The Reformer’s Dilemma: When to Transform Institutions—And When to Create New Ones
After two decades navigating corporate social responsibility work and an unexpected role change, I recently stepped away from big tech philanthropy to build something new. The decision of where to journey next wasn't easy: I've seen firsthand the transformative power of institutions committed to social impact. To change culture, we must create culture—and institutions remain our most potent culture-makers.
But I've also witnessed how institutions resist deep transformation. These systems are like houses built long before we arrived—you can often paint the walls, but you may not touch the beams.
This feels especially urgent right now. As democracy frays, as vulnerable communities are pushed aside, as artificial intelligence promises to amplify both our creative and destructive capabilities, I see many others wrestling with fundamental questions:
Do we stay and cultivate a faithful presence within these institutions? Do we imagine something new and find the courage to go build it? Or do we perhaps try the narrowest path of all and attempt to navigate both?
The Depleted Soil of Institutions
When I started in corporate social responsibility, the institutional soil wasn't perfect, but it was fertile. Seeds of change were growing, budding with possibility.
Consider my team's partnership with Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative to confront America's history of racial terror lynching. By bringing together Google's technical expertise and resources with EJI's moral authority and research, we helped legitimize this difficult truth-telling in the eyes of mainstream Americans, reaching over 35 million people through our digital platform. This was precisely the kind of initiative that demonstrated how institutional power could be redirected toward genuine culture change.
But today, that soil in many of our nation’s most powerful institutions has been depleted. What was once a garden with much potential has become increasingly hostile to initiatives that might genuinely renew society or build true solidarity across communities. When institutions become purely transactional spaces, they lose their capacity to cultivate civic virtue and meaningful social bonds.
The Limits of Faithful Presence
Let me say it straight: Inside many of our most dominant economic and political institutions, faithful presence alone is no longer sufficient. While some institutions may still maintain space for genuine transformation, those working within them must take an unflinching look at whether they are changing these systems or being changed by them.
The hardest truth I've learned this past year is that far more change agents are being absorbed (or even ejected) by our powerful institutions than are transforming them. We tell ourselves we're making incremental progress while core power structures remain untouched.
The tough reality is that the system does not step aside because you have made a better argument. It does not surrender because you have planted seeds in the cracks. It will often watch you plant new things in its garden, admire your patience, nod at your discipline, and then pave over what you've planted the moment it becomes inconvenient.
A Call to Build
Given this reality, many change-makers are asking a different question in this moment: If we cannot transform these institutions from within, what might we build instead? Many of us will find our most productive space in the underground.
For example, consider how hip-hop's most revolutionary voices emerged from underground spaces. While many artists later engaged with mainstream culture, their initial power came from building something entirely new, unconstrained by existing systems. The underground wasn't just an alternative—it was a protected space where different values could take root and flourish before engaging with mainstream power structures.
For those of us stepping out to build new models, I believe four foundational values are essential:
Power: Not as domination, but as the capacity to protect and sustain transformative change—because new ways of being must be defended until they can take root and flourish.
Love: Not as sentiment, but as transformative action—because if we do not center love, then whatever we build will crumble beneath the weight of the same hierarchies, the same violences, the same exclusions that have always existed.
Truth: Not as a weapon, but as a foundation—because we cannot build new institutions on foundations of unacknowledged harm, nor can we weaponize truth in ways that dehumanize others.
Solidarity: Not as slogan, but as the deep practice of shared struggle and mutual commitment across ALL people, without exception—because divided movements become conquered movements
The Leadership We Need
These values aren't just principles—they're the foundation for a different kind of leadership. The work of building new models demands leaders who deeply understand power—not to perpetuate it, but to transform it. People who can imagine a different conception of institutional purpose – one that places collective flourishing and moral values at the center rather than treating them as optional add-ons to market efficiency.
These leaders face a difficult path: their commitment to transformation will put them in tension with existing power structures. Their careers, relationships, and security may be put at risk. But this willingness to put one’s comfort and status on the line in service of building something better is precisely what gives their leadership its transformative power.
The Choice Before Us
Whether you choose to practice ethical navigation within institutions, join an underground movement to imagine and build something new, or take the road less traveled and attempt to navigate both, the key is clarity about our ultimate aim: creating systems that serve all of humanity, where everyone can flourish.
In a world increasingly driven by winner-take-all logic, perhaps the most urgent question is this:
What sacred line are you quietly watching erode that you could defend today? And more importantly, what are you prepared to do if you see it vanish entirely? Will you mourn? Will you resist? Or will you build something that cannot be so easily erased?
The soil may be depleted in our current institutions, but the earth beneath them remains fertile with possibility – if only we have the courage to dig deep enough to reach it.
I'd love to hear your experiences navigating these choices between institutional transformation and building alternatives. What's working? Where are you finding hope and renewed imagination?
#Leadership #Innovation #SocialEntrepreneurship #ChangeManagement #ThoughtLeadership
As a Fractional Chief Impact Officer and advisor through True Steele LLC , I help organizations navigate these complex tensions between transformative change and institutional constraints. Drawing from two decades directing over half a billion in corporate philanthropy, I partner with leadership teams to build authentic pathways to systemic impact. If you're wrestling with similar questions, let's connect.
