Organization: The lost art of giving space for living
An Essay on the Need to Redefine Organizations by Dr. phil. Christoph Quarch
In this essay, the Argonauts’ Thinktank — led by Christoph Quarch, initiator of the Third Platonic Academy — discusses the true meaning of the term “organization” and the art of managing a company as a dynamic organism.
There are words that hide more than they reveal. Organization is such a term. One hears it and immediately believes what it means. Usually one is not really wrong, but more could be said about this term.
One may leave it at a superficial understanding and think that an organization is a structure or an institution in which many people, departments, areas etc. interact with each other in some purposeful way. In this sense, organization is a good umbrella term for enterprises, societies, foundations, associations, administrations and the like.
Or one uses the word organization not for the what, but the how of an institution: for the internal order of its hierarchy, its procedures, processes, communication channels, etc. Both uses of organization are common. And both are correct according to current language usage. But both conceal what an organization really is.
But those who are responsible for any organization should know what a responsible organization really is. Because those who have only a superficial understanding of what organizations are will go astray easily. For they will be able to live up to their responsibilities only in a superficial way.
What is an organization? The history of language helps here — but in the case of the word organization, its origins are complicated. The word comes from ancient Greek. It derives from órganon (ὄργανον), which means “tool”. This word was later adopted as organum in Latin and further developed in the 17th and 18th centuries into terms such as organ, organism and organization. In the course of this development, however, there was a lasting shift in meaning.
That dramatic change owes its existence to the physician and botanist Georg Ernst Stahl, who for the first time established the word organism as a scientific term for the description of a living body. From then on the individual parts of the body were regarded as organs: heart, liver, kidneys, etc. — and organization became either the “activity by which an organism is formed” or “the formation, furnishing and composition of an organic being produced by organic activity” (e Dictionary of the German Language).
It is noteworthy that in the 18th century the word-complex of organ, organism, organic, organization, etc. largely detached itself from the original context of craftsmanship and shifted exclusively to the description of living systems. This has to do with the fact that Stahl explicitly positioned his concept of the organism against that of the philosopher René Descartes, who in the 17th century described the human body as a mechanism and thus became the pioneer of human medicine.
Stahl’s aim was to use his newly coined term to make it clear that Descartes’ mechanical thinking could adequately describe neither human life nor life itself. According to the „punchline“ of Stahl’s neologism, living beings are not technical apparatuses; rather, they are complex, dynamic ecosystems which follow a completely different logic and architecture than mechanical machines. In the 18th century, the word organization only described the growing, vital order of a living organism.
The organization of the organs of an organism was regarded as a natural event that could be studied and admired by humans, but not produced as a mechanism. It was not until the end of the 18th century that this idea of organization-as-a-mechanism came into being. Suddenly it was not only the organization of plants and animals that could be covered by this word, but also the organization of a state or a company.
But, when one spoke in this way, one did it to express the fact that the establishment of a state or an enterprise should not be carried out mechanically and technically, but organically and alive; that it should not be the art of engineering but nature itself that should measure who is in a position of political or entrepreneurial responsibility. And this is precisely where a deep insight lay, largely forgotten at the beginning of the 21st century, as shown by the fact that the significance of the word “organization” today has come to coincide with what it was originally supposed to differ from: an apparatus or a machine.
Thinking shapes reality. The semantic denaturation of the word organization leads to the sad reality that organizations today are mostly lifeless apparatuses whose organs lose their inner cohesion and act against each other instead of harmonizing with each other for the good of the whole.
Anyone who, as an entrepreneur or manager, is responsible for an organization is, therefore, advised to become aware of the original meaning and context of the word and thus to understand his or her own responsibility for cultivating and maintaining a dynamic, living system. In the organizational development of a company, the primary goal is not to optimize its functional processes and sequences, but instead to develop the potential it has created into a flourishing and prosperous aliveness.
However, only those entrepreneurs and executives who have a clear understanding of where exactly runs the borderline between mechanism and organism — and why companies are actually organisms and not machines — will be able to fulfill this task.
Immanuel Kant once noted that “an organized product of nature” is one “in which all is both purpose and reciprocal means”. What does this mean? The easiest way to understand this formulation is in comparison with the apparatus. An apparatus is all means, because it owes its existence to the fact that it fulfills a clearly defined purpose: a car should drive, a plane should fly, a calculator should calculate.
