Nothing is possible without men, but nothing lasts without institutions. – Jean Monnet

It is a classic trope of Christmas movies for characters to discuss when they stopped believing in Santa. The ‘adults’ of the 90s classic The Santa Clause share that it was the failure to receive a toy whistle (Neil) and a board game (Mom) that ended their belief. There is something universal in the concept of belief and trust being lost, and the challenges having to move forward.

At the risk of mixing the fictional (and inconsequential), this dynamic has occurred in another large sector of society. We live in a time of profound skepticism and distrust of organizations.

The reasons for this distrust are many. For some, it is the seeming inability to have a human interaction. Have you tried calling your health insurer recently? Or every tried to reach the IRS with a question regarding your taxes?

While those concerns only contemplate a poor service experience, no domain of organization has proved immune to scandal, abuse, and criminal behavior.

Consider the scandals that have occurred across :

• Entertainment – the #MeToo Movement
• Church – wide spread revelation of abuse across church denominations beyond the Catholic Church
• Business – a rolling stream but most recently the revelations shared by Boeing whistleblowers
• Sports – from Lance Armstrong to Olympic doping

In the face of this, our response, rightfully, has been withdrawal and cynicism. We are rightfully disheartened by corruption, crime and abuse – especially when we see power used to harm the weak. A natural reaction is to disengage.

I would suggest that is a mistake.

Facing these circumstances it feels either futile or overwhelming to contemplate what reform might look like.  The reform minded and the entrepreneurs who will bring to life the organizations of the future face a mighty climb ahead.

In America I encountered sorts of associations of which, I confess, I had no idea, and I often admired the infinite art with which the inhabitants of the United States managed to fix a common goal to the efforts of many men and to get them to advance to it freely.

Alexis de Tocqueville

We often do not think about the frequency of our engagement with organizations – instead far too often in the ‘movie’ of our lives, organizations enter and exit as innocuously as extras move in / out of a movie scene.  

Make no mistake, organizations are unique in their ability to harness and direct the efforts of people to accomplish goals. We, the collective we, need organizations for our society to function, let alone flourish.

Two weeks ago, we discussed the idea of service (part 1 and part 2) being central to the pursuit of happiness and the building a life of meaning. Decentering oneself and working to meet the needs of others is profoundly gratifying. This premise is both supported by academic research (Arthur C. Brooks’ Build the Life You Want is a nice summary), as well as by wisdom from religious traditions and the wise since time immortal.

Our service to others may be delivered at times in an ad hoc fashion – from neighbor to neighbor. However, for nearly all of us, our service rendered to others will be done so through the context of an organization.

Whether you are a nurse working in a hospital caring for a patient, a teacher in front of a classroom, to a paper salesperson meeting the office supply needs of small businesses in Pennsylvania – it is our affiliation with institutions that creates the place and platform where we have the privilege and responsibility to be of service to others.

Thus despite everything from their flaws (at best) to outright crimes (at worst), there is both an necessity and inescapability of the place of institutions in our lives and in our society. The opportunity we face at this moment is how best to reform, restructure, and reinvent organizations to prevent the abuses of the past ,while also reinvigorating them as places for service into the future.

I actually believe we are at a unique moment in time when this is not just an imperative, but is actually possible.

For centuries, the implied assumption that the best way for work to be accomplished was to break it down into smaller and smaller pieces. Hence organizations emerged with the now famous pyramid shape of hierarchy. There was tremendous amount of organization leverage to be unlocked through increasing levels of specialization. Hierarchy with command and control management was tremendously impactful in much of the economic growth of the past 100 years.

And yet, hierarchy also brings with it politics, along with power dynamics between subordinate and superior.  Certainly much of the abuse in recent years has been centered around abuses in power / position. Yet I believe we are entering into a fundamentally different sort of world. One in which hierarchy will be increasingly limited.

What will enable such a transformation ?

First – shrinking population sizes will mean a structurally smaller workforce. We will have to get more done with less. Management will be at a minimum level to ensure execution, but superfluous levels of hierarchy will increasingly make less and less sense. 

Secondarily, technology and specifically AI-enabled tools, will transform the productivity of the knowledge worker. A knowledge worker plus an AI powered assistant will mean that an individual employee can accomplish more – reducing the need for as much specialization / fragmentation of workflow. 

Third, rigid, permanent hierarchies continue to make less and less sense in a world marked by accelerating change. The worker of the future supported by technology is more flexible and able to be deployed to address new opportunities and solve new problems.  Hierarchy will be viewed less as a permeant structure, and instead more about finding the minimal level necessary to ensure coordination of organizational activities, but also the flexible to re-organize as circumstances dictate.

The best analogy of this in my mind are the US Special Forces.  Each Seal team consists of highly trained and capable operators with various capabilities. They are able to combine their efforts to support a specific mission, but then recombine shortly afterwards to accomplish the next.

In the world we are entering into, those in positions of seniority will be less command/control in their orientation, but more supportive and coach-like. The absence of a permanent structure makes authority due to title less relevant. Moreover, competing over a scarce workforce means that employees simply will not tolerate bosses that are jerks – they will have options.  We see this already through phenomena like quiet quitting.

We stand in a profound moment of opportunity. Hopefully at our past are not only the scandals and disfunction that keep coming to light. At the same time, as we look to the future, arguably change is at hand.

This change, if we will let it, can both help reform institutions, along with create new organizations. These new organizations can and must become new platforms of enablement, empowering and freeing us all in our life’s work of service to others.