July 26, 2026
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Most CEOs hand off the selection and management of their business operating system to someone else. This is a big mistake.
EOS and OKRs both break down at scale. I learned this the hard way building Classy to $100M+.
The Northstar OS fixes what both systems miss. Three focus areas: operating clarity, operating rhythm, and operating standards. When the CEO owns all three, the whole company runs better.
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Are you shitting me? How does he not understand the vision? He’s been here six years.
“What do you mean?” I replied. My temperature started to rise.
“It’s too vague. It doesn’t help me do my job.”
This was alarming. Matt was our top product manager.
“It’s not just me. People are confused about where the company is going.”
“I’m not confused. How could they be confused?” I was getting visibly angry now.
“Are you sure I can be honest?”
“No, no. It’s fine. Just tell me.”
“Ok.” He took a breath. “I think its clear in your head, but not to everyone else.”
I sat there staring at him. Digesting. The confusion felt like an attack, even though it wasn’t.
“I don’t know, Matt. I feel like it’s spelled out for people pretty well. I’m communicating this stuff all the time. The Board gets it. So everyone else should be able to get it too. Don’t you think?”
He paused, considering what to say next.
“Ya. I guess you’re right. I’ll just keep trying to get everyone aligned.”
“Ok, that’d be great. Thanks Matt.”
He left and closed the door.
Matt quit the company before I realized he was right.
We lost a special talent because I confused communication with clarity.
That sentence took me years to understand. Matt saw it before I did. I lost a great employee but I credit him for the inspiration for the PDP leadership framework I’m about to go through with you. It gets everything out of your head as the leader, and into the hands of the people who are trying to execute.
The PDP framework is a leadership tool that helps any CEO (or leader) cut through the noise and create absolute clarity for their team.
PDP stands for Purpose, Direction and Progress. The framework consists of three simple, but fundamental questions that every leader must be able to answer for themselves, and for their teams:
Yes, this is absurdly simple. Yet most leaders can’t answer these three questions clearly and succinctly. The crispness of the message is the real skill. I didn’t have it when I started. Almost no founder does. Now that I work with so many others through Highland Academy, I see the same pattern over and over. The increase communication without increasing clarity.
I built the PDP after the Matt conversation forced me to confront the gap between what I thought I was communicating and what my team actually understood. It became the anchor I returned to every time I felt the company drift. It now sits at the foundation of Highland’s curriculum and powers the Operational Clarity pillar of the Northstar Operating System. You can get the Northstar OS template for your own company here (for free).
Before we go deeper, I want to point out an important distinction.
Just because you manage someone doesn’t make you a good leader (and vice versa).
A leader inspires people to achieve a common purpose and reach their full potential. Leadership is something you earn from people buying into your vision. It’s not a title.
A manager is responsible for the work output of a group. It’s a defined business role with planning, execution, and accountability built in.
Natural leaders tend to be great at purpose and longer-range vision, but many fall short on execution. Excellent managers tend to be great at giving direction and updating progress, but most can’t connect day-to-day work to a larger purpose.
The best CEOs do both. The PDP framework helps them do exactly that.
Ready for a quick test? Give yourself 60 seconds per question. Then jot down the answers to the three PDP questions:
If you stumbled on any of them, you have work to do. And if you can answer them clearly, ask yourself the harder question: could every person on your team answer them the same way you do?
Most can’t. Not even close.
I cover the full self-assessment and team exercise in a separate article: The PDP Test: A 3-Minute Self-Assessment for Leaders.
Now let’s dive into each component of the PDP framework.
Purpose is the deepest layer of clarity. It’s the reason your company exists in the first place. The thing that gets people out of bed beyond the paycheck.
When purpose is clear, everything downstream gets easier. You hire better. Build product better. Make better decisions.
When purpose is fuzzy, the opposite happens. People interpret their roles differently. Customer-facing teams say one thing, product teams build another. The company drifts because nobody can agree on why it exists in the first place. Why you’re on this journey together to build your company.
There are two tools that answer “Why are we here?” for your team:
Together, Mission and Values give your team a shared answer to “why are we here.” Without that answer, none of the other clarity work matters. Here’s what it looks like as part of the Northstar OS template:
There are two tools that answer “Where are we going” for your team: a stepped vision and a strategy to get there.
Traditional vision statements are useless. A single fluffy sentence about the distant future. They sound aspirational but offer no real guidance. And they’re almost always confused with your mission.
In Highland’s Northstar OS, we use a tool called the Vision Ladder. Instead of one statement, you break your vision into three time-bound steps: 3-year, 5-year, and 10-year (you can add a 20-year if you want too). Each step builds on the last. Together they form a sequence and strategy that connects today’s work to your 100-year mission. I wrote a deeper article on the Vision Ladder here.
If the vision is the mountain you’re all climbing together, the strategy is the route you’ll take.
At Highland we use a framework called Strategic AIM, where AIM stands for:
I break down the full framework in the Northstar OS article here.
Progress is where most companies break down. Priorities get set in January and forgotten by March. Dashboards collect dust. No one knows how the company is actually doing.
There are two tools that answer “How are we doing?” for your team: annual priorities and health metrics.
