Institutional Drift

There is a German expression I used to hear when growing up and becoming a lawyer:

Die anderen Leute kochen auch nur mit Wasser.

It was usually meant as encouragement. A reminder that the people we admire or face do not possess some secret knowledge unavailable to the rest of us. They face uncertainty, competing priorities and difficult decisions like everyone else. They simply find a way to carry them.

I thought about that phrase often as my own responsibilities grew.

Over the years I founded an organisation, joined existing ones, became Chief Executive Officer of an established foundation and accepted responsibilities on foundation boards. The institutions were different, but I started recognising similar patterns.

Every institution carries tension.

Especially institutions built around a purpose need to balance different responsibilities at the same time. Resources need to be protected, people need to be considered, and impact needs to remain at the centre. Those forces are sometimes uncomfortable, but I have learned to appreciate them. They keep an institution aware of itself.

Every now and then, however, I encounter an institution where something feels different.

Nothing is obviously wrong. The organisation is successful, the people are capable, the structures are established. And yet there is a sense that something no longer relates to everything else the way it once did.

For a long time, I did not have a word for that. I now call it institutional drift.

Institutions rarely drift because people stop caring. More often, they drift through reasonable decisions made by responsible people. A small exception becomes a habit. A practical solution becomes a principle. A decision made for the right reason slowly creates consequences nobody intended.

That is why I have become interested not only in decisions themselves, but in the direction they create.

Whenever I look at an important decision, I try to understand what would happen if this decision became normal. Not because I expect an extreme outcome, but because following a decision to its consequence often reveals the motivation behind it.

Sometimes the result confirms the path. Sometimes it creates discomfort.

When that happens, I go back to the original question. What were we trying to achieve? What responsibility were we trying to serve? Has the solution remained connected to the intention?

The difficulty with institutional drift is that it often appears while an institution is still successful. Success can hide the small movements that slowly change who an institution becomes.

That is why I have learned to pay attention when something feels off but still presents nice.

Because while it is true that we all cook with water, sometimes the most important question is what we are actually cooking.