Redeeming Work: The Institution—Part 1

The third of a four-episode series on redeeming work that introduces three areas of harm (money, bureaucracy, and ideology) and one area of positive enhancement (promoting engagement or flow) that the institution contributes to our work. The three harms degrade, dilute, and/or distort our work.  

The disordered love or prioritization of money can either be from an individual or institutional perspective.  Paid work or employment is not a necessary condition of achieving the good of work; however, since we all need money this is the most common avenue and unfortunately is a source of problems within the psychologic dimension.  Institutions should pay workers and reward them to include pay for excellence in work.  Insufficient time and/or resources given to us by the institution can result in degrading the quality of our work resulting in moral injury to our personal integrity.  Leaders need to measure outcomes that best reflect the excellence of our jobs while avoiding measures that perversely work against excellence.  

Bureaucracy is now a hallmark of our increasingly complex modern society. Additional forms, requirements, and training seem to be ever increasing and, in many instances, quite distant to the actual work of making the good or providing the service.  These additional requirements take time away from the primary job at hand resulting in dilution of work.   Additionally, workers are frequently expected to maintain output despite increasing bureaucratic requirements thus leading to degradation of our work.  Leaders must take a very critical view of any new bureaucratic requirements, and any essential ones should be streamlined and tailored to the needs of the workers including in person and just-in-time training whenever possible.  One-size fits all training should be rejected.  Computer-based training further isolates us socially leading to a degradation of our humanity while missing opportunities to enhance training. 

References

A Time to Build by Yuval Levin is a key read for understanding the healthy role that our institutions should play while he convincingly argues that our current institutions are not healthy which is adversely affecting our society.  An NPR interview hits the high points of his book. 

Flourish by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman

 Margin by Dr. Richard Swenson is a great book revealing and reminding us of the dangers of a fast-paced life.

Creation Regained by Professor Albert M. Wolters.  Brief review of the book here while a more technical and detailed one is here

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