Our approach to understanding organisations is based upon a model which has been called "The Healthy Organisation". It is described in detail in a paper called the healthy organisation model, which you can find by following this link. For the purposes of this introduction we can summarise as follows.

Organisations are created by human beings and will function best when they replicate those qualities that we associate with best functioning of individual people. We believe those qualities begin with an attitude of interest and curiosity; from this we derive the capacity to think (by which we mean our ability to turn not knowing, which is usually accompanied by an emotion, into some kind of hypothesis that can be tested); combining curiosity and interest with the capacity to think leads to the ability to learn from experience. If we are interested, can think and can learn, then we will be able to accumulate sufficient information to make good decisions. Clarity about the decision-making function in an organisation is vital.

Thus an organisation needs to know what it is there to do, must be curious about how it achieves its task but also must remain curious as to whether this task is still required by the larger society in which it functions; it must remain able to think about what it is doing and to accumulate knowledge from its activity that improves its decision-making capacity. These qualities will be reflected in an organisational structure that allows information to be passed upwards through lines of accountability and allows authority to be passed downwards through those same lines.

Organisations need to understand that the emotion associated with the delivery of information is anxiety. Very often organisations are unable to manage anxiety and, rather than encouraging anxiety to be passed up the system, where it can be thought about so that the raw material can become information, they reverse the direction of travel so that anxiety is passed down the system and middle managers and ground floor staff are made to feel frightened.