As defined by Merriam-Webster, infrastructure refers to “the underlying foundation or basic framework” of a system or organization. It’s the stuff and systems that keep things functioning. In corporate spaces, the most common infrastructure I hear talked about is IT infrastructure: the combination of digital equipment, tools, and services that keep data flowing, systems secure, and services accessible to those who use them.

Incredible amounts of time and money are spent establishing and maintaining these systems, and organizations should invest in them! Healthy IT infrastructure can be life-giving, and messy or weak IT infrastructure can create miserable experiences for both employees and customers.

However, it is not the only essential infrastructure in an organization. Here, I want to argue the case for what I’ll call “social infrastructure”.

By “social infrastructure”, I mean the systems and processes that serve as the underlying foundation or basic framework for the humans within an organization. Whereas IT infrastructure enables the healthy and reliable activity of digital systems within a given organization, the social infrastructure enables the healthy and reliable activity of the humans within a given organization.

For my purposes, social infrastructure includes everything from the employee onboarding experience, to training resources and communities of practice for tenured staff, to how teams are structured and balanced to ensure individual contributors and managers receive adequate feedback and support, to PTO policies and efforts to ensure staff are happy and avoiding burnout.

Ok, let’s stop for a second. I want to make a bet.

I’m willing to bet that your eyes just glazed over.

Am I correct?

Onboarding, training, training resources, standards of feedback and management —these all can sound like boring fluff. Or worse, they can sound like bureaucratic nonsense that gets in the way of progress and revenue. They are buzzwords that a leader will use with stakeholders but often represent useless overhead to actual employees.

And yet… I believe that the health and longevity of an organization depends on the quality of its social infrastructure.

I suspect that the reason our eyes tend to glaze over the moment these topics come up is that most of us have been exposed to bad or poorly instantiated social infrastructure. We think of these systems in terms of mandated trainings or social events, or we think about the cold performance feedback cycles that do nothing to improve performance. These top-down systems often feel rigid and totally out of touch with what makes a given employee or team successful.

But — organizations often default to these approaches because they tick a box (e.g., cyber security trainings), and they allow leaders to tell stakeholders, “Look! We invest $XYZ in training our employees!” Top-down programing and systems are concrete, have easy to identify outputs, and are easy to talk about. 

It is much more difficult to talk concretely about the value of something like a community of practice or how a well-considered org chart and staffing plans ensure everyone is clear on their goals and feels well-supported. You can’t easily say, “We spent $XYZ and received ABC outputs,” and I think this blurriness can lead to a lack of investment. 

If an organization wants to be sustainably nimble over the long term, the employees who make up that organization need to have adequate support to remain happy and to continue growing and responding to dynamic market forces. 

Organizations get their life and culture from employees wanting to stick around for years at a time, but for that to happen, they have to see sustainable paths forward for themselves.

Organizations also need fresh ideas and perspectives. Of course, one critical avenue to get new insights is bringing in new people from outside the organization. The catch with fresh hires, though, is that they lack the context for the organization, and you’re often paying a high price tag to bring them in.

What if, instead, there were meaningful ways to get fresh ideas and perspectives from tenured employees, who understand the context and goals of the organization in a deep way? What if organizations were designed to encourage employees to build long-lasting careers, and those employees were provided tools and incentives to keep learning and growing? 

Ironically, the rapid evolution of AI tools like Large Language Models (LLMs) builds a case for just such an internal investment. On their face, LLMs seem like just another tool in the IT infrastructure toolbox. You buy the tool you like (and can afford), you deploy it, and voilà — you make money!

…right? 

Sure, if setting cash on fire is your goal.

For LLMs (or really any variety of AI) to work, you need thoughtfully deployed infrastructure, implemented and maintained by people who understand the history, nuances, and business context of the data, and you need people who understand the business context. Knowledgeable, well-tenured staff are the best positioned to share the ins and outs of the data, evaluate LLM outputs, and identify real opportunities for gleaning value from these tools.

If you want your organization to actually benefit from LLMs, you need to invest more in the people you have and build sustainable pathways for continued education and training (especially given how radically these tools are shifting from moment to moment).

I presented LLMs as an example of how investing in social infrastructure can have real-world impacts, but I want to be clear: I’m not selling an AI-specific strategy here (I mean… I’m not really selling anything here… this newsletter is free, after all…). LLMs are changing the way we do work, but in a few years, some other hot new thing will also be changing the way we work. Earnestly investing in the social infrastructure of an organization with an eye towards long term growth and impact ensures that you are actually ready for the next Big Thing.

On top of the obvious business benefit, it makes work more meaningful and fun for the employees who make up your organization. Many folks want to put down roots, and they want to grow where they are. Give them that opportunity, and they will have plenty to give back to the organization