Last week I offered Part I of Methods vs. Mission, this week is Part II. Part II asks the following question, how do you know when an institution has allowed its mission to be co-opted by its methods? Let me preface this by saying that the process through which an institution’s mission is co-opted by its methods is a subtle one. Over time it may barely be perceptible. Amazingly, even obvious signs of decline in productivity and efficiency are not seen as a failure to fulfill its mission but only as a temporary setback that can easily be remedied if the employees would just work harder. In fact, even in the absence of visionary leadership, the institutional mantra came become “just keep doing the same things, only do them harder.” Institutions with some degree of longevity and a history of success are difficult to kill, but it is possible. Losing sight of your mission in the maze of institutional methods is a slower death, but death none-the-less.
So, here are my eight symptoms that may indicate an institution’s mission has been co-opted by its methods.
1) Leaders believe that the institution’s best days are in the past and therefore the institution’s future depends on recapturing or re-forming the past.
2) Leaders are in denial that the institution reached its previous apex of growth, its critical mass, in the midst of a cultural milieu that no longer exists.
3) Previous leaders are assigned the status of martyrs and or saints and holy days are created to memorialize the moments of greatest success and joy in the institution’s history.
4) The institution’s most powerful and significant past achievements are canonized or absolutized as guidelines for the next generation of leaders/workers.
5) An inability to value creativity, innovation, and/or an unwillingness to critique itself turns an institution’s greatest asset, its people, into a maintenance crew.
6) The emergence of a pseudo-history created from the shared experiences of what happened in the institution’s past now defines and shapes what the institution’s future will be or must be.
7) The institution has forgotten that its greatest resource is its people not its structures or methods; once institutionalized, it expends more and more of its time, energy, and resources on perpetuating itself than fulfilling its mission.
8) Leaders come to believe and communicate that the institution’s survival is the mission.
I started this two part blog writing about observations I made while teaching a course on the Reformation. What I have described in two parts is a pretty accurate picture of the Catholic Church as it entered the sixteenth century. The Catholic Church was worth the time and effort it would have required to reform it and restore its true mission, incarnating the gospel of Jesus Christ in the world. My assessment is that the key element required for this reform to occur was missing. The key element in the reformation of any institution is leadership. Reform requires courageous, visionary leaders willing to overcome the fear and resistance associated with losing the institution in order to lead the changes that will allow the institution to recapture and renew its mission.
Lest we become arrogant or judgmental about what sixteenth century Catholic leaders failed to do with the challenges and crises of their moment in time, take a moment and reflect on the crises and challenges facing our own institutions, what choices are we making? I would suggest Jim Collins’ book as a good read for this topic.