techniques or approaches, but how it maintains its distinctive spirit while continuously evolving its expressions. By this standard, ILM’s collaborative custodianship stands as one of the most successful essence preservation stories in creative business—maintaining a consistent soul through nearly five decades of revolutionary change in how its work is accomplished.

The Essence Custodian Framework

Beyond understanding different custodian archetypes, effective essence leadership requires systematic approaches for maintaining the delicate balance between preservation and evolution. The Essence Custodian Framework provides a comprehensive methodology for this balance:

1. Essence Articulation

The foundation of essence custodianship is clear articulation of what the organisation fundamentally is and stands for—the irreducible core that must remain consistent despite changing expressions.

Philosophical Foundation: Begin by clearly defining the unchanging “why” at the company’s core. This isn’t a marketing statement but a genuine articulation of fundamental purpose that explains why the organisation exists beyond profit generation.

Disney’s essence articulation under Bob Iger exemplifies this: “We create happiness through magical storytelling.” This simple statement captures Disney’s irreducible purpose—not tied to specific media, characters, or business models, but to the fundamental experience they create.

Present Expression: Next, articulate how that foundation manifests in current context. This connects timeless purpose to contemporary relevance, acknowledging that while essence remains consistent, its expression must evolve.

Iger’s leadership connected Disney’s storytelling essence to modern expressions—from traditional animation to Pixar’s computer graphics, from theme parks to streaming services, from classic characters to acquired franchises like Marvel and Star Wars.

Future Projection: Then, envision how essence might express itself in changing conditions. This future-focused articulation helps the organisation anticipate evolution needs rather than reacting after essence disconnection occurs.

Iger consistently projected how Disney’s essence would remain relevant through technological and market evolution: “Technology is lifting the limits of creativity and transforming the possibilities for entertainment and leisure… But what hasn’t changed and never will is the need for storytelling.”

Constraint Identification: Crucially, define clear boundaries that essence creates—what the organisation will not do regardless of opportunity. These constraints provide operational guidance more effectively than aspirational statements.

Under Iger, Disney maintained clear essence boundaries despite tremendous change: storytelling quality would never be compromised for production speed; family accessibility would remain paramount despite market pressure for “edgy” content; and character integrity would be protected regardless of merchandising opportunities.

Value Translation: Finally, express how essence creates market and stakeholder value. This connects philosophical purpose to practical impact, demonstrating that essence isn’t abstract philosophy but concrete competitive advantage.

Iger consistently articulated how Disney’s storytelling essence created unique value: “In an era of incredible choice and infinite content, consumers will still gravitate to brands they know and trust.”

2. Decision Alignment

Once essence is clearly articulated, effective custodians ensure it consistently guides organizational choices through systematic decision alignment:

Essence Test: Develop a simple, applicable test that evaluates whether decisions express or contradict core essence. This provides clear guidance for choices at all levels without requiring constant leadership intervention.

Patagonia’s decision alignment exemplifies this approach with their simple essence test: “Does this action help save our home planet?” This straightforward question guides product development, operational choices, and strategic decisions throughout the company.

Expression Flexibility: Clearly distinguish between essence preservation (which is non-negotiable) and expression evolution (which must adapt to changing contexts). This prevents rigidity while maintaining core identity.

LEGO demonstrates this flexibility by maintaining unwavering commitment to creative play through the brick system (their essence) while continuously evolving expressions through new themes, digital experiences, and construction approaches.

Priority Assessment: Establish which essence elements take precedence when conflicts arise. This prevents decision paralysis by providing clear guidance when values appear to compete.

Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett establishes clear priorities: integrity above all, then long-term value creation, then short-term results. This hierarchy ensures consistent decision-making even in complex situations.

Compromise Boundaries: Define explicit limits beyond which compromise is unacceptable regardless of potential benefit. These boundaries create clear “stop lines” that prevent incremental essence erosion.

CVS Health’s decision to stop selling tobacco products despite $2 billion in annual revenue reflects this boundary clarity—a line they would not cross regardless of financial impact.

Stakeholder Impact: Consider how decisions affect all essence stakeholders, not just immediate financial beneficiaries. This ensures holistic decision-making that maintains essence integrity across relationships.

