There are multiple ways of looking at organisations.

Here’s a baker’s dozen to get you going:

1- Empowerment — contributing to meeting purpose (or not)

2- Effectiveness in prevention — meeting needs early

3- In terms of dealing with demand ‘outside-in’

4- Functional perspective — professional and statutory functions

5- A resource based view

6- An outcomes view

7- Evaluation

8- As purposive users of resource to achieve outcome

9- Just based on ‘what’s changed since last year’?

10- As complex adaptive systems

11- As living things

12- As societies at a small scale

13- As things that deal with complexity and have intent

And through various other metaphors….

So what?

Well, they all (or most) have something to say, something to add.

And moving between them generates something else again.

But, so much of the time, we try to pick a bit of this view, a bit of that — and muddling up the views gets us in a real mess.

>>>> What’s your favourite way of looking at organisations, and why? <<<<<

Are there good ones I’ve missed?