Signature framework
The Curtain Framework
A diagnostic lens for understanding the difference between the official performance of organisational life and the forces shaping what people actually experience.
Values, strategies, policies and leadership messages appear at the front of the curtain. Incentives, informal power, avoidance, tolerated behaviour and real decision-making operate behind it.
Between them sits the curtain itself: the mechanisms through which reality becomes edited before it reaches the organisation's official stage.
The model
Trace what happens through the curtain.
Choose a backstage reality or an official claim to trace what happens through the curtain.
Start
Behind the curtain
What is really happening
The curtain
What edits reality
- Fear
- Hierarchy
- Status
- Avoidance
- Selective reporting
- Optimism
- Self-protection
- Political judgement
- Informal power
- Incentives
Front of the curtain
What appears at the front
The official version will appear here.
© EthicEyes Limited 2026
Interpretation
Choose a backstage reality or official claim to see how reality is edited before it reaches the front.
Key idea
The curtain edits reality.
Information rarely moves through an organisation untouched. People assess status, risk, timing, hierarchy, relationships and likely consequences before deciding what to say and how directly to say it.
By the time an uncomfortable reality reaches the front of the organisation, it may have been softened, delayed, reframed or removed entirely.
The curtain is maintained not by dishonesty alone, but by all the small reasons people learn to edit reality before presenting it.
Diagnostic method
Five questions for looking behind the curtain.
- 01
What are we saying?
The values, strategy, policies, messages and commitments the organisation presents at the front of the curtain.
- 02
What do leaders currently believe?
The version of reality reaching senior leaders, filtered by proximity, reporting lines and the information they choose to accept.
- 03
What are people editing before they speak?
The softening, delay, reframing or omission people apply as they weigh status, timing, hierarchy and consequence.
- 04
What does behaviour demonstrate?
What is rewarded, tolerated, avoided and repeated day to day, regardless of what is written down.
- 05
What makes the existing behaviour rational?
Behaviour that appears dysfunctional may be a sensible response to incentives, power, previous experience or personal risk. Diagnosis begins by understanding the system rather than simply blaming the individual.
What to look for
Signals that the curtain is doing more work than the strategy.
- Messages that become more positive as they move upwards
- Values that disappear when pressure increases
- Decisions made informally before the formal meeting
- Behaviour everyone recognises but nobody names
- Problems repeatedly described as communication issues
- High performers who receive exemptions from expected behaviour
- Processes that conceal ownership rather than clarify it
- Employees who are candid privately and cautious publicly
Related framework
The Curtain Framework reveals what creates the gap.
The Organisational Reality Gap measures the distance between organisational promise and lived experience.
The Curtain Framework helps identify the filters, incentives, fears and informal forces producing that distance.
Measures
The distance between promise and experience.
Explains
The mechanisms producing that distance.
Using the framework
Where the Curtain Framework is used in practice.
The Curtain Framework can be used with leadership teams, boards and intact teams to examine where organisational reality is being filtered and what that means for trust, decision-making and performance.
- Organisational diagnostics
- Leadership-team development
- Culture reviews
- Team truth-and-silence workshops
- Change-readiness work
- Ethical resilience
- Board and senior-team effectiveness
Andrew’s forthcoming book
The framework at the heart of the book.
Andrew’s forthcoming book begins with a simple observation: organisations frequently present a rational official version of themselves while everyday experience reveals something much more human.
What sits behind your organisation's official story?
A short, honest look at where reality is being edited is often the most productive place to begin.
© EthicEyes Limited 2026. Original website text, framework diagrams and visual materials are protected by copyright unless otherwise stated.
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