Driver Statement Worksheet
The single sentence everything else hangs from — the first reference and the last.
A Driver Statement is the one entrenched sentence that says why your Community Company exists. It is not a slogan and not a mission paragraph. It is the root — short enough to say from memory, deep enough that when a hard decision comes and the rest is uncertain, the Driver decides. Companion to Step 1 — Forming a Steering Committee and the Community Company Charter — Template (it fills Section 1).
What a Driver Is
The Driver comes before purpose. Purpose is what you do; the Driver is the situation in the world that calls your doing into being. It has two halves:
We see ‹the situation, need, or ache in our place that will not let us rest› — and so we exist to ‹what we therefore commit to bring into being›, in service of ‹the wider whole this serves›.
Keep the whole thing to roughly forty to sixty words. If it does not fit on a breath, it is not yet a Driver.
How to Write It — Together
Do not draft it by committee, sentence-by-sentence. That produces mush. Instead:
- Each founding member writes a draft alone (10 minutes). Everyone fills the two halves in their own words, privately.
- Read them aloud, in turn, without discussion. Just hear them. Notice the words that recur — those are the live ones.
- Weave, don't average. One person holds the pen and braids the strongest threads into a single draft.
- Test it against a hard case. Name a real decision you expect to face. Does the Driver actually settle it? If not, it is too vague — sharpen it.
- Mark it provisional. Adopt it for now (good enough for now, safe enough to try) and revisit it after a full season of living it.
Parse It Into Load-Bearing Clauses
Once you have your Driver, break it into its few essential clauses and name, for each, the operational consequence — what it actually obligates you to do or refuse. This is what turns a beautiful sentence into a usable compass.
| Clause of our Driver | What it commits us to | What it rules out |
|---|---|---|
| ‹"…the total wellbeing of all generations of life…"› | ‹decisions weighed against the unborn, not just the present› | ‹spending the future to fund the present› |
| ‹ › | ‹ › | ‹ › |
The Read-Aloud Ritual
A Driver only governs if it stays present. So read it aloud at the opening of every founding gathering, at the seating of every new steward, and at the signing of every agreement with another Company. It costs less than a minute and it keeps the whole body oriented to the same north.
How the Driver Changes
The Driver's interpretation will deepen as you grow — you will understand your own sentence better in year three than in year one. But its intention and commitment should be the hardest thing in your whole Charter to change: amend it only by your highest threshold, slowly, and never casually. Everything else is built to serve it.
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