Knowing When to Step Aside
Summary
The people and organizations I most admire knew when to leave. They went out on top, before success hardened into complacency and purpose gave way to self-preservation. When organizations live too long, even good ones can become inward-looking, uncreative, and cautious. Energy slowly shifts from innovation to maintenance, from mission to management. What begins as service risks becoming routine, and routine dulls courage.
Too often, institutions demand accountability from the world while exempting themselves from the same discipline. They continue simply because they can, not because they should. I have long believed it is wiser to kick the struts out from under yourself before they rot out.
When the Charles Bronfman Foundation chose to wind down, its leaders spoke plainly about mission accomplished and about avoiding the trap of institutional self-preservation. That clarity deeply resonated with me.
Harmony Foundation was created to contribute, not to endure indefinitely for its own sake. After more than four decades of work in Canada and around the world, we have decided to step aside while our values are intact and our performance remains strong. Ending well feels less like withdrawal than stewardship, a sensible and responsible act of leadership.
Over the years, we seeded innovation, supported communities, challenged leaders, and took risks that larger institutions could not or would not take. It was demanding work, but a life shaped by purpose and meaning is exhilarating.
Now is the time to make space for new ideas, new leaders, and new ways of doing good. To invest in others doing important work as we have done.
We step aside with gratitude for all who walked this journey with us, and with hope. The world faces serious, even existential challenges. May the next generation meet them with integrity, humility, collaboration, and, ideally, a good dollop of humour.
For me personally, this is a moment of re-alignment. I look forward to contributing as an advisor, mentor, educator, and connector, supporting others as they pursue ambitious goals on behalf of people, other species, and future generations, guided by curiosity, humility, joy, and respect.
Full version
Many of the people and organizations I most admire went out on top, before they became complacent and self-serving.
This decision did not come suddenly, nor does it reflect disappointment or exhaustion. It reflects clarity of purpose, and a desire to break free from the increasingly suffocating demands placed on charities and not for profits, demands that too often reward compliance over courage, process over purpose, and survival over service.
Too many charities committed to social and environmental progress are being managed into irrelevance by ideologies that fail to build the trust needed to lead. Others are being undermined by declining donations in an increasingly self-centred society.
Harmony was created with a clear purpose, to convene people from all walks of life to address environmental challenges and the deeper inequities that drive them. It was founded on the belief that unless we build a society grounded in respect for each other, for other species, and for our responsibility to future generations, we put everything at risk, including our survival.
Over decades, we have worked with partners across Canada and around the world to seed innovation, support communities, push leaders, and take risks that larger institutions could not, or would not, take.
We challenged transactional corporate social responsibility and helped advance a more transformational approach grounded in societal well being rather than branding. We created platforms for civil society leaders to share experience and insight at a time when community organizations were being asked to do more with less. We pushed government to abandon silos and fortress thinking in favour of working across disciplines and sectors.
We worked with governments, Indigenous partners, and environmental organizations on biodiversity protection, including caribou recovery and habitat protection. We supported international cooperation, from lake reclamation and Monarch butterfly conservation efforts in Mexico to biodiversity and student learning partnerships linking Rwanda, Israel, and Canada, training mayors and civil society leaders in China, and promoting peace through conservation among Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians.
This work has been recognized internationally, but its real measure of success has always been the people and places it has strengthened, including partners in thirty-six countries.
We invested in youth and student learning, Indigenous scholarship, environmental justice, and mentoring across sectors. We always encouraged people to confront the issues, not each other, to be respectful and constructive.
Much of what we set out to do has been done. What remains to be done now belongs to others, in other forms and places. As we wind down, we have invested in them to inspire and enable their good work which we hope they will do with goodwill and a sense of purpose.
Some years ago, when the Charles Bronfman Foundation chose to wind down, I noticed with respect and admiration. I share Charles Bronfman’s belief that institutions should not exist forever. They should exist to serve a mission, and when that mission has been achieved, or when the institution is no longer the best vehicle to advance it, the honest act is to step aside. He spoke openly about avoiding the trap of self preservation, the slow drift from purpose to process.
That insight stayed with me. Over time, I have become increasingly convinced that one of the great unspoken failures of modern society is bureaucratic decay, and that it infects civil society as well. Institutions are born to solve problems, but many gradually turn inward.
Energy shifts from innovation to maintenance, from purpose to preservation.
What began as service risks becoming routine, and routine dulls courage. What begins as accountability too often hardens into control. Survival has become, for too many, confused with success.
I have often said that it is better to kick the struts out from under yourself before they rot out. The principle is simple.
If an institution no longer challenges itself as rigorously as it challenges the world, it should not presume to continue simply because it can. When mission drift sets in, when organizations contort themselves repeatedly to align with funding fashions, regulatory pressure, or ideological constructs such as DEI, or become trough feeders rather than change agents, it is time to go.
Harmony preferred to go out with its head held high. I am deeply grateful to the people and organizations who made our work possible and those who walked this journey with us, To board members who supported risk rather than safety, to partners who shared trust and truth, to students and young leaders who renewed my faith in the future, and to colleagues and critics alike who worked for clarity rather than comfort. Harmony was never a solo act; it was a shared endeavour. I am most grateful to our Chair, Robert Bateman, my mentor Jean Pierre Soubliere, and most of all to my family for their unwavering support.
In recent years, I wrote about these dynamics more critically, including in my reflections on stepping away from parts of civil society that had lost their moral compass or practical relevance. But this moment is not about criticism. It is about discernment.
Harmony does not need, nor want, to become another organization whose primary achievement is its longevity. It does not need to defend past work by repeating it. Its purpose was never to create an empire or dependency, but to help others find their own way, build their own capacity, and carry their work forward independently.
Harmony’s story does not end here. The ideas, relationships, accomplishments, and commitments that mattered most are already living elsewhere, in people, communities, and initiatives that no longer require Harmony’s scaffolding. That always was the point.
Retiring an institution is not failure. It is stewardship. Ending well is an expression of discernment, not withdrawal.
I have always believed that leadership includes knowing when to leave the room, and philanthropy includes knowing when to let go. Stepping aside creates space for new leadership, new models, and new courage, which both society and civil society desperately need. Without renewal, we trade results for comfort, and history is unforgiving of that bargain.
I have spent much of my life arguing that meaning comes not from standing in line, but from knowing when to step out of it.
For me personally, this is also a moment of re alignment. I look forward to expanding my role as advisor, mentor, and connector, supporting others as they pursue ambitious goals to make the world a better place for us, for other species, and for future generations. I look forward to contributing to a spirit of curiosity, humility, joy, and respect for each other.