Phase 0 · Purpose Audit and Rediscovery
Five questions, run before any other diagnostic. The audit decides whether the rest of the framework should run at all.
Phase 0 is the gate that sits in front of OMI (Metabolism) and EMI (Immunity), not a sub-step inside either. A team that doesn't know its Purpose can score “high” on every EMI dimension and still be in deep trouble, because the team is well-organized around the wrong center of gravity. If the team can't articulate Purpose separate from tasks, the move isn't to fix Identity or Closure. It's to stop and run Purpose Rediscovery first.
Five questions
Run all five with the team in a single 60-minute working session. The test isn't whether the leader can answer. It's whether every member of the team answers the same way, in their own words, without rehearsal. Three or more questions where the team converges = pass. Two or fewer = fail. One question where members openly disagree on direction = automatic fail, regardless of the other four.
Run the 25-question diagnostic. The five EMI dimensions (Identity, Closure, Trust, Belonging, Agency) will now read cleanly, because the Purpose layer is intact. Pathologies that surface are real pathologies, not artifacts of an unclear center.
Don't run EMI. Don't retire any workflow until the team has rediscovered its Purpose. Running EMI on a Purpose-Fog team produces data that misleads. It attributes pathology to dimensions when the underlying problem is the operating system.
Purpose Rediscovery
Purpose Rediscovery is not a brand exercise. It's a 90-day move where the team writes down what it would still exist to do if every current task were automated, then tests that statement against the work for one quarter. The statement either earns its keep or gets edited.
The leader's job during Rediscovery is not to write the Purpose statement and announce it. It's to set the question, hold the room while the team converges, and refuse to let the team escape into task lists. The single best signal that Rediscovery is working: a team member voluntarily declines a task in the next quarter on the grounds that it doesn't serve the Purpose, in writing.
Re-run Phase 0 at the end of the 90 days. If the team passes, proceed to EMI. If not, don't paper over it. Rediscovery isn't done.
If Phase 0 passes, run the other organs
Phase 0 gates the other two diagnostics. If the team passes, run OMI and EMI for the full picture: how fast you can change (metabolism) and whether change gets absorbed (immunity).