Independence Day: Today, America Needs More than a Noble Cause

Written by Bryan Lutz, Editor at Dollarcollpase.com:

Happy Independence Day to my American friends!

Wishing you and your nation all the best, but America, where are you going?

This Independence Day, America needs a new narrative , or a re-visioning of the old one…

And it needs more than a noble cause.

Something more than Donald Trump’s MAGA. After all, what will become of the ‘Make America Great Again’ movement in three-and-a-half more years?

We don’t know, but…

What we do know is this:

Every successful organization starts with what business researchers call a “noble cause”—a narrative that energizes people to stretch their efforts and impact the world.

The Boy Scouts had character building.

Hospitals have healing.

Political movements have their vision of a better society.

MAGA certainly qualifies as a noble cause, promising to restore American greatness and put America first.

But here’s the problem: noble causes alone aren’t enough.

Russ Gonnering at the Brownstone Institute writes:

Why Organizations Die While Cities Live Forever

“…All these organizations had a common characteristic: they were significantly more than the sum of the parts. They all had a “noble cause” that energized the participants to stretch their efforts and impact the world in which they operated. Yet within a short period of time all of them either atrophied or toppled altogether. Why?

In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Dan Pink explains that money is not the primary motivator many believe it to be. Instead, the most effective motivators are: the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world. Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose are far more potent energizers than financial gain by itself. 

Warren Bennis, the “Father of Academic Leadership Studies,” mentored Dave Logan, my own mentor at the USC Business School. In Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, Logan and his co-authors described the results of more than 10 years of empirical study on the critical role Organizational Culture plays in Organizational Performance. Logan and I went on to expand the definition of Organizational Culture of Edgar Schein to: “The pattern of, and capacity for, constructive adaptation based on a shared history, core values, purpose and future seen through a diversity of perspectives.”

Organizational Culture is a meme and is propagated through an organization by verbal and non-verbal communication. As a meme, it changes both belief and behavior. It brings a conscious or subliminal desire to spread itself to other members of the organization. “

When Gonnering wrote the article above, he was focusing on the endurance of cities. Because at a small localized level, they are able to maintain a pattern of constructive adaptation based on shared history, core values, purpose, and future, seen through a diversity of perspectives. They endure because they excel at this.

They maintain core functions while constantly adapting to new challenges. They welcome diverse perspectives that generate innovation. They build institutions that outlast any individual leader. That is, if their institutions allow for those qualities to persist in their institutions.

America had a narrative like this before.

It was called the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The challenge extends beyond any single political movement, ideology, or institution to enforce. It requires institutions to adapt to changing circumstances while maintaining fundamental commitments to democratic governance, individual rights, and the rule of law. 

In others words, the core institutions upholding the United States need to maintain those values, but so far they have suffered the same as businesses…

Organizations across sectors face the same entropy problem when they lose focus on their core mission. Companies get “mired in culture wars” instead of serving customers. Universities become ideological battlegrounds rather than centers of learning. Even well-intentioned organizations can fall into the trap of prioritizing political positioning over institutional purpose.