Does the title surprise you? Let me explain the reasoning for justifying it.
Successful organizations are living organizations. Like all living bodies that suffer from health problems over time so are organizations.
- Stressed humans, stressed plants and so are stressed organizations.
- Malnutrition leads to health problems and so for organizations that lack talents, knowledge, resources, and cash.
- A block of blood or water in plants and a block of information from deserving employees lead to several health problems. In humans, it may lead to the failure of kidneys.
Low circulation of information leads to kidney failure in human bodies. This in turn causes the failure of kidneys in five stages. These are:
Stage 1- the kidneys suffer from mild damage and still perform well with no noticeable problems.
Stage 2- more damage to the kidneys than stage 1, but still they function well.
Stage 3- in this medium stage the kidneys start to lose some of their functionality.
Stage 4- the kidneys suffer marked loss of their functions.
Stage 5- this is an advanced stage of failure so that the kidneys lose a remarkable part of their functionality.
The most noticeable part of the loss of the function of kidneys includes feeling fatigued, nausea, swelling of part of the body, dry skin, and poor appetite.
Kidneys remove wastes from our bodies as they also remove acids produced by cells in our bodies among other functions.
This is a similar organizational problem where you feel the organization suffers from a lack of activity, fatigue, and poor appetite for knowledge leading to malnutrition as well as feeling nausea.
This happens in organizations when their kidneys stop removing acidic information. They are also unable to remove toxic and faked information and what blood circulates in the organizations is intoxicated leading to the advanced stages of kidney failure of organizations.
Communication is the lifeblood of organizations. If communication is of poor quality then the organization shall suffer from the symptoms of kidney failure.
Lack of blood circulation is another cause of health problems for organizations. For organizations, this happens when a senior employee screens the information downwards or when team members stop exchanging information and learning from each other.
Confirmation bias is another cause of kidney failure in organizations. These organizations do not realize that new information is necessary to unlearn and re-learn. This leads to the poisoning of the circulating blood of knowledge in the organization.
The purity of knowledge in an organization is akin to the purity of the circulating blood in the human body. What the human body suffers from this is also what organizations also suffer from.
What applies to human health applies to organizations as both are living bodies.
Honestly, I am not elevated only by your greqat comment Aldo but also by the depth and intefrity of your comment. You added valus and depth to the post which fascinate me.
You highlighted several great idea about the integrity of the human body as well as the need to keep its balance.
Man and the company are complex organisms that live, grow, and transform in a continuous balance of all their parts.
The company system should maintain its individuality while being interconnected with the surrounding environment.
The spine, for example, should be elastic and mobile to support the weight and movements of the head, shoulders, chest, and pelvis.
Management, recognized as an organic function, now needs freedom, fluidity, and strength in supporting weights and “abrupt” movements.
The immune system, crucial for protecting the human body, should be integrated into corporate safety and security, including firewalls, antivirus software, access control, and training.
The entire human body helps compensate for discomfort, and an organization with a systemic approach fosters a sense of belonging and support.
Who would argue with the vailidity and beauty of your comment I do not know and do not want to know.
As always, a fascinating insight. Well done.
Man, like the company, is a complex organism: both can turn to the complexity of nature for their own care and well-being and all complex systems are network organizations.
The company, just like the human body, lives, grows and transforms in a continuous balance of all its parts.
For example, the so-called biological “conversations” of cellular networks are essential for life.
The same thing happens to the company system and the importance of the flow of vital energies within it: of its breathing, of its oxygenation, of the relationships between the inside and the outside and above all of the relevance of the individual for the life of the system.
The company system should in fact operate with the same intent on the individual: that is, through a tension that leads to the maintenance of its individuality, as a distinct and distinctive entity, to be enhanced but at the same time interconnected with the surrounding environment.
The spine is elastic and mobile, to ensure the widest freedom of movement, but it is also extremely robust, suitable for supporting the weight and movements of the head, shoulders, chest and pelvis.
Similarly, management, recognized both as an organic function and as a single individual, now more than ever needs freedom, fluidity and strength in supporting weights and “abrupt” movements.
The immune system, so important to keep the human body “protected”, corresponds today to everything that concerns corporate safety and security where it seems to be increasingly important to protect the entire perimeter of the network, with firewalls, antivirus and anti-malware software, access control, reactivity to attacks, without neglecting the fundamental aspect of training, which helps employees and collaborators to move in the new context with easier connections and greater awareness.
The entire human body helps to compensate when just one part is in difficulty, sometimes even a very small part. If I crush my little toe, this pain spreads throughout the body and the individual parts help to compensate for this discomfort.
Thus, an organization made up of people who are aware of a systemic approach feel supported by the company and become “generators of support” themselves, they develop a sense of belonging because the system represents them.