Notes on Organizations
OrgRiver is my attempt to build a better vocabulary for understanding organizations. I collect recurring ideas from many disciplines, connect them to one another, and turn them into concepts, essays, and practical tools.
Field Guide · Essays · Tools
Field Notes · Essays and Ideas
Short essays exploring how organizations actually work, written as ideas surface, one recurring pattern at a time.
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What Does Your Org Whisper?
In 2008, Paul Graham argued every city whispers an ambient message about…
The Field Guide
An evolving reference of recurring organizational patterns: concepts, biases, laws, and mental models, named and explained one at a time. This is the vocabulary for seeing what is actually happening inside an organization.
G.I. Joe Fallacy
Knowing a bias exists doesn’t reliably stop it from operating on your own judgment.
The IKEA Effect
Involving people in a change builds buy-in only if what they build actually gets finished.
Streisand Effect
Trying to suppress information sends a signal, and the signal is often louder than the message.
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New observations. Occasionally.