Have you ever thought how you’d define an organization? It may seem like an esoteric question, but I think your answer to the question has real implications; and therefore warrants some thought. It’s also important to think deeply about what an organization is because we spend so much of our lives in them.
Schools, sports teams, the military, governments, and places of work are all organizations; but as different as they all are, there is something that they all share that qualifies them as organizations. I want to admit upfront that I think the question has some real complexity and room for disagreement—there are many issues I’m still wrestling with myself (feel free to leave comments below with any insights).
Organizations are essentially a collection of people and things that are united around some common purpose. Schools are a collection of teachers, cleaning staff, students, and administrators that interact in buildings, offices, buses, and playgrounds. Organizations are nothing more than the people that make them up. Of course, when the final light is turned off at night the school is still standing—but it is now silent and void of the life that springs at 8am the following morning. In this way, organizations—like schools—are little more than the people that make them up. Organizations are not things—or people—they are processes and organisms made up of people. Organizations are verbs; not nouns.
So why does this matter? Again, how you define an organization will determine how you work in them, and how hopeful you are about the work you do in them. Many people in our culture view organizations as things—or even as persons—and less as organisms made up of people. You see this in the way our laws give corporations similar rights to persons. Or in the way we talk about a particular business “making decisions” or “reacting to the market.” When in reality, it was a group of individual people from that company that made the decision—not the entire organization itself.
I understand we talk about organizations in the collective as a short-hand but we easily make the mistake of thinking organizations are more than what they are. I recently had a conversation with an expert who does a lot of policy work in education. They see organizations as large, powerful, structures run by rules and regulations. And so their preferred intervention is to change education systems by making large-scale policy changes from the “top-down.” They are also more critical of more “bottom-up” interventions like training and mentoring. Again, their definition shapes their intervention.
Likewise, viewing organizations as organisms—a collection of living people that are constantly changing-—also shapes your strategies for change. Seen in this way, the policies and regulations that make up an organization are always created, implemented and enforced by the people in the organization—not some invisible force from above. So the hope is that more “bottom-up” interventions like training will impact the policy makers at the top to make large-scale decisions that have such a powerful impact on organizational life.
I believe both kinds of “top” and “bottom” interventions are needed. There is no either-or; but a both-and. And stepping back to remember that organizations disappear when the lights go off and the people leave, gives us greater hope for making a difference when they come back on.