Vision and strategy tell your team where you’re going over the next few years. Your annual priorities tell them what matters right now, this year. In Highland’s Northstar OS, we call them WhyGos:
Most companies have too many priorities. That’s why the WhyGo framework follows a strict 3×3 structure. No more than three WhyGos per year, and no more than three measurable outcomes per WhyGo. This forces brutal prioritization. Read more in The WhyGo Framework: An OKR Alternative.
Priorities aren’t the whole picture. A company can hit every goal on paper and still be quietly bleeding somewhere else. That’s what health metrics catch.
We track a small set across four health systems: Acquisition, Retention, Financial, and Team. Together they’re the vital signs of the business. Keep the set small. A handful of numbers everyone can name beats a dashboard nobody opens.
Most companies overcomplicate their dashboards and scoring systems. Keep it simple. Every WhyGo and every health metric gets one of three colors:
🟢 On pace
🟡 Slightly off pace (within 20%)
🔴 Off pace (more than 20%)
No complicated scoring. Just a signal anyone on the team can read in a second.
PDP is the entry point. The simplest expression of what every leader must do. But it sits inside a bigger system.
The Northstar Operating System is built around three pillars: Operating Clarity, Operating Rhythm, and Operating Standards. PDP is the foundation of the Clarity pillar. Mission and values answer Purpose. Vision and strategy answer Direction. Goals and health metrics answer Progress.
Clarity (and the PDP) is also the first of seven core CEO responsibilities. When clarity is dialed in, the other six become easier to execute.
If you take nothing else from this article, take this. The gap between what you think you said and what your team actually received is the most dangerous debt a leader carries. Clarity, not more communication, is the only way to pay it down. The most underrated skill of a great CEO is making the complicated feel simple. PDP is the tool that forces you to do it.
I didn’t set out to create frameworks. I set out to survive.
In 2017 my lead investor tried to push me out as CEO. Two missed quarters and I’d already lost their confidence. What followed was a 24-month battle to buy them out, the darkest stretch of my career, and the deepest reflection of my life.
I’d gotten the company that far on raw effort. But I wasn’t a great CEO yet. I acted like an early-stage founder, a builder, when the company needed a scaler. I confused activity with progress. Communication with clarity. Effort with leadership.
The PDP framework came out of that fire. So did the Northstar Operating System.
Now I coach hundreds of early stage founders through my CEO coaching program, Highland Academy. Check it out if you want step by step help on implementing the PDP and Northstar at your own company.
Highland CEO Coaching: Every founder & CEO deserves great CEO coaching. This is exactly why I started Highland. We go deep on PDP, the Northstar OS, and the full CEO-7 curriculum. Learn more here and apply here (takes 1 minute).
What is the PDP leadership framework? PDP stands for Purpose, Direction, and Progress. It’s a clarity framework leaders use to align their team around three fundamental questions: why are we here, where are we going, and how are we doing. Scot Chisholm developed it while scaling Classy from zero to a $100M+ acquisition by GoFundMe. Today it anchors the Clarity pillar of the Northstar Operating System, taught through Highland Academy.
Why is clarity the most important CEO responsibility? Without clarity, even the most talented team drifts. People make decisions in different directions, priorities conflict, and energy gets wasted. The trap most leaders fall into is confusing communication with clarity. They talk constantly and assume the message landed. PDP closes that gap by forcing every leader to answer the three questions their team is already asking.
What’s the difference between leadership and management? A leader inspires people toward a shared purpose. A manager is responsible for the output of a group. The best CEOs do both, and PDP develops both sides: purpose and vision on the leadership side, priorities and metrics on the management side.
How is PDP different from OKRs or EOS? PDP is a clarity framework, not a full operating system. OKRs are a goal-setting method. EOS is a prescriptive operating system best suited to smaller businesses. PDP focuses on the three foundational questions every team needs answered, and it’s the entry point into the Northstar Operating System, which scales from single-digit millions to $100M+ in revenue.
What is the Strategic AIM framework? Strategic AIM defines the strategy behind your vision. AIM stands for Approach (how you’ll uniquely reach the vision, including your core bets), Impact (how you’ll know you’ve won, measured across customers, shareholders, and employees), and Market (who you’re targeting, split into primary, secondary, and tertiary). If the vision is the mountain, the Strategic AIM is the route.
Can the PDP framework work for non-CEOs? Yes. PDP applies to any leader of any team. Founders use it, executives use it, department heads, coaches, and senior managers use it. Any time you’re responsible for moving a group of people from where they are to where they need to be, PDP works.
How do I create vision clarity for my company? Start with the Vision Ladder. Instead of one fluffy statement about the future, break your vision into time-bound steps: 3-year, 5-year, and 10-year, with an optional 20-year. Each step builds on the last and connects back to your 100-year mission. Refresh it every year as part of annual planning.
How does Highland Academy teach the PDP framework? Highland Academy teaches implementation of the Northstar OS, including the full Clarity curriculum: PDP, the Vision Ladder, Strategic AIM, WhyGos, health metrics and more. 30+ masterclasses, custom GPTs and Claude Skills and every template. We recommend getting started here.
Every week I tackle management, operations & startup topics that are helping 300,000+ people become better leaders.
Written Weekly by Scot Chisholm
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