During more than thirty years of working with organizations, I have visited companies of every size, in many different industries and countries. Some were multinational corporations employing tens of thousands of people. Others were family businesses with only a few dozen employees. Although they differed enormously, one observation continued to intrigue me.

Very few organizations deliberately become complicated.

Most begin with remarkable clarity. People understand why the organization exists. Decisions are made quickly. Communication flows naturally, and everyone is focused on creating value.

As organizations grow, however, something slowly changes. More meetings appear, more procedures are introduced, communication becomes slower and responsibilities become less clear. Departments gradually become occupied with coordinating one another instead of serving the customer. People work harder than ever, yet many feel they accomplish less.

We often accept this as the inevitable consequence of growth. Larger organizations, we tell ourselves, must naturally become more complex.

Yet throughout my career I have worked with organizations of similar size, operating in the same industry, that felt completely different. One was calm, focused and decisive. Another seemed trapped in endless coordination. One created energy. The other consumed it.

If growth alone explained complexity, this difference should not exist.

That realization led me to ask a different question.

Perhaps the real question is not how organizations become complex, but where complexity actually comes from.

Every organization is created by people. Every decision, every relationship, every process and every culture originates in the countless interactions between the people who create the organization. If those people experience uncertainty, fragmented priorities or conflicting ways of thinking, why would the organization they create look any different?

Gradually I began to realise that organizations do not merely contain complexity.

They often express it.

Organizations do not merely contain complexity. They express it.

That single observation eventually became the starting point of what I now call The Theory of Inner Organization.

Rather than asking how organizations can become more efficient, the theory asks a deeper question:

Why do capable people repeatedly create organizations that become more complicated than they ever intended?

I believe that question deserves far more attention than it currently receives. Because when we understand where complexity originates, we can also begin to understand how coherence emerges. And once we begin looking for coherence instead of merely reducing complexity, leadership, organizational development and transformation start to look very different.

Continue the Conversation

This reflection introduces one of the central ideas behind The Theory of Inner Organization.

If it resonates with your own experience, I invite you to continue exploring the theory and discover why organizations often become reflections of the people who create them.

→ Explore The Theory of Inner Organization