{"id":9287,"date":"2014-10-23T16:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-10-23T20:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=9287"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:06","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:06","slug":"institutions-are-liars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2014\/10\/institutions-are-liars\/","title":{"rendered":"Institutions are Liars"},"content":{"rendered":"

And this is why: every institution (college, foundation, large corporation, clinic, agency, government body) inevitably realizes that, whatever it once represented, its continuity<\/em> as an institution is part of its identity and is highly marketable.\u00a0 The longer an institution exists, so the preservation of its own continuity grows increasingly important and eventually becomes the institution’s unstated but primary goal.\u00a0 Ipse dixi<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Think about how continuity<\/em> is sold to you as a value proposition in everyday life, and whether it amounts to anything.\u00a0 Here’s a trivial example.\u00a0 In college, I joined the staff of The Tartan<\/em><\/a> (“Carnegie-Mellon’s Student Newspaper Since 1906”) and served for a while as its features editor, columnist and cartoonist — part of some “long and proud tradition” of Tartan<\/em> contributors.\u00a0 But does anyone remember that, other than a scant few of my college mates? \u00a0 Does anyone currently on the staff delve into\u00a0The Tartan<\/em> archives and read my articles and say, “Ahh, so\u00a0that’s<\/em> the way to write a college newspaper!”\u00a0 Of course they don’t, because what we did in the 1970s is neither memorable or relevant.\u00a0 The name of the paper is the only thing that’s the same.\u00a0 The Tartan <\/em>is not your grandfather’s college newspaper.\u00a0 Or your mother’s.<\/p>\n

This does not keep the Carnegie-Mellon University website, when describing The Tartan<\/em>,\u00a0 from mentioning the year 1906<\/em> for no other purpose than to — you guessed it — remind tuition-paying parents of the continuity<\/em> of the institution.\u00a0 The message to parents: your $64,000<\/a> a year will be buying something that lasts a lifetime.\u00a0 An academic diamond ring, if you will.<\/p>\n

I suggest that whether we are talking about The Tartan<\/em> or\u00a0Kodak<\/em> or The New York Times<\/em> or The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/em>, the idea that institutional continuity exists, that it ensures quality and consistency and is therefore entitled to our trust, is a fragile framework of fabrications.\u00a0 The premise that continuity signifies strength and proficiency is sold to us by our beloved institutions for plainly Darwinian reasons: to win our trust, to gain our money, and ultimately to ensure the continued existence of the institution.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n

The people who manage institutions are loath to admit fault, either personal or collective.\u00a0 Instead, like birds flying to cover in a storm, they tend to seek the protection<\/em> that the institution offers.\u00a0 They believe that the institution’s aura of trustworthiness, implied by its durability, is like a dome that shields its members from harm.\u00a0 The institutional dome protects its affiliates in (at least) two ways: by diffusing responsibility among its members; and by making the actions of its members invisble to anyone outside the dome.\u00a0 I contend that it is the people outside <\/em>the institution who more often need protection, from the complacency and irresponsibility of those inside<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Richard<\/a>One of my heroes is the late Richard Feynman<\/a>, the Nobel Prize physicist who, during the Rogers Commission hearings on the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster, posed a fundamental question: “What is the cause<\/em> of management’s fantastic faith in the machinery?\u00a0 It would appear that, for whatever purpose, be it for internal or external consumption, the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product, to the point of fantasy.<\/sup>”<\/p>\n

These challenging remarks would lead William P. Rogers, former Secretary of State, head of the commission, and a person who had managed an institution or two himself, to say,\u00a0 “Feynman is becoming a real pain in the ass.”<\/p>\n

Feynman spoke bluntly about the institution that was NASA in the 1980s.\u00a0 “Official management … claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less.\u00a0 One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds.\u00a0 The other may be that they sincerely believed it to be true, demonstrating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their engineers.”<\/p>\n

Bingo.\u00a0 Except Feynman was correct on both<\/em> counts, not just one reason or<\/em> the other.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n

Such is the mindset of institutions.\u00a0 They come to believe, “Our endurance is testimony to our accumulated wisdom and the way we do things.\u00a0 So why question how we do things?”\u00a0 This is how they lie to themselves, as they lie to us — with the weak logic of the continuity of their own existence.<\/p>\n

