Yuval Levin’s book, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and a Campus, How Recommitting to our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream provides deep insights as to to why P&G has been a successful, sustaining organization over time.
Levin begins by documenting the well-established decline in faith in institutions, all kinds, excepting the military. In losing faith, “We’ve lost the words of which to speak about what we owe each other.” Institutions which were once formative in establishing who we are and in meeting our highest ideals of integrity, respect for others and excellence have become personal platforms for people to use to pursue their own purposes and establish their individual excellence and uniqueness. This lack of conviction in the role of institutions in helping set boundaries, provide a code of conduct and help individuals to achieve their highest aspirations is what accounts for this loss of faith, according to Levin. I believe there is much truth in this.
As Levin talks about what characterizes strong institutions, what enables them to be sustained over time, as he presents the benefits they offer, I think back again and again to what makes P&G special and what it must preserve.
Institutions come in a lot of shapes and sizes, Levin writes, but they share two distinct elements: They are durable; they keep their shape over time and so shape the realm of life in which they operate. P&G has done this in its fundamental purpose of serving consumers, providing a place of employment where people can grow, delivering excellence in every dimension that matters (consumer acceptance of its brands, financial results etc.)
Another critical element is that strong institutions are forms of association in which people are not only willing but motivated to provide their best effort. In P&G, I think of our unique Alumni group, which brings people back after years and decades of being with the company. They do this for a lot of reasons, but a critical one is to share, once again, in the common values and the achievements that have grown from those values of the company.
This perception of the institution to which we belong will lead us to respond to the question of, “What should I do now?” by asking, “What is the responsibility I owe to this institution?” This line of making a decision as to what one does permeates military culture. It is what makes integrity and commitment to duty the highest priorities.
Institutions can properly be defined as the durable forms of our common life. For that to prove true, the institution must work to accomplish some socially important task, whether that be educating the young, making laws, defending the country, serving God, or in some meaningful way improving the lives of consumers—that, of course, is P&G’s commitment.
We come to trust and value an institution, as we have Procter & Gamble, to the extent that it delivers on this purpose over time and operates with an ethic and set of values that help individuals be their best selves.
Levin argues that strong institutions should be “formative” in the sense of helping us live in accordance with the highest values of integrity, pursuit of excellence, respect for one another and truth. This has to be modeled in action, and this can only happen if leaders believe in and live these values. This has been actualized in P&G for most of its history, through its leaders. The company’s “promote from within” practice has helped achieved consistency in the choice of leaders who embody these values. At the same time, our record has not been without blemish.
What is it that has led to and accounts for the decline of values and character as fundamental to the life of institutions and the life of individuals in them? Part of it has certainly come from the growing predominance of the internet and social media as the conveyor of what makes for news. It has led to a culture where multiple opinions have to a significant degree come to override the reality and importance of fundamental truths.
Procter & Gamble’s succinct and concrete set of Principles and Values, combined with its Purpose, establish and demand adherence to such a broad, concrete set of values. Living this, telling stories, showing their presence in the past and the present, are vital to preserving a culture built on these values.
In talking about institutions and their role, Levin makes the excellent point that, “The family is our first and most important institution. It gives each of its members a role, a set of relations to others and a body of responsibilities. The institution of the family helps us see that institutions in general take shape around our needs and, if they are well shaped, can help turn those needs into capacities. They are formative because they add to us directly and they offer us a kind of character formation for which there is no substitute. There is no avoiding the need for moral formation through such direct habituation in the forms of life.”
We recognize that our role at any point should stem from what we view as our responsibility and opportunity to contribute to the purpose of the organization (supporting the development of children to be all they can be in the case of the family), and doing so in alignment with our highest moral aspirations.
Importantly, this view of the family as an institution flows directly into how I’ve viewed Procter & Gamble—as carrying out and, in many ways, being a family. A family, too, in not unduly restricting the development of every individual in it.
An important quality of a “good family” is to extend our “horizon of expectations and priorities” when it comes to our children. So is this true in Procter & Gamble.
Levin notes that “the relationship between ideals and institutions must be fairly explicit—in the case of the most idealistic institutions, it must be very explicit—and it must be widely understood and clearly sustained in practice.” This describes I believe the role that Purpose, Values and Principles have played and must continue to play in Procter & Gamble, even recognizing that we will not be perfect.
The argument presented in this book and which I have attempted to extend into my perception of Procter& Gamble will not be easily applied to tackling the decline in trust in the institutions around us. However, I agree that it describes what we need to do: recognize our institutions are critical to accomplishing aspirational goals and purposes.
This has to be done in a way that invites new learning on how this purpose and values must be better lived in the context of new knowledge and the environment in which the organization operates. Only with this attitude will organizations be able to live the coda: “Preserve the core; be prepared to change everything else.”
