From the outset, it must be understood that any notion of progress is a subjective one. Progress is perceived movement from one perceived status to another perceived status, where the perceiver considers the final status to be more desirable than the original. Universal agreement of these statuses is nearly certain to be absent, so those who want progress are burdened with the onus of convincing others of their perceptions. This is not a detractor to the idea of progress, necessarily, but it may be terribly challenging, and some methods are bound to be more effective than others. Oppressing and coercing people into changing their behavior, for example, may be a successful tactic for inciting progress, at least in the short run, but it may also cause resentment, backlash, and other undesirable consequences. ‘Progress,’ furthermore, is not a universal topic in its own right. ‘Progress’ is auxiliary to some other topic about which standards may be set forth, deliberated on, and argued for. In other words, one must say what ‘progress’ is in relation to some other topic, like, say, social justice, diplomatic relations, or toilet bowl sanitation. So let us assume that a person has settled upon a topic about which he or she feels progress must be made. At the risk of losing an objective approach to this subject, it is necessary to insert a relevant premise. No doubt, issue may be taken with this, as it is reflective of my personal values, but I have to start somewhere. Premise: The desire for progress must be one of integrity. Progress with integrity has many implications; not all of them can be illustrated in the short span of a blog (or even in the many pages of a textbook), but I hope to conjure a general understanding of what this means. When the desire for progress is one of integrity, the person or people holding that desire are foremost genuine in their desire. They want the progress because they believe it will improve the status of whatever topic they are invested in, and not because it will have some unrelated, or perhaps only tangentially related result. Progress with integrity also means that the progressors will proceed with honesty, openness, and straightforward actions. They will not utilize oppression, coercion, fear, deception, or any other framework of group or individual manipulation to achieve their goals. They will not succumb to corruption, nor will they furnish opportunities for it to flourish. Their methods will remain transparent so that people may judge them without a cloud of vagueness. This being said, the execution of the progress requires three principle factors: a coherent vision, clear articulation, and worthwhile leadership. Each of these is not just sufficient, but necessary. The vision is an understanding of the disparity between the aforementioned perceived statuses (the current status and the desired), and a plan for bridging the two. Surely, this must the most difficult requirement to satisfy; for in order to be truly successful, the vision must anticipate whatever roadblocks the plan will face and must be prepared with solutions or innovative enough to invent them. The articulation is the communication of the vision to others, not just verbally, but in any fashion. It must take into account an understanding of the audience(s) to which it is presented so that people may understand its necessity, its proposed course, and its details. The articulation must appeal to notions with which people can identify and should stir up sentiments that are not too far removed from individuals’ personal experiences. Leadership, like vision, is a challenging requirement to come by because statistically, leaders are rarer than followers. The leaders must be those who can carry the vision through to completion, and take people along with them. It is natural to think of leaders as political entities or revolutionaries, as our history has made a point of noticing them. However, leaders may take unexpected and subtle forms, at times gently swaying opinions and feelings, at other times commencing a massive onrush of events. This may depend on the particular nature of the topic at hand. In summary, progress on a topic can be achieved through vision, articulation, and leadership, but these ingredients are worthless without integrity. Without integrity, real progress can not be made, even though it may appear so superficially. Integrity is the overarching bind that has the power to unite the people, to withstand undermining, and to trudge forward through the mucky and murky marshes of genuine progress.