One may argue that what we call institutional\u00a0<\/em>memory<\/em> — facilities, systems, documents and procedures that guide (and constrain) the work of an institution — demonstrate the value of continuity<\/em>.\u00a0 I disagree.\u00a0 Performance depends on people who are there today<\/em>.\u00a0 Institutional memory is worthless if it is not effectively applied.\u00a0 Systems and structures put in place by predecessors mean nothing when new leaders discard them in favor of their own consulting-firm-0f-the-month ideas.\u00a0 Most importantly, poor leadership negates every institutional asset, including its legacy.\u00a0 Poor leadership breeds cynicism and sub-optimal performance from all those who are forced to endure it.<\/p>\n

Institutions<\/em> per se do not do anything — whatever they do is done by real live people. Words and deeds of dead people may be invoked, to provide inspiration or pay homage to tradition, but the fact remains, there is no Thomas Edison at General Electric today, no Clara Barton at the Red Cross, no Colonel Sanders cooking KFC, and no George Washington in the White House.*\u00a0 We forget that institutions are<\/em> people.\u00a0 High-strung people.\u00a0 Slackers.\u00a0 Allergy sufferers.\u00a0 Maybe your neighbors, or even you.\u00a0 My point?\u00a0 Individuals<\/em> make the decisions at institutions and individuals should be held accountable for them.<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n

Many people who work for an institution are there for a relatively short time, with respect to the lifespan of the institution.\u00a0 Asking workers to keep the history of the institution in mind as they perform their duties can be counterproductive.\u00a0 It can encourage futile and wasteful efforts to keep “sinking ships” afloat, when the better thing to do would be to abandon the past and embrace the problem at hand.<\/p>\n

This brings to mind the most distasteful memory from my final years at Kodak.\u00a0 It was the time when film was still popular, consumer digital cameras had 3 or 4 megapixels at best and cost a few hundred dollars, and Kodak sold a lot of both.\u00a0 I worked in the silver-halide (i.e., traditional photography) area and was attending our year-end, division-wide meeting where our next research budget was to be presented.\u00a0 Many of the silver-halide scientists were outraged, to put it mildly, when management told them that the “digital side” of the company would, for the first time in Kodak history, be given more research dollars than the “film side” of the business.<\/p>\n

In the question-and-answer period that followed, one disgruntled audience member after another stood up and defended continued research in silver-halide technology, asserting that film promised higher resolution and better image quality than digital could hope to offer for years and years to come.<\/p>\n

Those researchers weren’t so wrong about film’s capabilities, but they were dead wrong about what consumers wanted.\u00a0 As it turned out, photo shooters cared more about convenience and cost than image quality or physical prints.\u00a0 But many of our scientists (and their management) seemed to care more about defending their hallowed ground than helping the company deliver something future consumers would want.\u00a0 There was clearly a split within the ranks between film and digital, and Kodak leadership waffled.\u00a0 You know the rest of the story.\u00a0 In just a few years, there was no more turf to defend, film, digital or otherwise.<\/p>\n

Kodak did do one thing well during that time.\u00a0 It was excellent at believing its own lies.**<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u2022<\/p>\n

If institutions are to be trusted (we do need to trust them because they aren’t going away), they need to stop acting like institutions and more like people, more like the people they are comprised of, more like the people they serve.\u00a0 Whatever worth an institution has is derived from individuals, working together.\u00a0 Storied pasts do not matter, only the performance of current leaders and members.\u00a0 If an institution is not effective or trustworthy, then something needs to change, most likely the method by which its leaders are selected.<\/p>\n

I can think of five ways that institutions can help us trust them:<\/p>\n

(1)\u00a0 Spread out.\u00a0 The more massive the institution, the less important any one individual feels and the more that personal responsibility is diffused.\u00a0 No individual in the institution should be more than two steps from top management, or two steps from direct contact with people outside the institutional dome.\u00a0 Increasing the number of points of contact with the public will also help increase the transparency of the institution.<\/p>\n

