The Company as a Living System

Beautiful Organization

To build a new generation of soulful companies, we need to move beyond seeing companies as machines and begin seeing them as on open, living systems that are inherently social and alive.

We can learn a lot about organizations from biology. The way cells connect with one another and with their environment offers a particularly rich metaphor for rethinking the organization.

 

 

 

 

 

 Featured Articles on Organizational Living Systems:

Double the StuffThe Biology of Great Organizations

The boundary between what’s inside and what’s outside the firm is where the future of organizational thinking now lies. The membrane is a powerful metaphor for the way modern organizations connect with people, organizations, and their environment more generally.

 

Membranes are people tooThe Biology of Organizational Intelligence – It’s People

The membrane that surrounds the organization and connects it with its external environment is made out of a wonderful layer of humanity. What’s more the number of people involved in helping organizations exchange information with the outside world is radically multiplying and decentralizing.

 

Latest Articles on Organizational Living Systems:

  • Radical Connectedness and the Evolution of Business Companies need to move beyond the old, mechanistic strategies for connecting and collaborating. To thrive today, they must now look to the biology-inspired strategies of networks. This is the evolution of the firm - a move away from the self-reliance of yesterday, to the radical connectedness of today.
  • Influence: the Flip Side of Permeability Part 3 of 4: Doing effective influence mapping isn't easy, just as creating effective geographic maps isn't easy. To be useful, the map needs to describe the actual terrain - and for that, you need people who understand how the decisions that impact...
  • 5 Steps to Influence Mapping Part 2 of 4: As Walmart's move to sustainability illustrates, when you scratch below the surface of most institutional change, there's usually a handful of relationships that play a disproportionately large role in bringing those changes about. That's...
  • The Biology of Organizational Intelligence - It's People The membrane that surrounds the organization and connects it with its external environment is made out of a wonderful layer of humanity. What's more the number of people involved in helping organizations exchange information with the outside world is radically multiplying and decentralizing.
  • The Biology of Great Organizations The boundary between what's inside and what's outside the firm is where the future of organizational thinking now lies. The membrane is a powerful metaphor for the way modern organizations connect with people, organizations, and their environment more generally.

 

Cocoon image by Ecoagriculture Partners. Thank you.