For years, the phrase “servant leadership” has circulated in Philippine boardrooms, government offices, and graduate seminars as a kind of moral aspiration. The original insight behind servant leadership theory was that true leadership begins with the desire to serve, and that authority should flow from that posture rather than from position or title. If servant leadership is to mean anything beyond a flattering label leaders apply to themselves, it needs indicators specific enough to be observed, scored, and contested. Servant leadership theory addressed this too, in a 1977 essay on the institution as servant, but the idea was never operationalized, and nearly five decades later, no one else had done so either. An institution that behaves well only when a particular charismatic leader is in charge has not built servant leadership into its design.