How Organizations Work: Taking a Holistic Approach to Enterprise Health

Citation

Brache, A.P. (2002), "How Organizations Work: Taking a Holistic Approach to Enterprise Health", Facilities, Vol. 20 No. 10, pp. 349-350. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.2002.20.10.349.2

Humankind has not woven the web of life.

We are but one thread with in it.

Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

All things are bound together.

All things connect.

(Attributed to Chief Seattle).

Change has become a way of life for organizations as the business environment becomes increasingly dynamic. Stiffening competition means that many organizations are being forced to re‐examine every aspect of performance. The critical challenge is how to pull the right levers in the right way at the right time and achieve business objectives for organizations.

How Organizations Work is about improving organizational heath and the variables which must be managed in order to achieve permanent improvements in performance.

The organization, like the human body, is not a simple organism. It is a complex network of interlocking factors. The author provides numerous analogies between organizational health and human health. The understanding of individual symptoms does not provide a complete explanation of a person’s health. A body is an integrated system in which the interactions are as important as the individual functions. It is argued that the same applies to organizations. Organizational health is a function of understanding and managing an “intricate and entwined” set of variables.

The book argues that, since a business is an integrated system, one cannot effectively address one variable in isolation. How Organizations Work describes an “enterprise model” that provides an integrated treatment of variables. The success of any action one takes is a function not only of how well one treats the variable on which one is focusing but also how well one addresses the other variables to which it is linked.

The book provides a series of interactive self‐assessment questions and narratives derived from case studies.

The book is aimed at executives, managers at every level, especially those who need to grasp the nature of organizational health and the impact that each has on performance. Therefore it is highly recommended to the facility managers who need a deep understanding of “the water in which organization swims”.