I wrote recently about the building blocks of what lasts. Institutions last, sometimes many generations. Trust in institutions has eroded in cities and countries all over the world. People can’t thrive in a world without reliable institutions, no matter what the modern anarchists say. Therefore you and I should care deeply about and for institutions.
It’s helpful to distinguish institutions from organizations and movements.
Organizations exist in many forms, from extended families to massive corporations. People come together and work together in a formal structure. Organizations can replicate processes and improve processes. They can evolve and adapt to change, sometimes reinventing themselves. Organizations have a spotty record of developing future generations of workers; some create their own leadership pipelines but most count on hiring new generations of workers and leaders.
It’s crucial to understand that corporations are legal entities without a soul. They were invented. A corporation can act like a person does (e.g., own property, create binding contracts) but does not have the same accountability as an individual. A corporation’s power is its lack of soul, despite transparent efforts to infuse soul-like qualities into corporations to induce employee ‘engagement’ and social attractiveness. Corporations have no moral limits apart from legal and regulatory constraints, which were created by people with moral frameworks.
Movements are people coming together with common ideas and energy, usually with less structure than an organization. They can be tremendously powerful and influential. (Violence is the characteristic of a movement that becomes a mob.) I’m sure you can think of multiple movements in recent years. There will be more. Movements are a natural feature of human populations.
It’s difficult to engineer or control a movement; the energy is more channeled than designed. Movements are like being carried along by a wave in the ocean. We’re not sure where the wave began, now it’s moving us, and then suddenly the wave is gone. Movements tend to dissipate faster than they began. Movements cannot reproduce themselves; movements can inspire counter-movements. No movement lasts for multiple generations. Participate in movements that resonate with you, yet be sober about their time-span.
An institution is an organization which has developed self-reproducing capabilities while retaining a consistent purpose. We live among and participate in many institutions: sports groups, religious communities, schools, a subset of social clubs like the Rotary, military, government. Institutions are generally oriented toward maintaining order and stability within a society, providing frameworks for social behavior, and supporting societal functions. Marriage is a special-case institution.
Institutions can have long, multigenerational histories. Their reproduction is not pure replication or cloning. Just as a child has common DNA with her parents and is unique, the subsequent generations of people in an institution have both common ancestry and uniqueness. Commonness is from codes and creeds. I remember when my Scoutmaster first quizzed me on the Boy Scout oath he said, “Millions of boys spoke these words and became men.” That stuck with me.
Institutions, like all human organizations, tend to ossify. Therefore, there must be mechanisms for evolution and adaptation without sacrificing purpose and principles. We can’t be like those who say, “If the King James English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me!” (Forgive me, but I’m only partially hyperbolic in writing that.) What Kent Wagner said about marriages is true for all institutions: “There are only two kinds of marriages, those being worked on and those which aren’t.”
Institutions, like all human organizations, can engender trust or destroy it by their behaviors. Trust is always gained in many small drops and lost in a flood. There was a story told where I grew up about a boy who lied often. His father set up a post by the road where passersby could see it. He pounded a nail into the post every time he caught his son in a lie. When the boy did some manly action he pulled a nail from the post – but the passerby could still see the hole.
I’m particularly intrigued about what’s needed for honorable and sustainable reproduction within an institution. What does it take for one generation to develop the next, and so on, many times? How does this process continue in the face of collapsed trust? How do we foster reproduction of people who can in turn reproduce others? (In biblical language, how do we make disciples who can make disciples who make disciples?) How can institutions do this amidst even cascading crises?
Successful institutions know their mission and have clear ideas of what they are NOT. They have internalizable codes and creeds. They honor their ancestry and history. They keep promises about honoring their legacy.
Institutions require an investment mentality – sow now, reap later. There is a considerable gap between investment and payoff. I reflect on all the institutions which invested in me as a child and younger person. I probably wasn’t a net positive contributor until I was 40 years old!
Reproduction is about education, not indoctrination. Indoctrinated students are never permitted to deviate from or go beyond the approved ‘curriculum.’ Educated students are expected to honor what they’ve been taught as preparation for going beyond a finite set of knowledge. Pure indoctrination cannot evolve and adapt. It will only change when the institution breaks.
Institutions must have a well-seasoned playbook for teaching the fundamentals. It’s not just knowledge. Institutional reproduction is the apprenticeship model: There is instruction, practice with abundant feedback, and association with other practitioners of the craft. There are clear standards of mastery of the fundamentals.
What conditions favor a reproduction model? There must be incentives for the teacher/coach/leader to develop others. The US Army does this well. An officer is rated in large part by how well they have trained those in their command. It’s difficult for an officer to be promoted if he cannot point to two or three soldiers ready to take over. Institutions must normalize the expectation of developing the next generation. They must demand development; it’s part of the role responsibility, not an add-on. Likewise, the student/apprentice must have incentives to learn, to grow, to achieve new levels of mastery. There are recognized advancement points. There are rewards for demonstrated progress and new skills.
Curiously, an institution must have skin in the game to be successful. The ongoing purpose must be large and significant. There is something serious to lose when we fail. West Point cadets are taught that when a business fails, jobs and money are lost, but when they fail, people die and nations fall.
Maintaining a standard of excellence is the common way institutions forestall a passive slide into obsolescence. No coasting – true for a football coach, a pastor, a government official, a school teacher, or the Rotary Club president. Bustle and posturing are not the same as productive industry. The most successful institutions set high expectations and create environments where people want to exceed them. I’ve told many people about military recruiters coming to my high school in 1979. The Army, Navy, and Air Force recruiters pitched all the benefits. The Marine recruiter looked at each of us in the auditorium and said only “There might be two of you good enough to be United States Marines.” You can guess which recruiter was most successful that day.
Subtract any of these things – mission clarity, trust, education/apprenticeship with incentives for all, skin in the game, excellence – and institutions flail and fail. Institution from healthy families to government agencies need deep people and breed deep people. I hope you’ll consider how you can help institutions succeed in the future.