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
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.
Cobra Effect
A fix that creates a faster, worse way to produce the very problem it was meant to solve.
G.I. Joe Fallacy
Knowing a bias exists doesn’t reliably stop it from operating on your own judgment.
Shared Information Bias
In group discussion, the one thing only one person knows often never comes up.
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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Bob Dylan Teaches Change Management
When Bob Dylan went electric at Newport in 1965, the crowd booed.…
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What Does Your Org Whisper?
In 2008, Paul Graham argued every city whispers an ambient message about…
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New observations. Occasionally.