Southwest Airlines’ frequent decisions to provide refunds during weather disruptions despite no legal obligation reflects this stakeholder-wide consideration—maintaining their essence of democratized air travel even at short-term cost.

3. Cultural Reinforcement

Essence requires continuous cultural reinforcement through deliberate mechanisms that maintain its presence in organizational consciousness:

Story Curation: Identify and share narratives that embody essence. These stories make abstract principles concrete and memorable, creating reference points for essence-aligned behavior.

Nike excels at story curation, continuously sharing narratives of both athletes and employees that embody their essence of competitive innovation. These stories aren’t just marketing but internal essence reinforcement that guides decisions and behaviors.

Ritual Development: Create regular practices that reinforce core values. These rituals embed essence into organisational rhythm rather than reserving it for special occasions.

Pixar’s “Braintrust” meetings exemplify ritual development—regular sessions where projects receive candid feedback without hierarchical pressure. This consistent practice reinforces their essence of story quality above all considerations.

Symbol Management: Maintain physical and visual representations of essence. These symbols provide constant environmental reminders of organizational identity and priorities.

Apple’s product design lab symbolically reinforces their essence of elegant simplicity, with prototype objects carefully arranged to embody the company’s aesthetic values. The environment itself communicates essence priorities.

Language Guidance: Develop distinctive terminology that expresses essence. This unique vocabulary creates cultural shorthand that reinforces identity and priorities.

Netflix’s language of “informed captains” and “context not control” reinforces their essence of employee empowerment and individual decision-making responsibility. This terminology shapes behavior more effectively than formal policies.

Recognition Alignment: Ensure celebrations reflect essence priorities. What an organization recognizes signals what it truly values despite what it claims to value.

REI’s recognition programs celebrate employee outdoor activities and environmental contributions alongside sales achievements, reinforcing their essence as an outdoor community rather than merely a retailer.

4. Team Development

Effective essence custodianship requires team development approaches that build essence understanding and expression capability:

Hiring Alignment: Recruit for essence compatibility, not just skills or experience. Technical capabilities can be developed, but essence alignment is fundamental to integrated contribution.

Zappos’ famous practice of offering new employees $2,000 to quit after initial training exemplifies this priority—ensuring only those truly aligned with their service essence remain.

Onboarding Immersion: Introduce new employees to essence foundations through immersive experiences rather than abstract statements. This creates emotional connection rather than merely intellectual understanding.

Patagonia’s onboarding includes environmental fieldwork, creating visceral connection to their conservation essence that classroom training could never achieve.

Development Focus: Build capabilities that strengthen essence delivery rather than focusing solely on functional skills. This ensures team members can express essence effectively in their roles.

Four Seasons focuses significant development resources on emotional intelligence and cultural awareness alongside technical hotel management skills, enabling authentic expression of their service essence across diverse contexts.

Promotion Criteria: Advance leaders who demonstrate essence stewardship, not just operational results. This ensures essence guidance at all management levels, not just at the top.

Southwest Airlines explicitly includes culture leadership in promotion decisions, ensuring essence carriers advance throughout the organization.

Departure Management: Handle exits with essence integrity regardless of circumstances. How organizations manage departures reveals true commitment to stated values.

Basecamp’s approach to layoffs—providing generous severance, extended benefits, and public accountability—reflects their essence commitment to humane work practices even in difficult circumstances.

5. Essence Transmission

Perhaps the most critical aspect of essence custodianship is ensuring it outlasts any individual leader through systematic transmission mechanisms:

Successor Identification: Select future leaders with essence understanding as a primary criterion. Technical competence without essence alignment creates short-term results but long-term identity erosion.

Warren Buffett’s careful succession planning at Berkshire Hathaway prioritizes essence understanding alongside investment acumen, ensuring continuity of the company’s distinctive approach.

Knowledge Transfer: Ensure principles, not just practices, are conveyed. This distinguishes unchanging essence from evolving expressions, enabling appropriate adaptation without dilution.

Pixar’s leadership development involves deep immersion in storytelling principles rather than just production techniques, ensuring essence understanding transcends specific projects or technologies.

Institutional Memory: Document essence foundations for future reference. This creates enduring reference points beyond individual recollections or interpretations.

