If onboarding must explain the point, the point is missing.

If an organization needs onboarding to transmit purpose, its structure isn’t actually carrying purpose. Real meaning is learned by watching what gets rewarded, punished, and made unavoidable.

Slides, documents, workshops, and value statements, packaged as onboarding, attempt to explain what the organization is, why it exists, and how one should think inside it. This is rarely a sign of sophistication. More often, it reveals that the system itself does not carry meaning in its structure. When purpose is real, it is not taught; it is encountered. People understand what matters by observing what is rewarded, what is ignored, and what is impossible to avoid. Modern organizations assume that if something can be explained well enough, it becomes true. In practice, the opposite holds.