A book by Marc Lamalle
The Persistence
of Identity
How Organizations, Cultures, and People Survive Change
A Meditation on What Endures
- Status
- Manuscript complete
- Length
- 31 pages
- Author
- Marc Lamalle
The central question
How can something continually change while remaining recognizably itself?
A focused inquiry into persistence and continuity in organizations, software systems, relationships, and individuals. The book considers how something remains recognizably itself while changing — and how continuity is actively produced through decisions about what matters and its deliberate transmission.
What the book examines
Four domains. A shared question.
The question of continuity crosses these domains without making their mechanisms identical.
- 01
Organizations
Institutional memory, governance, and stewardship bring the question of continuity into the life of an organization, including growth, crisis, acquisition, and succession.
- 02
Software systems
As software evolves, the question is what must endure for a changing system to remain recognizably itself.
- 03
Relationships
Relationships bring continuity into a shared life: what persists between people as they and their circumstances change?
- 04
Individuals
Personal identity brings the inquiry to the individual: what allows a person to remain recognizably themselves through change?
The central argument
The Principle
of Sufficiency
Identity does not require preserving everything. It requires deliberately preserving enough of what matters for meaningful continuity.
The inquiry connects five dimensions of continuity, considered alongside decisions about preservation and deliberate transmission.
- Memory
- Resemblance
- Meaning
- Intent
- Coherence
Deliberately preserving enough of what matters.
Inside the book
Eight parts
- 01
The Question of Continuity
- 02
What Identity Is Made Of
- 03
The Principle of Sufficiency
- 04
The Four Domains
- 05
How Identity Erodes
- 06
The Work of Transmission
- 07
Identity Under Pressure
- 08
What Survives Us
Who the book is for
For leaders, founders, and stewards of institutions — and for readers interested in organizational continuity, institutional memory, software evolution, and the persistence of relationships and personal identity.