Johnson & Johnson maintains its Credo, written by founder Robert Wood Johnson II in 1943, as an unchanging reference point despite continuous evolution in healthcare practices and business models.

Transition Management: Guide handoffs with essence continuity as a primary focus. This ensures leadership changes strengthen rather than dilute organisational identity.

Disney’s transition from Michael Eisner to Bob Iger involved explicit focus on essence reconnection, with Iger’s mandate including both performance improvement and Disney heritage reemphasis.

Legacy Planning: Create mechanisms for essence to outlast any individual. This structural approach ensures essence doesn’t depend on specific personalities.

Patagonia’s creation of the Patagonia Purpose Trust and Holdfast Collective represents the ultimate legacy planning—placing company ownership in structures dedicated to environmental protection regardless of who leads the company.

The Essence-Performance Integration Matrix

A framework for resolving the seeming conflict between essence integrity and business results, the Essence-Performance Integration Matrix helps leaders navigate different situations based on the nature of the essence-performance relationship:

1. Immediate Alignment Zone

In this zone, decisions naturally express essence while driving performance. Essence creates immediate competitive advantage, and principles and pragmatism naturally harmonize.

Example: Vanguard’s low-cost index fund approach perfectly expresses their investor-first essence while creating immediate business advantage. The alignment is so natural that no trade-off exists—doing what’s right for investors directly creates competitive advantage.

Leadership Approach:

Confidently pursue these opportunities with full resource commitment
Document and communicate the essence-performance integration
Use these examples to demonstrate essence value organization-wide
Create systems to identify and prioritize similar opportunities
Measure and celebrate both essence expression and performance impact

2. Investment Zone

In this zone, decisions express essence but require short-term investment before performance benefits materialize. Essence creates long-term advantage but immediate costs.

Example: Costco’s above-market employee compensation expresses their member-service essence while creating short-term cost but long-term advantage through reduced turnover, exceptional service, and employee loyalty that translates to customer loyalty.

Leadership Approach:

Make calculated investments in essence expression with clear ROI timeline
Create metrics that capture long-term value creation beyond quarterly results
Communicate strategic rationale connecting short-term costs to long-term advantage
Develop patience among stakeholders by showing historical patterns
Balance portfolio with appropriate mix of immediate and investment zone activities

3. Innovation Zone

In this zone, current essence expressions are becoming less effective, requiring new approaches that maintain essence while creating fresh advantage. Traditional implementations need reimagining.

Example: Netflix’s transition from DVD-by-mail to streaming maintained its entertainment access essence while fundamentally changing delivery to improve performance. The essence remained consistent while its expression evolved dramatically.

Leadership Approach:

Focus innovation efforts on finding new expressions of enduring essence
Distinguish clearly between unchanging purpose and flexible practices
Involve diverse perspectives in essence reinterpretation explorations
Test new approaches against both essence integrity and performance impact
Communicate continuity of purpose despite evolution of method

4. Boundary Zone

In this zone, decisions create direct tension between essence preservation and performance demands, requiring careful evaluation of compromise limits and true priorities.

Example: CVS Health’s decision to stop selling tobacco products created direct essence-performance tension, with the $2 billion revenue loss requiring difficult prioritization between health essence and financial performance.

Leadership Approach:

Clearly identify genuine essence boundaries versus preferences
Create explicit decision frameworks for evaluating compromise limits
Involve key stakeholders in boundary clarification discussions
Communicate rationale for difficult trade-off decisions
Develop balanced scorecard approaches that capture both essence and performance

The Transmission Challenge

Beyond making essence-aligned decisions themselves, leaders must ensure essence understanding permeates the organisation and survives their departure. The Essence Transmission System addresses this fundamental leadership responsibility:

1. Documentation Systems

Effective essence transmission begins with creating institutional memory that outlasts individual leaders:

Founding Story Preservation: Carefully document and maintain organizational origin stories that capture founding purpose. These narratives contain essence insights that might otherwise be lost over time.

Johnson & Johnson meticulously preserves the story behind its Credo—how founder Robert Wood Johnson II crafted it during World War II as a moral compass for the company regardless of leadership changes or market pressures.

