← Working PapersN° 006Working Paper
July 2025·9 min read

Notes on Institutional Patience

The kind of patience that builds institutions is not passive. It is the discipline of continuing to do the right small thing on days when nothing appears to be happening.

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Institutions are built by decades of unremarkable Tuesdays. The photograph is taken on a founding day; the institution is made on all the others.

Patience, in this sense, is not slowness. It is refusal — refusal to trade a durable direction for a rapid appearance, refusal to inflate one quarter's result into a story that the next quarter cannot honour.

The measure of institutional patience is simple: how long can a good idea remain a plain idea before it is asked to be a headline?

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