But in an organism it is different: the organization of an organism does not owe its purpose to the realization of a specific purpose, but carries its meaning in itself: an organism is organized the way it is organized precisely because it unfolds in this way and cannot do otherwise. While the organs within the organization — as Kant said — function as a means of self-development and self-preservation, they are not subject to external goals: no quarterly results, expected returns, etc.
The purpose of the organization is to maintain, increase and promote the vitality of an organism. The purpose of organizing a business is to maintain, enhance and promote the vibrancy of the business. This must be understood by all those who want to master the art of the organization. It is based on the insight that an organization is only healthy if it can fulfill this purpose: to support the organism in growing, thriving and bearing fruit.
Now, however, one may well ask whether a company is really an organism: a living system and not an apparatus — an organization and not a mechanism.
This question arises especially when, like so many entrepreneurs today, one has become deaf to the semantics of the word organization and the word no longer reminds us of organic growth. For then, one is easily tempted to misunderstand a company solely as a machine for maximizing the benefit of its owners, and its organization as its technical optimization.
And this perception does not work because it fails to recognize that companies are not constructed from lifeless components but, for the time being at least, they owe their existence to the interaction of living beings that interact organically rather than mechanically. If a company were indeed a machine, then one could only measure its success solely by whether it fulfilled the yield expectations of its owners or the market. And who knows, it may well be that soon, with the help of robotics and artificial intelligence, optimized companies will be able to do without human labor. Except that they will be lifeless: dead spaces that in turn create dead spaces around themselves. The question is: do we want that?
As long as people in companies interact, the companies are living systems. And living systems, ecosystems, can be described as organisms that require proper organization — an organization committed to maintaining and growing the organism, helping it not just survive but thrive. Such an organization measures its success not only in the company’s profits, but also in its inner vitality — which is always the vitality of the employees. Those who take the idea of the organization seriously cannot avoid changing their criteria of success, and realize that a company’s health and liveliness are more important than its short-term returns.
Above all, the concept of corporate governance needs to change. In an organization that is worthy of its name, you will no longer be able to align all processes and sequences to wished-for returns and measure the value of the company solely on the basis of its productivity. Instead, one will cultivate a systemic mindset that fosters a harmonious interaction within the company to serve the dignity of its people. For what has meaning in itself or sees its fulfillment in the preservation and unfolding of one’s own vitality differs greatly from all instruments, machines and apparatuses. That organization possesses a human dignity which is completely independent of the fluctuating valuations of markets or analysts.
The art of organization is indeed an art and not solely a technical function. Its mastery lies in cultivating, arranging or composing the whole of a living system in such a way that the human energy of the employees bound up within it can optimally unfold and freely flow. Each employee needs to be valued in his or her individuality to appreciate their qualities and give them living space — or, as it sometimes happens, to recognize their intractable inadequacies and possibly overlook them.
It also means transforming the enterprise into a cultural space that is not dominated solely by purposeful logic or purely instrumental reason. It must also leave room for non-targeted, free interactions of people. Individual growth should serve the fruitfulness of the whole rather than being subservient to private power and the accumulation of money at the expense of the health of the whole. That would be the motto of an advanced, progressive leadership that has brought itself to mastery of organizing as an art of entrepreneurship, inspired by the living business of the gardener and not just oriented to the technical craft of engineers.
The guiding metaphor of the machine and the apparatus should be replaced by the leitmotifs of the organism and the garden. The main goal of increasing profits and optimizing efficiency should be replaced by the guiding principle of fostering vitality and sustainable harvesting. Only in this way will it be possible to prevent companies from becoming dead zones whose supposed success is belied by dead souls and a dead nature. This is the only way to pave the way to a genuinely new and progressive organizational culture that will make companies blossom and increase their people’s sense of aliveness and purpose.
Dr. phil. Christoph Quarch is Chief Philosophy Officer of The Argonauts, a community for courageous leaders and their organizations. He applies ancient insights that are increasingly relevant today, providing wisdom and answers to key questions such as how to discover our true selves and what it means to be fully alive. Christoph is the author of the bestseller ‘Plato’s Metaphysics of Soul’ and is regarded as Europe’s most down-to-earth philosopher.
