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The English edition is out
L’onestà è lucidità now exists in English, under a different title: Integrity Burnout. It is not a literal translation. It is a deliberate choice.
Read how the title came about
Managerial Fables for Complex Times
Integrity Burnout
“Integrity is not naivety.
It is clarity.
And clarity requires courage.”
The English edition of L’onestà è lucidità.
Buy on AmazonAuthor’s note
From the Italian title to the English one
- Original L’onestà è lucidità
- Literal Honesty Is Lucidity
- Chosen Integrity Burnout
I The title
The original Italian title of this book, L’onestà è lucidità, literally translates as Honesty Is Lucidity. But a faithful translation should preserve meaning, not just words. For the English edition, I chose Integrity Burnout.
Lucidity allows us to recognise the gap between the principles we proclaim and the choices we make. When that gap persists, it can exhaust those who strive to uphold integrity and gradually erode integrity within the organisations around them.
Integrity Burnout captures this tension between awareness and action, between the integrity we expect from individuals and the integrity we demand of systems. This is not a book about giving up. It is a book about what it takes to stay.
Recognising these contradictions is not enough to resolve them. But seeing them clearly is where change begins.
II The translation
The same principle guided the translation of the fables. Throughout the book, lucidità becomes clarity: the plainest English word for seeing things as they are.
Where a literal rendering would have kept the words and lost the meaning, I chose the meaning. Where an Italian expression carries something English cannot hold, a sound, an irony, a piece of culture, I left it in Italian, on purpose. Those words are not untranslated. They are part of the story.
Nicola Allocca · #StayLucid
The five movements
Thirty-one fables, five movements.
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I
The Night
“At night, thoughts make more noise. The night magnifies the distance between what should be and what really is.”
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II
The System
“Governance is not a document. It is not a structure. It is a choice.”
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III
The Metaphors
“There are truths that enter the mind only disguised as fables.”
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IV
Courage
“Seeing is not enough. You have to decide which side you are on.”
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V
Clarity
“Integrity is not naivety. It is clarity. And clarity requires courage.”
Some stories
Running the Red Light
A rule observed not out of fear of a fine, but because it holds the system together.
“The traffic light is not a brake. It is a pact.”
The World Against Me
The monologue of an anti-corruption officer who finds herself alone in the very role the whole organisation should be backing.
“Anti-corruption is not a bureaucratic superstructure. It is the invisible infrastructure of trust that supports competitiveness and results.”
The Governance Loop
A system that speaks, listens, understands and acts, yet never manages to produce real change.
“Governance is not a document. It is not a structure. It is the ability to break the cycle.”
The Old Beech Tree
Control functions are like roots: often invisible, slow to build, but essential to withstand the storms.
“If you want to grow high, you need strength deep below.”
When the Pencil Argued with the Eraser
A fable about the balance between those who build the future and those who help correct mistakes before they become irreparable.
“The business writes the future, but compliance makes sure the pages stay clean and up to date with the right rules.”
There’s Them. And There’s Us.
Corruption advances as a system. Countering it takes more than an isolated function: it takes an “us” able to react.
“Every time one of us says no, every time a light comes on in the fog, every time a cog in a rotten system is stopped, even for a moment, they lose. And we win.”
The author
Staying lucid is a choice.
Organisations do not change only through new rules. They change when someone manages to see clearly what is happening and finds the courage to act.
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