Organizations as living organisms?

Do companies have DNAs and 'personalities'? Sometime ago, my boss chewed my head off when I opined at an offsite that we couldn't execute on something because it wasn't part of our DNA. But I do believe that organizations like humans have some fundamental building blocks and the resulting 'personality' - how it behaves or does not behave to stimuli is the result of both 'nature' and 'nurture'. So I was pleasantly surprised (and validated) when I came across a book titled 'Results' authored by two Booz Allen Hamilton consultants, Gary Neilson and Bruce Pasternack, which espouses just such a theory of Organizational DNA and personality types.

Unlike me just dropping a 'concept' at an offsite, Gary and Bruce have done an exceptional job at arriving at four fundamental (though maybe not irreducible) primaries, which like in the case living DNA, are the building blocks of an organization. These are decision rights, information, motivators, and structure and how these are architected in an organization, how they interplay and how they come together to respond to external and internal challenges is what makes a company able to deliver consistently on its commitments. The authors then postulate seven organizational types and how they stack up against the four building blocks. The book is based on hands-on consulting experience, research and over 30,000 surveys, and does a pretty good job of giving real life examples that resonate with many of our own professional experiences and therefore makes the theory credible to a large extent. But what I liked about it is its simplicity.

Whether at the end of it, you agree with their proposition or not, I found it a reasonable read and a great framework to analyze some of my company's failings and dysfunctions. I recommend a read, and for those who don't like business books which take 200+ pages to say something simple, go to www.orgdna.com and read the 3 pager. You will also find it interesting to take the 5 minute survey that will return a result on your organizational type.

PS: Here's a PJ ('poor joke' for the uninitiated) that I heard on a radio ad (paraphrased without the ad content)...
A man is surprised that his wife filed a divorce and his dad disowned him after he had given her a huge rock and an SUV to him. Wow...how couldn't they like that? He says, ' I can't understand it either... the granite paperweight keeps all our bills down and the 'slightly used vacuum' sucks up pretty well.'

Gotta run before those brickbats that you are throwing gets me....till the next one.