After years of working inside institutions and alongside them, one lesson stands out: failure is not necessarily imposed. More often, it is carefully constructed through everyday decisions that go unchallenged. VIDEO: Kagame: Leaders must be held accountable for delayed projects This is not to dismiss the pressures of markets, politics, or funding. It is to recognise that the most damaging obstacles institutions face are often those they create through their own choices. This becomes increasingly evident the longer one works within institutions or alongside them. Institutions often prioritise external risk surveillance while underestimating the cumulative impact of internal governance choices, operational norms, and leadership practices on their own resilience. ALSO READ: Leaders cannot change the world before understanding it Context, funding, and circumstances are blamed, while the system remains untouched. Nowhere is this self-inflicted damage more evident than in the way institutions approach recruitment and procurement of expertise. Terms of reference are often vague, expectations unclear, and what counts as success is loosely defined. These gaps create room for system abuse and manipulation, often without overtly violating formal procedures. ALSO READ: Reframing the One Stop Center is not a retreat from ambition Recruitment panels search for people who resemble the system design. Having “done a closely similar job before” is treated as proof of suitability, even when such a job was never exactly or consistently defined in line. While this may seem safe or efficient, it stops hiring from being about finding the best person for the job and turns it into copying what is familiar, a practice that reinforces outdated assumptions and blocks fresh ideas. To reinforce this pattern, institutions elevate academic credentials. The past is recast as a standard rather than examined in substance. Someone is hired who seems capable and aligned enough to get things moving. They learn on the job, and the institution adjusts around them, or the new hire adapts to the system. But real-world practice often contradicts this rigidity. Across sectors, people cross professional boundaries with success. Clinicians become effective strategists. Engineers emerge as credible policy advocates. Communication specialists lead complex institutions and build sustainable businesses. These transitions are not anomalies; they reflect the transferability of judgment, leadership, and analytical skill. Of course, limits exist. No HR officer is expected to perform a medical surgery. Some roles demand precise technical matching. But many positions, particularly in strategy, leadership, coordination, and reform, require the ability to synthesise, learn, and decide, not narrow pedigree. Treating all roles as if they demand the same credential logic is not meritocracy; it is institutional rigidness. And in many cases, recruitment panels are often ill-equipped to assess the field and expertise they claim to demand. Recruiters may lack the depth of knowledge they are asked to judge. Faced with this gap, they fall back on what is easiest to verify: certificates, templates, and years counted rather than substance and insights examined. This way, substance gives way to form. This same logic undermines procurement and contracting. Assignments that clearly require a firm, with multiple skill levels, checks, and delivery capacity, are sometimes structured as individual consultancies. To leadership, this should be a red flag. Such misalignment creates room for manipulation: reduced scrutiny, weaker accountability, and discretion that is difficult to justify on technical grounds. Whether intentional or not, poorly designed terms of reference invite abuse. Financial thresholds rise not because work demands it, but because complexity has been artificially inflated. Work that should be judged on skill and competence are instead decided by network. Collective decision-making often shields these failures. When panels act by consensus, responsibility dissolves. If a hire underperforms or a strategy falters, institutions point to the process: rules were followed, thresholds met, approvals secured. Procedure becomes a defence against accountability. The recent national dialogue confirmed what practitioners have long observed: many public projects fail not because of lack of funding or intent, but because of some of the above issues. Projects are often designed to secure approval or resources within one institution, yet execution requires alignment across multiple agencies never involved in the original design. Responsibility is fragmented, and failure is later described as an external challenge rather than the predictable result of internal design choices. Over time, this system produces outputs that look good on paper but weak in real life impact. Capable people are filtered out early, not because they lack ability, but because they challenge inherited assumptions or threaten settled interests. From my experience, what most weakens institutions is most times not from outside, but the decisions made inside. Poor internal choices make systems harder to run, more expensive to maintain, and more vulnerable abuse and funding shocks. Facing and correcting this ‘enemy within’ is not optional. It is the only way to build strong, effective, and resilient institutions. The writer is a management consultant and strategist.
