Three positions. One consequential distance.
- AI Leader
- Trusted Advisor
- Customer First
- Innovative
- Sustainable
Gap
- Automation Vendor
- Commodity Provider
- Expensive Platform
- Risk Averse
- Lagging Innovator
Maven continuously measures these signals to show how perception moves closer to — or farther from — your strategic intent.
- 01
Observed Position
How the market sees the organization today.
- 02
Maven Recommended Position
The most credible strategic territory available between current perception and the Desired Position.
- 03
Desired Position
Where the strategist wants the organization to be understood. This destination is strategist-governed.
- 04
Reality Gap
The distance between current market perception and the Desired Position.
The strategist sets the destination. Maven recommends the path.
Follow the work through market response.
- Desired Position
The strategist sets the destination.
- Strategic Work
The communications the team chooses to do.
- Market Response
What the market actually says next.
- Observed Position
The evidenced reading of perception.
- Reality Gap Movement
Whether the distance narrowed.
- ↺ The next reading starts from what the market did with the last one.
The reading is longitudinal. Maven compares the evidenced market picture over time and explains what moved, what did not, and which work is connected to that change.
Move from activity reporting to perception change.
Activity still matters.
Reach, placements, engagement, and output describe what happened. They remain useful operating measures.
Reality Gap asks what changed.
It keeps the team focused on whether communications moved market understanding toward the position the strategist set.
Did communications actually change how the market understands the organization?
No movement claim without a defensible basis.
Evidence shown
Market observations remain connected to their sources.
Unknowns named
Insufficient evidence remains unresolved rather than becoming certainty.
Destination governed
Only the strategist establishes the Desired Position.
A measurement is only as good as the evidence you can produce for it.
Reality Gap is a composite of six weighted dimensions, each tied to observable evidence. The number is executive shorthand for the distance between intended and observed perception; the evidence explains why it moved.
In an executive conversation, one number answers four questions at once: where perception stands, whether communications is moving it, what is driving the movement, and where the largest distance still remains. The trend and the evidence behind it carry the explanation.
Narrative Authority
weight 25%
Are the narratives the organization has declared the narratives the market repeats?
Adoption of declared narrative language in independent third-party sources, weighted by source authority.
Executive Authority
weight 20%
Do the people intended to carry the position actually carry it?
Named executive presence, subject ownership, and quote share across tier-ranked outlets.
Message Adoption
weight 20%
Is the specific language of the strategy surviving contact with the market?
Phrase-level persistence of claimed positioning terms versus substituted market language.
Competitive Differentiation
weight 15%
Is the organization distinguishable, or interchangeable with its category?
Distance between the organization's observed language and the aggregate language of its named competitive set.
Editorial Reach
weight 12%
Does the coverage occur where decision-makers actually read?
Five-tier source authority ranking applied to observed placements, not raw volume.
Evidence Confidence
weight 8%
How much should any of this be trusted?
Quantity, independence, quality, and recency of the underlying evidence objects.
When available evidence cannot support a dimension, that dimension is removed and its weight is redistributed across those that can be measured. The reading states what was excluded and why.
Read the score in context.
0 – 30
Aligned
Observed perception closely tracks declared strategy.
31 – 60
Drifting
Material distance remains on specific dimensions.
61 – 100
Divergent
The market holds a materially different view.
A score shows where the gap stands at one moment. Direction matters more: a gap of 54 closing nine points is healthier than a gap of 41 that is widening.
Rules the measurement obeys
Cite or refuse
No dimension is scored without evidence behind it. An unmeasurable dimension is excluded and its weight redistributed, never estimated.
Sufficiency before score
A reading requires declared and observed positions, enough evidence, and enough measurable dimensions. Otherwise, the missing inputs are named.
Source independence
Syndicated and republished coverage is clustered by domain so one story cannot create false consensus.
Fact and inference are separated
Observed facts, interpretation, and strategist judgment remain distinct. An inference cannot corroborate itself.
Movement is explained, not asserted
Successive readings show which gaps closed, which opened, and which stood still.
Unknowns beat certainty
Thin evidence is disclosed. A confident number without provenance is worse than no number at all.