Consulting Organisations and Cell Division

Lately I’ve been thinking about how organisations, in particular how consulting organisations grow and looking for parallels in nature which might explain the kind of pressures and the outcomes that you can expect.

At the moment I’m fascinated by how the growth of a small boutique consulting organisation in some ways mimics the process of cell division.

When a cell divides it is called Cytokinesis - I’m not sure how deep the analogy goes but my theory is that most organisations have an optimal size (although not necessarily a maximum) and that they grow to that size and then pressure builds up for them to divide by people leaving the organisation and taking part of the culture with them - kind of like organisational DNA.

I think that there is some interesting philosophical thinking to be done in this space around how despite all our complexities as humans, we may actually ultimately just continue to replicate “basic” natural processes.