Your Organization Is a Nation

Your organization is a nation.

It isn’t like a nation. It doesn’t have the properties of a nation. It is a nation.

Your organization starts with territory. For countries, the territory is geographical: the southern boundary of much of Canada is the 49th Parallel, and Mayalsia is bounded in part by the Golok River. For most businesses, the territory is intellectual: Amazon’s territory is its online retail site, Johnson & Johnson’s territory is its products, etc. The territory may have physical properties–offices, factories, warehouses, etc.–but it is intellectual in nature.

Your organization has sovereignty within its intellectual territory, which means it can conduct its business more or less the way it wants. Your organization has governance, a.k.a. “government,” to guide and regulate the actions within its territory. And of course, your organization has its own culture, with its own language, beliefs, and customs.

Because your organization is its own nation, there are a number of lessons to be derived from public policy and economics. It also faces dangers similar to those faced by world governments, even if it’s at a much smaller scale and the results look different: a revolt may look like an internal power struggle, but it may also be a mass exodus. And if your organization is large enough, it has its own subcultures that have to work with one another.

This week, I’ll be discussing some of the practical ramifications of this idea that your organization is a nation.