Decision Principle Documentation: Record the rationale behind essence-significant decisions, not just the decisions themselves. This creates precedents that guide future choices even after decision-makers depart.

Berkshire Hathaway’s annual letters from Warren Buffett aren’t just investor communications but essence documentation—recording not only what decisions were made but why, creating an enduring decision framework.

Essence Artifact Curation: Preserve physical and digital artifacts that embody essence. These tangible items maintain connection to foundational purpose beyond abstract statements.

Apple maintains a carefully curated design archive containing product prototypes and design iterations that physically embody their essence for future generations of designers and leaders.

Historical Record Maintenance: Maintain comprehensive organizational history beyond marketing purposes. This unvarnished record provides context for understanding how essence has evolved over time.

Patagonia maintains detailed environmental impact documentation—both successes and failures—creating a transparent record that binds future leaders to continued improvement rather than merely maintaining status quo.

Essence Evolution Chronicles: Document how essence has been translated across changing contexts. This creates a roadmap for future adaptation that maintains essence continuity.

LEGO maintains detailed records of how their creative play essence has been expressed through different eras—from wooden toys to plastic bricks to digital experiences—providing guidance for future evolution.

2. Education Mechanisms

Systematic essence transfer requires deliberate educational approaches that build understanding throughout the organization:

New Employee Essence Orientation: Create immersive onboarding experiences focused specifically on essence understanding. This establishes foundation before functional training begins.

Zappos’ famous four-week onboarding dedicates significant time to culture immersion, ensuring new employees understand the company’s service essence before focusing on role-specific skills.

Regular Essence Renewal Sessions: Conduct periodic essence reconnection experiences for all team members. These refresh understanding that might fade amid daily operational focus.

REI conducts “campfire sessions” where employees share experiences that embody the company’s outdoor essence, refreshing connection to purpose beyond retail responsibilities.

Leader-Specific Essence Training: Provide specialized essence education for those with team responsibility. This ensures leaders can effectively transmit understanding to their teams.

Four Seasons conducts intensive essence immersion for all new managers, regardless of functional expertise, ensuring consistent service philosophy transmission throughout their global operations.

Cross-Functional Essence Dialogue: Create regular conversations across departments about essence application. This prevents functional silos from developing different essence interpretations.

Pixar’s “Notes Day” brings together employees from all disciplines to discuss how their storytelling essence applies across technical, creative, and business functions, creating shared understanding.

Customer/Partner Essence Education: Extend essence understanding to external stakeholders. This creates alignment throughout the ecosystem rather than just within organizational boundaries.

Patagonia’s “Worn Wear” program educates customers on product repair and responsible ownership, extending their environmental essence beyond the company’s direct operations.

3. Reinforcement Rituals

Regular practices that embed essence into organisational rhythm create continuous reinforcement that maintains understanding over time:

Recognition Systems: Design awards and celebrations specifically around essence expression. What gets recognized gets repeated.

Trader Joe’s “Value Champion” recognition specifically celebrates employees who embody the company’s quirky, customer-focused essence, reinforcing these behaviors throughout the organization.

Decision Review Processes: Conduct regular analysis of choices through an essence lens. This creates accountability for alignment beyond initial decision moments.

Patagonia’s “Let My People Go Surfing” philosophy includes regular review of decisions against environmental impact criteria, ensuring continuous alignment with conservation essence.

Celebration Events: Create special occasions that mark essence milestones. These ceremonial moments elevate essence importance beyond daily operations.

Southwest Airlines’ annual “Heroes of the Heart” celebration specifically honors departments that support frontline employees, reinforcing their people-first essence across the entire organization.

Reflection Sessions: Schedule deliberate time for essence-focused contemplation. These pauses prevent operational momentum from gradually disconnecting from purpose.

Eileen Fisher clothing company conducts regular “purpose circles” where employees reflect on how their work connects to the company’s essence of simplicity and sustainability.

Correction Mechanisms: Establish clear approaches for addressing essence misalignments. This provides guardrails that prevent gradual drift.

Nordstrom’s practice of “no questions asked” returns represents a correction mechanism that immediately realigns with their service essence whenever customer experiences fall short.

