This website covers knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints, amongst other topics. Opinions expressed here are strictly those of the owner, Jack Vinson, and those of the commenters.

Organizations are collections of people

Ton Zylstra poses an interesting question in his Ton's Interdependent Thoughts: How We Might View Organisations:

What happens when an organisation is first founded? Is it individuals joining (their networks) together, or is it a box to be filled with employees?

He adds to this some drawings of the implications. From one viewpoint, the whole world is a web of connections, and companies or other organizations are simply subsets of those networks. But the direction that Ton seems to be going helps me thinks about the direction an organization takes as it grows. Do you look for people to fill a "position," or do you look for people who have critical skills and connections into a part of the external network that didn't exist before.

To paraphrase Ton's opener: "Organizations are made of people, without whom there would be no money made." How does an organization look at the people and their relationships to understand value?

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