Three Levels of Perspectives
on Organizational Systems

It's a common observation that if you look closely enough, stuff always seems to be made up of other stuff. People are made up of organs, organs are made up of cells, cells are made up of molecules, molecules are made up of atoms, as so on.  And it works the other way, too. If you broaden your viewpoint, everything seems to be part of a larger system, which itself is part of a larger system.  People are part of a society, society is part of an world ecology, the world is part of a solar system, the solar system is part of a galaxy, and so on.

I have found it useful to make a corollary organizational observation: that everything can be viewed as either:

1. A unitary whole, with its own boundaries and individuality,
2. A part of a system, interacting with other similar or complementary parts of that system, or
3. A system of interacting parts, maintaining its coherence despite constant change and uncertainty.

A division of a corporation is something in its own right, it is part of the whole corporation, and it is a system of many departments or projects.  The corporation has a clear legal boundary, it is part of an industry or supply chain, and it is a system of interacting divisions, and so on.

What I find most interesting is that any piece you look at is not one, but all three, of these things, simultaneously.  Depending on what you are trying to figure out, one might be more useful to think about than another, but I find that thinking about each is often highly productive and leads to unexpected insights.

You may notice that my starter set of principles is organized in this way.