Socrates famously declared that "an unexamined life is not worth living." His words remind us that self-reflection is not a luxury, but a necessity for personal growth, integrity, and transformation. At each stage of our lives, pausing to take stock of our beliefs, behaviors, patterns, and priorities allows us to live with greater purpose and authenticity. Without such examination, we risk remaining stuck in outdated mindsets or routines, drifting away from what truly matters, and missing opportunities for alignment and evolution. Growth, after all, is not a spontaneous outcome but a process fueled by awareness, choice, and action.

The Case for Organizational Self-Examination

The same principle applies to organizations. Companies are, in many ways, living systems. They develop habits, inherit beliefs, and operate according to unwritten rules shaped by their history, structure, people, and pressures. And just like individuals, organizations that do not engage in meaningful reflection risk stagnation, disconnection from their environment, and diminished performance. The unexamined organization is one that keeps busy without clarity, adds structure without intention, and reacts to symptoms rather than diagnosing root causes. Over time, this leads to cluttered communication flows, misaligned roles, unclear decision rights, and a slow erosion of engagement and adaptability.

Organization Design Encounters the Unexamined

In organization design, we often encounter exactly this phenomenon. Companies seek design interventions to address surface-level issues—a need for speed, agility, growth, integration, or cost reduction—but resist looking too closely at the deeper systemic patterns that have led to the current situation. There is sometimes a hope that a new structure or operating model can be implemented without disrupting the underlying dynamics, culture, or assumptions. But real organization design work inevitably touches these very foundations. It brings into view the unexamined: power dynamics, outdated mental models, misalignments between strategy and structure, and the subtle but powerful ways in which behavior is shaped by design.

Creating the Conditions for Thoughtful Design

This does not mean every design effort must be a full-scale transformation or overhaul. But it does mean that successful design begins with a willingness to pause, reflect, and examine the organization not only as it appears on paper, but as it is lived and experienced by its people. In fact, when organizations are open to examining themselves, they are much more likely to create design solutions that are not only technically sound, but also widely understood, adopted, and sustained.

How to Examine Your Organization

Here are a few ways to examine your organization more effectively in preparation for, or as part of, an organization design initiative:

1. Notice what feels stuck or off-track. Often, the need for organization design begins with a sense that something isn't working as it should. Decisions are too slow. Initiatives stall. Collaboration feels forced. These are not just annoyances—they are signals. Before jumping to solutions, take time to gather observations from across the organization. What do people feel is holding them back? Where is energy lost? What tensions do they experience between priorities, roles, or units? These informal data points can be more illuminating than any chart.

2. Revisit your purpose and direction. Clarity of purpose is essential. When organizations shift, grow, or diversify, their structure and ways of working must evolve to support that new direction. Start by rearticulating your organization's core purpose and current strategic priorities. Then ask: Does our current design help us deliver on this? Where does it get in the way? Misalignment between design and direction is one of the most common causes of friction.

3. Examine how decisions are made. Decision-making is a powerful lens into the lived organization. Who makes decisions, how, and with what input? Are decisions clear and fast, or slow and confused? Do people have the authority they need to act, or do they need to escalate for approval? Mapping your current decision flows—and comparing them to how decisions should be made for effectiveness and speed—can reveal critical mismatches between roles, structure, and accountability.

4. Observe how work flows across boundaries. Most organizations don’t struggle within teams—they struggle across teams. Look at your cross-functional workflows. Where do handoffs break down? Where does ownership get lost? Where are there too many steps, signoffs, or checkpoints? These places often signal design issues that affect collaboration, productivity, and customer experience.

5. Reflect on what the current design is rewarding. Structure shapes behavior. Your current organization design may be unintentionally rewarding behaviors that no longer align with your goals. For example, siloed structures may reward internal competition over collaboration. Centralized models may reward caution over innovation. Consider what kinds of outcomes, behaviors, or attitudes are being encouraged or discouraged by your design—and whether those support your strategy.

6. Include multiple voices. A true examination requires diverse perspectives. Invite employees from different levels and areas of the organization into conversations about what is and isn’t working. Their experiences will often surface design issues invisible from the top. Co-creating this exploration process builds both trust and ownership in any future design decisions.

7. Create space for pattern recognition. The most important findings in organizational self-examination often emerge not from isolated data points but from patterns. Look for themes across functions, levels, and sources of feedback. If the same friction appears in multiple places, or if several challenges point back to a shared cause, you likely have a structural or process design issue worth addressing.

Embracing Reflection for Resilient Design

Ultimately, dealing with the unexamined organization is not about judgment or blame. It’s about curiosity. Organization design is not just a technical exercise—it’s a form of strategic reflection. It gives companies the opportunity to look at themselves with fresh eyes, make the implicit explicit, and choose structures that bring their purpose and potential to life.

Just as Socrates urged us to examine our own lives, the practice of examining the organization allows companies to grow with intention, evolve with awareness, and design themselves to meet not just today’s challenges, but tomorrow’s opportunities as well.

And perhaps most importantly, this kind of self-inquiry builds organizational maturity. When a company is willing to question its own assumptions, challenge its own design, and learn from its own dynamics, it creates the conditions for resilience. In a world of continuous change, this is no small advantage. The examined organization is not only better prepared for the future—it is better at shaping it.

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