The Trusted Facts Method

A Leadership Operating Model for Establishing Operational Truth™

The Trusted Facts Method is a leadership operating model for establishing Operational Truth across the enterprise.

It defines, governs, and operationalizes the performance drivers that determine revenue, operating income, and cash flow.

What Are Trusted Facts?

Trusted Facts are certified Performance Measures with clear definitions, calculation logic, and consistent use across the enterprise.

They define both:

  • Outcome Measures, which reflect business results

  • Driver Measures, which influence those results

Outcome Measures answer what happened. Driver Measures explain why it happened. You cannot manage the results, only the drivers.

Trusted Context

Trusted Context defines what can and cannot be known about business performance based on the Driver Measures that have been certified.

It organizes Driver Measure Trusted Facts into a structured understanding of the forces influencing Trusted Facts Outcome Measures, while making gaps in knowledge explicit.

Trusted Context is not a report. It is a defined boundary for interpreting performance based on what the organization has agreed is true.

Trusted Context defines the boundaries of what can be known.

As additional Driver Measures are defined and certified, the scope of Trusted Context expands, improving the accuracy and usefulness of analysis over time.

Trusted Context and AI

Trusted Context establishes the boundaries within which business performance can be interpreted.

It enables AI prompt engineering by defining what questions can be asked and answered based on certified Driver Measures.

This allows business users to query data freely, while preventing conclusions that extend beyond what the organization has defined and validated.

Trusted Context allows users to ask better questions and prevents AI from answering the wrong ones. Without Trusted Context, AI will attempt to answer questions the model is not yet equipped to answer correctly.

The Five Components of The Trusted Facts Method

The Trusted Facts Method establishes Operational Truth through five integrated capabilities that function together as a leadership operating model.

  • Trusted Facts
    Certified measures that define the drivers of revenue, operating income, and cash flow.

  • Trusted Context
    Defines what performance drivers of an outcome can and cannot explain about an aggregate performance measure.

  • Trusted Governance
    Establishes ownership, accountability, and decision rights.

  • Trusted Cross-Functional Management Cadence
    A structured leadership rhythm for evaluating performance and coordinating decisions.

  • Trusted Workflow™
    System-driven cross-functional processes that ensure execution aligns with performance thresholds.

Together, these capabilities establish Operational Truth.

The Trusted Facts Operating Model

The Trusted Facts Operating Model establishes the culture and process for building, maintaining, and operating the business on certified Trusted Facts.

A Trusted Fact is an accurate, clearly defined performance measure that is understood and trusted across the enterprise for decision-making.

As Trusted Facts are established, an accurate view of Operational Truth emerges.

The operating model functions through executive and cross-functional councils that define, certify, and govern Trusted Facts and the actions they prompt.

These councils ensure that:

  • Performance drivers are clearly defined

  • Disagreements are resolved

  • Responses to risks and opportunities are coordinated

Trusted Facts are foundational. Everything else, including BI and AI, is built on them.

Executive Ownership

Operational Truth is often uncomfortable. It challenges current narratives and exposes performance issues beneath the surface.

The hardest question a leadership team can ask is: What truths are we avoiding?

As CEO, the process begins with a willingness to confront what Operational Truth will reveal. Establishing Trusted Facts requires a culture where people feel safe raising issues that might otherwise remain hidden. The CEO must communicate a clear commitment to transparency as the standard for the organization.

Within the project team, it is critical that the CEO and CFO consistently reinforce that surfacing performance gaps is a responsibility, not a risk.

Trusted Facts are created and sustained through leadership commitment to truth across the enterprise.

Trusted Governance

Trusted Governance establishes ownership, decision rights, and accountability for responding to risks and opportunities revealed through Operational Truth.

It ensures that:

  • Ownership is explicit

  • Decision rights are clear

  • Initiatives are tied to measurable outcomes

  • Accountability exists across functions

Trusted Governance ensures that the organization responds consistently and in a coordinated way to what Trusted Facts reveal.

Trusted Governance defines who owns decisions. Trusted Cadence is where those decisions are made and reviewed.

Trusted Cross-Functional Management Cadence

Trusted Cadence establishes a structured leadership rhythm in which performance drivers are reviewed and acted upon to manage outcomes.

It is not a status meeting. It is a working session where certified measures drive decisions.

These sessions bring cross-functional teams together to coordinate enterprise outcomes through processes such as S&OP and FP&A.

Without action, Trusted Facts only have potential value.

Trusted Cadence ensures that:

  • risks and opportunities are identified early

  • root causes are addressed

  • decisions are aligned across functions

Truth must be reviewed, discussed, and acted upon with discipline.

Trusted Workflow™

Trusted Workflow™ ensures that decisions made during cadence are executed consistently across the enterprise.

It consists of system-driven, cross-functional processes that make execution visible, measurable, and aligned with business performance.

Each step in a workflow is tracked by stage and cycle time, allowing teams to identify delays, bottlenecks, and breakdowns. High-value workflows cannot have blind spots at functional handoffs. Where full system integration is not yet complete, analytics can provide visibility to ensure execution remains observable and manageable.

Workflow must be understood before it is automated. Automation can serve as a precursor to autonomous AI.

If the workflow is not well understood, automation will be challenging, and autonomous AI will not reach production.

The Trusted Facts Flywheel

The Trusted Facts Method is designed for organizations to take ownership of their modernization journey.

Early phases require effort as new ways of working are established.

However, each cycle of the Trusted Facts Flywheel builds momentum:

  • performance drivers are defined and certified

  • business and IT align

  • cross-functional collaboration improves

  • decision quality increases

Over time, the organization becomes more aligned, responsive, and capable of managing performance proactively.

Culture of Transparency

Operational Truth requires an environment where honest conversations about real problems are safe and expected.

Performance gaps must be visible before they can be solved.

This requires:

  • transparency around performance gaps

  • willingness to challenge assumptions

  • incentives that reward problem-solving

A culture of transparency is a leadership responsibility.

AI Within The Trusted Facts Operating Model

There is a rush toward AI driven by the expectation that it will fix performance problems.

It will not.

AI requires:

  • Trusted Facts

  • Trusted Workflow™

  • Trusted Governance

When these are in place, AI can:

  • identify risks and opportunities

  • support decision-making

  • coordinate execution

AI cannot determine what is true. It must operate within what the business has defined as true.

What The Trusted Facts Method Delivers

When Trusted Facts, Trusted Context, governance, cadence, and workflow operate together, the enterprise moves from reactive management to deliberate performance management.

Planning improves execution. Execution improves planning.

Organizations move from results happening to them to managing outcomes.

Start small. Focus on the drivers that matter most.

Build deliberately.

Next Step…

Explore the Questions →

Closing Guidance

Without leadership and organizational alignment on operational truth, AI has no foundation.