Delusional Organizations

Many organizational struggles remain invisible because we lack the words to describe them. This venture draws from the history of organizational psychology and systems thinking to introduce theories, vocabulary, and mental models that make the invisible visible. Without shared language, there can be no shared understanding — and without understanding, no learning.

Behind every chart and process lies a human story. We gather lived experiences from inside organizations — personal accounts of confusion, courage, silence, and resistance — to reveal the textures of organizational life that numbers alone can’t capture.

Stories gain clarity when examined through multiple lenses. We look at the psychology of individuals, the dynamics of systems, and the drivers that shape behavior. These analytical threads help us understand not just what happened, but why it happened.

Organizations don’t exist in a vacuum: they are structured as systems. Some are hierarchical, some aspire to be networks, many are hybrids. Each system type has its own resilience — or vulnerability — to delusion. Ironically, traditional hierarchies often prove more robust, while modern, network-based structures can be fragile when trust and alignment falter. To make things more complex, many organizations only pretend to belong to a system type: they declare themselves “agile” or “flat” while hidden hierarchies continue to rule. These pretending systems are especially prone to delusion, because the gap between what they claim to be and what they truly are becomes fertile ground for self-deception.

Repairing delusional organizations is not only a matter of courageous individuals or resilient teams. The systems themselves must change. Ways forward therefore operate on multiple levels: individuals learning to speak honestly, teams creating safe space for reflection, and systems redesigning their structures, drivers, and governance to support reality-based action. The path is rarely dramatic, but through small and consistent adjustments at all levels, organizations can begin to close the gap between appearance and reality.