4. Leadership Development

Ensuring future leaders maintain essence understanding and commitment requires deliberate development approaches:

Essence Stewardship in Succession Criteria: Make essence understanding an explicit requirement for advancement. This ensures future leadership maintains essence connection.

Berkshire Hathaway’s succession planning explicitly prioritizes cultural fit alongside investment skill, ensuring future leaders will maintain the company’s distinctive essence.

Leadership Development with Essence Focus: Design development programs that build essence transmission capability. This treats essence stewardship as a learnable skill requiring deliberate practice.

Disney Institute trains leaders specifically in “Disney heritage” alongside operational competencies, ensuring essence understanding becomes a fundamental leadership capability.

Mentoring Relationships for Essence Transfer: Create deliberate pairings focused on essence understanding. This personalized approach transmits tacit knowledge that formal programs might miss.

At Pixar, established directors mentor new filmmakers with specific focus on storytelling essence, creating personal transmission of the studio’s creative philosophy.

Essence-Aligned Promotion Pathways: Design advancement paths that select and develop natural essence carriers. This puts essence-aligned individuals in influential positions throughout the organization.

Southwest Airlines’ practice of promoting extensively from within allows selection of leaders who have already demonstrated deep understanding of the company’s distinctive service essence.

Leadership Assessment Including Essence Measures: Evaluate leaders on essence stewardship, not just operational results. This prevents advancement of those who achieve numbers but compromise identity.

Patagonia’s leadership evaluation includes specific assessment of environmental commitment alongside business results, ensuring essence stewards advance throughout the organization.

5. Structural Safeguards

Creating organisational structures that protect essence regardless of individual leadership provides the strongest transmission protection:

Governance Models with Essence Preservation Roles: Establish specific board positions or committees focused on essence maintenance. This creates institutional responsibility beyond executive leadership.

Patagonia’s governance structure now includes the Patagonia Purpose Trust with specific responsibility for ensuring environmental essence maintains priority over profit considerations.

Decision Processes that Incorporate Essence Review: Build essence alignment assessment into formal approval systems. This creates systematic checks rather than depending on individual initiative.

Ben & Jerry’s maintained its social mission after acquisition by Unilever through an independent board with veto power over decisions that might compromise the company’s essence.

Resource Allocation Systems with Essence Criteria: Include essence impact in investment approval frameworks. This ensures funding flows to aligned initiatives rather than purely financial opportunities.

Warby Parker’s budget process includes explicit social impact assessment alongside financial return criteria, ensuring resource allocation maintains essence alignment.

Performance Metrics that Include Essence Alignment: Develop balanced scorecards that measure essence expression alongside traditional metrics. This prevents optimization of numbers at essence expense.

Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan incorporated environmental and social metrics alongside financial targets, creating accountability for essence alignment throughout the global organization.

Ownership/Board Structures Designed for Essence Continuity: Create governance mechanisms specifically designed for long-term essence protection. These structural approaches transcend individual leadership periods.

The Guardian newspaper is owned by the Scott Trust, established specifically to maintain the publication’s editorial independence and progressive essence regardless of financial pressures or leadership changes.

The Scale of Essence Leadership

Essence custodianship takes different forms depending on organisational scale and context. While the fundamental responsibility remains consistent, implementation approaches vary:

Founder-Led Startups

In early-stage companies, essence leadership focuses on initial establishment and deliberate documentation of often-implicit understanding:

Key Priorities:

Articulating often-intuitive essence explicitly
Embedding essence in initial systems and processes
Documenting founding principles for future reference
Selecting early team members with strong essence alignment
Creating decision precedents that demonstrate essence priorities

Implementation Approaches:

Regular founder reflection on implicit values and purpose
Creation of simple “first principles” documents
Deliberate essence focus in early team onboarding
Explicit discussion of essence implications in key decisions
Documentation of essence-significant choice rationales

Example: When Blake Mycoskie founded TOMS, he recognized that the company’s “One for One” model wasn’t just a marketing approach but its fundamental essence. His early leadership focused on documenting this purpose, embedding it in initial operations, selecting team members who connected deeply with this mission, and creating decision precedents that prioritized impact alongside profit.

