The Mirror gap

How it is calculated

From the instrument · ACM 1.12 · 18.10.2026 · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22926708 · proposed translation

• The pair: Believes ↔ Sees.
• The distance: the sum of the absolute differences across the 12 archetypes, divided by two (0–100).
• The target: as close to zero as possible: below 15 is small, above 25 is large.
• Weight in the index: 20%; the index is reported only at tier 3.
• Appears from tier 2 (“With perception”).

Which diagnosis it feeds into

From the instrument · ACM 1.12 · 18.10.2026 · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22926708 · proposed translation

It feeds the coherence diagnosis, together with Integrity and Legibility.

• Chaotic: The distances are large everywhere. The work does not start with communication; it starts with deciding who the brand is.
• Misunderstood: The brand does things well, but it is not seen. This really is a communication problem, and it is fixed relatively quickly.
• Aligned: The brand says what it does, is seen doing it, and is seen as it believes itself to be. From here the work is on differentiation, not coherence.

How to read it

Platform material · not part of the published instrument

A small gap means that “Believes” and “Sees” describe the same brand. A large one shows where they do not match, and the archetype-by-archetype comparison shows exactly where. See also the archetypes.

The method and the author

Platform material · not part of the published instrument

All the reference pages describe the same method: how ACM Framework measures a brand’s coherence. The terms are explained in the glossary. The instrument is openly published, with DOI 10.5281/zenodo.22926708, by Dumitru Talmazan.