Institutions reflect the structured, codified and aggregated views and expectations of individuals. Instead of focusing on how our institutions enslave us in shackles, how can we inject humanity into our institutions to reshape our institutions into platforms?

Imaginary Realities, Berlin, Germany, Sept 2009

John Hagel, A Labor Day Manifesto for a New World:

… institutions must be redesigned from the ground up to address a totally different rationale. Instead of pursuing scalable efficiency, institutions must learn how to pursue scalable peer learning. Said differently, institutions must find ways to make talent development the core rationale for their existence. Everything about these institutions – strategy, operations and organization – will need to be reconceived through this talent development lens. As this rationale focuses our efforts to craft a new set of institutional arrangements, we [passionate creatives, in particular] will move from the edges of our institutions to their core.

We must make this long and difficult march through our institutions. Without it, we will be forever limited in terms of the scope of our learning and our impact. Properly configured, institutions can provide extraordinary platforms to amplify and accelerate our individual efforts. Without these institutional platforms we will surely still make a difference, but the difference will be far more contained.

… We need to move forward and engage the institutions around us. And the institutions have more and more need to listen to us. Twentieth century institutions are not succeeding in the twenty-first century as new infrastructures take hold. … With the right effort, we can turn these institutions from prisons to creation platforms and achieve the potential that we have long dreamed about, both for ourselves as individuals and for the institutions that support us.

A small portion of a great explanation of how the large-scale changes underlying the Big Shift impact us at a personal level; worth a deep read.