(2)\u00a0 Increase the stakes.\u00a0 Leaders and workers need to be accountable.\u00a0 To be accountable, their performance must be made visible, as must their goals.\u00a0 (The goals of an institution are too often obscured when convenient, especially to mask poor leadership.)\u00a0 It is a powerful tool for accountability that the public knows the names of individuals, not just the title of an office in a deparment of a division.\u00a0 And when a person fails in an important effort, he or she should be reassigned or let go, period.\u00a0 That is what accountability means.\u00a0 It is not to punish but to make for a better-working institution.<\/p>\n

(3)\u00a0 Forget the past.\u00a0 Instituions cripple themselves when they insist on building bridges between the past and the future using resources at hand.\u00a0 The past is gone.\u00a0 Painful as it may be for existing workers, a viable institution needs to equip itself for challenges ahead, and that calls for workers with new, specific skill sets.\u00a0 Institutions must continuously re-train or re-hire, or both.\u00a0 If not, they will have to lie about their outdated capabilities.\u00a0 This also applies to the facilities and information systems an institution uses.\u00a0 When legacy systems get in the way of effectiveness (think the Veterans Health Administration), then people throughout the institution — including its leaders — need to make noise, not excuses, until something is done about it.<\/p>\n

(4)\u00a0 Be externally, not internally, responsive.\u00a0 An institution contemplating its own navel (that is, its legacy) is not fully engaged in its real purpose.\u00a0 The leader cannot just be the institution’s cheerleader-and-fundraiser-in-chief —\u00a0 the leader must model for the public how everyone in the institution is expected to perform.\u00a0 The leader must be willing to go before the public and speak the truth about things that have gone wrong.\u00a0 Sugar-coating a problem should be cause for a leader’s dismissal — too often it is part of the leader’s job description.<\/p>\n

(5)\u00a0 The key to all of this lies is the selection process (and de-selection as needed) for leaders and managers.\u00a0 Institutional board members — CEOs and other big guns — tend to bring in the people they are comfortable with, which means (to no one’s surprise) people like themselves.\u00a0 Boards need to be diverse, not just in race and gender but in background.\u00a0 And boards need to operate democratically — if a board simply rubber-stamps the chairperson’s decisions, any diversity of background among board members is useless window-dressing.\u00a0 Finally, when it comes to government agencies, we can only hope that some politician, someday, will end the long-standing tradition of putting cronies and mega-donors into leadership positions.\u00a0 Sadly, I’m not sure how much leverage the voting public will ever have in this regard.\u00a0 Money talks, and we are outspent.<\/p>\n

Institutions become too tightly bound to their pasts in any number of ways.\u00a0 They need to stop lying to themselves — and to us — that their past performance implies future results.\u00a0 And they need to stop reminding themselves — and us — about their reputations and traditions and focus instead on doing the job they are supposed to do, today.<\/p>\n

__________<\/p>\n

* The alert reader knows that was a trick statement, as George Washington never did live in the White House.<\/h5>\n
** The fiction (from Forbes, August 21, 2000):\u00a0 \u201cWe happen to be in a business that is going to explode,\u201d says [Kodak CEO Dan] Carp, 52. \u201cDigital means more picture-taking, whether they are health pictures, professional pictures or consumer pictures.\u00a0 And with that comes more and more output.\u201d\u00a0 He vows Kodak will expand sales by 8% to 12% a year and boost profits 10% annually<\/span><\/em> for the next five years, triple its earnings growth rate over the past ten.\u00a0 That would push revenue from $14 billion to $24 billion, with most of the surge fueled by digital products.\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\n
The facts:\u00a0 2000 – Kodak earned $1.407 billion.\u00a0 2001 – earned $76 million.\u00a0 2002 – earned $770 million.\u00a0 2003 – earned $265 million.\u00a0 2004 – earned $544 million.\u00a0 2005 – lost $1.26 billion.\u00a0 Actual total profit over the years 2001 to 2005: $395 million.\u00a0 Profits “promised” by CEO Carp for the same period: nearly $9.5 billion.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And this is why: every institution (college, foundation, large corporation, clinic, agency, government body) inevitably realizes that, whatever it once represented, its continuity as an institution is part of its identity and is highly marketable.\u00a0 The longer an institution exists, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9287"}],"version-history":[{"count":114,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9548,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9287\/revisions\/9548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}