Growing Mid-Market Companies

As organizations scale beyond founder direct influence, essence leadership focuses on systematic transmission and operational alignment:

Key Priorities:

Creating essence transmission systems beyond founder presence
Scaling culture while maintaining essence integrity
Selecting leaders who can carry essence throughout growth
Evolving expressions while maintaining purpose continuity
Building infrastructures that reinforce essence at scale

Implementation Approaches:

Formal essence documentation and training programs
Regular essence alignment audits during growth phases
Explicit essence criteria in leadership selection
Systematic decision frameworks with essence filters
Strategic communication connecting growth to founding purpose

Example: As Warby Parker grew from startup to public company, co-founders Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa focused on systematizing their essence of providing affordable eyewear with social purpose. They created formal training programs, built leadership development with explicit essence focus, established regular impact measurement, and consistently connected expanding operations to founding purpose.

Established Large Organizations

In mature companies with complex structures, essence leadership focuses on maintaining connection across diverse operations and preventing gradual drift:

Key Priorities:

Maintaining essence clarity across diverse divisions
Preventing incremental drift through successive decisions
Connecting essence to changing market contexts
Selecting and developing leaders with strong essence understanding
Creating governance mechanisms for essence preservation

Implementation Approaches:

Comprehensive essence education across all organisational levels
Regular essence audits across divisions and regions
Formal essence consideration in strategic planning
Long-term incentive structures aligned with essence
Structural safeguards for essence preservation

Example: At Unilever under Paul Polman’s leadership, essence custodianship required maintaining purpose alignment across hundreds of brands and numerous countries. Polman created the Sustainable Living Plan as a company-wide essence framework, established sustainability metrics at all organisational levels, incorporated social impact into executive compensation, and built governance structures specifically designed for long-term essence preservation.

Organizations in Transition

During major transitions—leadership changes, mergers, transformations—essence custodianship focuses on preserving core identity despite significant change:

Key Priorities:

Clearly identifying essence elements that must remain consistent
Distinguishing between essence and its historic expressions
Creating transition frameworks with explicit essence focus
Selecting transition leaders with strong essence understanding
Establishing essence success metrics for the transition period

Implementation Approaches:

Pre-transition essence assessment and documentation
Explicit essence preservation protocols in transition plans
Regular essence alignment reviews during change process
Deliberate essence-reinforcing communication throughout transition
Post-change essence reconnection activities

Example: When Howard Schultz returned to Starbucks as CEO in 2008, his transition leadership focused explicitly on essence reconnection amid necessary operational changes. He conducted systematic essence assessment, created explicit preservation protocols, established regular alignment reviews, communicated consistently about coffee passion fundamentals, and conducted company-wide reconnection activities like the famous temporary store closure for retraining.

The Stewardship Mindset: Leading for What Lasts

The essence custodian’s fundamental perspective differs from conventional leadership approaches. Rather than viewing the organization primarily as a vehicle for current-period performance, the custodian sees it as a living entity with past and future extending far beyond their tenure.

This stewardship mindset—seeing oneself as temporary caretaker rather than permanent owner—creates distinctive leadership behaviors:

1. Humble Continuity

Essence custodians recognize they inherit values and principles from those who came before, rather than creating them anew. This humility creates respect for organizational heritage without rigidity about its expressions.

Warren Buffett exemplifies this approach at Berkshire Hathaway: “We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, and they built something extraordinary… Our job is not to invent a new Berkshire but to make this distinctive company ever stronger and more durable.”

2. Transparent Adaptation

Essence custodians openly discuss how essence must evolve in changing circumstances, rather than pretending either that nothing changes or that everything changes. This transparency creates trust during necessary transitions.

Reed Hastings demonstrated this at Netflix during their transformation from DVD-by-mail to streaming: “Our essence remains unchanged—bringing entertainment joy through unprecedented convenience. But how we deliver that must fundamentally change.”

3. Principled Pragmatism

Essence custodians balance respect for fundamental principles with practical adaptation to circumstances. They maintain non-negotiable values while finding flexible implementations appropriate to context.

When Yvon Chouinard transferred Patagonia’s ownership to environmental trust structures, he embodied this balance: “We needed to find a way to put more money into fighting the environmental crisis while keeping the company’s values intact.”

