How can new institutions work as a team and build a collective identity?

The term institutional culture describes the ideas, customs, and social behaviours of a particular organisational group. A good institutional culture does not mean everyone agrees all the time, instead, it means that interactions are respectful and are carried out in pursuit of a shared objective. Institutional culture and institutional effectiveness are closely linked.

For new institutions, building a team, defining an institutional culture and coming up with clear decision-making processes are crucial to their success. This is particularly so for collegial bodies, with a number of members who may have different views and visions about what they would like the institution to be and how they would like it to work.

There is no easy or fast way to establish a good institutional culture, although beginning with an open discussion around the institution’s vision and mission is a good place to start. On this basis a new specialised institution may then define its core values and principles as a representation of what it would like its culture to be. Later steps might include basing hiring, performance assessment and promotion criteria on adherence to these core values and principles.

A large part of creating a good institutional culture is through leadership. Leaders set the tone for what is acceptable and desirable in an institution. Leaders should model the values they want to see in the institution. They should provide support, guidance, and feedback and be open to discussing and learning from staff. In collegial bodies, where a number of members hold leadership positions, selecting a “president” or other institutional leader is thus crucial, as are open and frank discussions among members about the kind of institutional culture they would like to foster. Because processes for selecting a leader among members may not be set out in the institution’s founding legislation, members should consider developing a process for this as a priority.

For new institutions, the task is complicated by the fact that they are immediately confronted with a huge list of tasks and competing priorities. “Soft” topics like institutional culture and decision-making processes might seem like lower priorities than finding offices and conducting first visits. Not considering them a priority, however, would be a mistake – they provide the foundations on which so much else is built.