I asked this to my management team during one of those biannual “who are we?” and “what do we do?” existential strategic planning meetings. My own conclusion is “no”, a company cannot have a soul. It’s not human; but certainly the people inside do have souls.
So, maybe the soul of the company is the collective soul of all its employees? Probably not. For example, no client is typically exposed to the entire collective; only to a few individuals. So, it’s not really an average of all the souls, but merely a subset.
And it’s not really an average either. If, say a client, is exposed to 3 souls in the organization, and 1 of the 3 is rude and obnoxious… well then, for that client, your collective soul is defined by that single bad actor, isn’t it? The majority good behavior will be more than offset by the minority bad behavior. It’s crazy math; 1 lousy soul is greater than 1,000 good ones if the client happens to deal with the bad apple.
That said, I want to believe any organization of which I am a member has a soul. It feels good, it inspires, it makes me glad to come to work. Most people feel this way, don’t they? Maybe.
If an organization doesn’t have a soul, but we want it, what should we do? I am proposing the latest in management trends to solve this matter. I call it the Organization Soul Simulator (or OSS for short). Let me get back to you on the details…
What do you think? Comment below.
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