4. Patient Trust

Essence custodians focus on building long-term trust rather than short-term transactions, recognizing that essence-aligned approaches may take longer to demonstrate value but create more sustainable advantage.

Satya Nadella’s leadership at Microsoft reflects this patience: “We needed fundamental cultural change that wouldn’t show immediate results but would position us for long-term relevance. That required asking people to trust the direction before we could prove its success.”

5. Personal Non-Centrality

Perhaps most distinctively, essence custodians see leadership success not in personal recognition but in building something that thrives beyond their tenure. Their goal is independent organizational vitality rather than leader dependence.

As Max De Pree, former CEO of Herman Miller, wrote in “Leadership Jazz”: “The measure of leadership is not the quality of the head, but the tone of the body. The signs of outstanding leadership appear primarily among the followers.”

A Final Thought: Dancing with Essence

Leading with essence isn’t about rigidity—it’s about having a clear center while dancing with changing circumstances. It’s the paradoxical ability to simultaneously honor what must never change while evolving everything else.

The greatest essence failures come not from change but from either rigidity or drift—from confusing expressions with purpose or gradually disconnecting from founding identity.

When Howard Schultz noted that “Starbucks is at its best when we are focused on our customers and our people,” he wasn’t advocating nostalgic return to the past. He was reconnecting with timeless purpose while allowing its expressions to evolve appropriately.

Similarly, when Satya Nadella transformed Microsoft from a Windows-centric company to a cloud-first organization, he wasn’t abandoning essence but reinterpreting it for a transformed world. “Microsoft exists to build products that empower others” remained true—but what that meant in practice needed fundamental reimagining.

The essence custodian faces a paradox: holding something unchanging while everything around it transforms. This delicate dance requires wisdom to know what must never change, what must always change, and most importantly, how to tell the difference.

Your company’s essence doesn’t care about your quarterly targets. That’s precisely why it’s valuable—it provides continuity beyond immediate pressures, connecting past to future through a consistent thread of purpose and identity.

The greatest essence leaders don’t create monuments to themselves; they create living traditions that outlast them. Their legacy isn’t personal accomplishment but organizational vitality that continues long after they’ve moved on.

As you consider your own leadership, remember that essence isn’t a historical artifact to be preserved in a museum; it’s a living flame that must be tended and passed on. Your role isn’t just achieving today’s results but ensuring tomorrow’s leaders have the same clear understanding of what makes your organization distinctively itself.

In the words of organizational consultant Peter Block, “Stewardship is the willingness to be accountable for the well-being of the larger organization by operating in service, rather than in control, of those around us.”

That service—to organizational essence, to team members who embody it, to customers who experience it, and to future generations who will carry it forward—represents leadership’s highest calling and most enduring legacy.

The Essence Custodian Assessment

1. Essence Clarity

Can all leadership team members articulate our essence consistently?
Do operational decisions reflect stated essence priorities?
Is there clear understanding of what aspects of our essence are non-negotiable?
Can the organization distinguish between essence and its current expressions?
Do team members understand how essence applies to their specific roles?

2. Custodian Archetype Identification

Which custodian archetype does your organization most need right now?

The Keeper: Preserving essence during stability
The Translator: Adapting essence during context shifts
The Archaeologist: Recovering essence after dilution
The Reformer: Transforming essence during disruption

3. Decision Alignment

Do we have explicit essence filters for major decisions?
Have we clearly identified essence-based boundaries we won’t cross?
Do we apply consistent essence criteria across different functions?
Can we articulate which essence elements take priority in conflicts?
Do we consider all essence stakeholders in significant decisions?

4. Transmission Systems

Have we documented our founding essence for future reference?
Do we have systematic essence education for all team members?
Are there regular practices that reinforce essence understanding?
Do we develop leaders with specific focus on essence stewardship?
Have we created structural safeguards for essence continuity?

5. Leadership Approach

Do we integrate essence and performance rather than opposing them?
Do we distinguish between essence preservation and expression evolution?
Do we explicitly address essence implications during transitions?
Are we balancing loyalty to heritage with openness to adaptation?
Do we model essence priorities in our leadership behaviors?

6. Current Priorities

Based on your assessment, identify your top three essence leadership priorities: