What Organisations Are Actually Made Of

At HAANA Institute for Leadership and Wellbeing, we work with a premise that is unusual in leadership education: an organisation is what it is made of. Its declarations come later, and they matter less.

An organisation is built from materials, substances, just as real as steel or concrete, though they cannot be weighed.
Emotional culture, which is the fabric from which every conversation, decision, and silence is actually constructed. It is decided in each moment of construction, not layered on top afterwards.

Trust, which functions as infrastructure. Installed, maintained, occasionally repaired, sometimes sabotaged. Built by whether the organisation does what it said it would do, on Tuesday, when nobody is watching.

Belonging, which asks for recognition in difference. Not the warmth of everyone looking alike, but the harder, slower work of holding each person’s specificity inside the same room. Only one of these holds under pressure.

If organisations are built from materials, then the leaders who redesign them must be trained to see materials. To read them, in real time, in the room they are standing in. To develop the judgement to know when the material is wrong for the work, and the capacity to intervene in its composition before the decision hardens. Also to allow that material to work at its best, understanding its essence and potential.

That kind of judgement is not learnable from a curriculum in the ordinary sense. It requires long attention, sustained practice, and formation with people who have themselves learned to see. It is one of the things we are trying to hold open at HAANA.


Maria Marshall-Clarke – née Martinez Serrano
– Co-Founder at HAANA Institute for Leadership and Wellbeing –
– Strategic Integration & Wellbeing Architecture –