WORKING WITH

THE CONCEPT
Paper presented by JEAN HUTTON OF
Managing Consultant, The Grubb Institute, London

ORGANISATION
IN-THE-MIND

Distinguishing between Organisation and Institution

This paper introduces a way of thinking about organization which has been developed by The Grubb Institute
as a significant tool for leadership and management in institutions, and for consultants in working with their
oragnisational clients. It focuses on organization as it is being experienced by the manager, and looks at how his
or her internal picture is related to external events and assumptions 1

I would like to begin by distinguishing between organisation and institution. These words are often used
interchangeably in everyday speech, but in the interest of scientific study they are frequently used to identity
different ways of understanding people’s collective activity in pursuit of a defined purpose.

Institution is an entity constituted to carry out a specific function, whether official, unofficial, formal, or
informal, eg family, business, church, government, voluntary agencies, army.

Organisation is the way the institution is structured and developed in order to deploy human and material
resources to carry out its purposes.

For example, I had a client, a Methodist minister in the United States, who was sent to a developing, up-market
housing area to establish a new church. Together with a small group of residents they agree that their aim was
to grow a church. Two years on they had a very large congregation and an extensive programme of church
activities. When he presented his situation to hypothesis emerged to suggest why this had happened. Though
they had applied the label ‘Church’ to their institution, at an unconscious level their institution-in-the-mind
was about being a business. The local lay people, who were themselves highly successful in their business and
professional careers, were more familiar with a business culture and automatically applied it to their new
institution, the church. Together with the minister they developed an organization-in-the-mind along the lines
of running a business, a venture in which they succeeded. Somehow in the process the meaning of church was
lost. That had led him to consult the Grubb Institute. It was not just a matter of different values or integrity, it
was a matter of outcomes. His idea of the church/ business institution was focused on the need to grow in
importance, strength of numbers, popularity and sense of achievement, but with no specific spiritual outcomes.
He needed first to define an outcome for the church and then to question his assumptions, beliefs, feelings, and
knowledge about how the church functioned. This shock gave him some insights into himself, enough to define
the outcome desired in terms of the church serving God and the Kingdom of God. Until he was able to grasp this
insight and own it with his lay colleagues, it would be useless to go and change the structures, to deconstruct
their organization–in-the-mind.

This example led the Institute to formulate definition about these mental constructs. When people start to
examine what they mean by institution or organization, they are trying to identify what they have ‘in-the-mind’
about them. The temptation is always to reify them as existing ‘out there’ but the reality is that they are constructs,

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Jean Hutton

so are held only in the mind. We can thus speak of ‘organisation-in-the-mind’ and ‘institution-in-the-mind’. [see
also W. Carr 1999]2.

Organisation-in-the mind is a conscious or pre-conscious construct, focused around emotional experience of

tasks, roles, purposes, rituals, accountability, competence, failure, success. It calls for Management.

Institution –in-the mind is an unconscious construct, focused around the emotional experience of ideals,
values, hopes, beliefs, dreams, symbols, birth, life, death. It requires leadership.

We can say that organization-in-the-mind can be understood as a metaphor of the body, and institution-in-the-
mind as a metaphor of the spirit. Together they constitute a whole. A way of illustrating this would be to take the
example of the nuclear family. ‘Nuclear’ describes the organisation-in-the mind, and ‘family’ the institution-in-
the-mind.

With organisation-in-the mind the elements are able to be described and measured, as organization is necessarily
experienced in a specific context. An example of this in the United Kingdom could be a prison, described as an
establishment for young offenders, aged 16-19, taking so many convicted young men and women from all over
the country. The context is the courts which, by sentencing the accused, send them to prison under specified
conditions.

With institution-in-the-mind the elements are more difficult to describe because they relate to unstated beliefs,
emotions and values. What a prison is in reality reflects the current values of the society and those appointed to
administer justice, elements which cannot be quantified (3). This leads to debates about its purpose and how to
cope with criminal behaviour because of confusion about the unconscious institution-in-the mind.

To take another example, that of the church. Organisation-in-the-mind would describe church in terms of types
of people – ministers, priests, lay people, buildings, liturgy, finance, polity etc which has a purpose which may
or may not be defined. Institution-in-the-mind would conceive church as people with something to do with the
idea of God, eg the people of God, the Body of Christ. What it is for is a matter for belief which will vary over
time and place.

Shapiro and Carr4 describe these concepts in a similar way:

“... all institutions exist in the mind, and it is in the interaction with these in-the-mind entities that we
live. Of course, all organizations also consist of certain real factors, such as other people, profits,
buildings, resources and products. But the meaning of these factors derives from the context established
by the institution-in-the-mind. These mental images are not static: they are the product of dynamic
interchanges, chiefly projections and transference”.

Organisations start with someone who has an idea which requires certain kinds of activity for that ideas to be
carried out. He (5) forms an organization-in-the-mind as an expression of some wish to set up an institution, eg
a company for designing computer progammes, with certain values, hopes, and beliefs in mind. He tries to
communicate those beliefs and thoughts to others to make a structure to embody the purpose and aim of this
idea. In this process there are a number of stages:

First, the person with the idea and vision may have a very unformed idea of institution-in-the mind and
there may be discrepancies between his initial concept and how he describes that to others, and what he
believes and hopes for as a result. So there is one aspect of uncertainty.
Secondly, as he works with other people to set up the institution with its organization, those others may
find difficulty in interpreting the ideas, emotions and values of the original plan in practice. Their attempt
to embody the aim and achieve its intentions can also lead to uncertainties.

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 Working with the concept of Organisation in-the-Mind

Thirdly, there is the unknown of whether they can employ competent skilled people who are able to manage
the resources available to achieve the aim in a constantly shifting and dynamic context. This again is a
matter for uncertainty.

The task therefore of the management of the organization is to achieve a dynamic balance between these
uncertainties and make the best use of the resources. The actual results of this process may be discrepant with
the original intentions and lead to problems which confuse management and staff.

An example of this is that of an ex-army officer who was drive by his love and concern for old people. He
wanted to find a way of enabling them to live out their own homes as possible. He set up a scheme using a row
of existing houses within a neighbourhood. This activity was so successful that he came under considerable
pressure from well-wishers to grow and to become a national organisation to reproduce such places all over the
country. An executive was brought in to develop and run this growing organization since the founder
acknowledged that he was not a manager but a visionary leader. However after a year or so there was a major
split between the national directors and the founder because the latter felt his original aim of the institution of
caring for old people was not being carried out. He became aware that his institution-in-the mind was quite
different from his fellow directors.

They could not see that there needed to be a problem, although they were fully aware that relations were
breaking down between them and the founder and the situation was becoming unworkable. They felt the founder
as unreasonable and unrealistic. The founder, feeling deeply the values of his institution-in-the-mind was unable
to argue his point in organizational terms because outwardly they were in agreement. The ‘dynamic balance’ I
referred to earlier was not achievable. The founder left the original charity, and went off to found another
housing scheme which exists to this day as a small separate entity alongside the highly successful national
housing association.

Understanding differences
6
Why do such things happen in organizational life? Let me offer you a very simple diagram of two people
working in the same organization. “A” and “B” are trying to agree an action to be taken by “B”. They do agree,
but afterwards “B” goes and does something completely different. Has this experience ever happened to you?

Figure 1

A B

The problem is about each of them having a different picture of the (same) organization-in-the mind. “A”
attributes certain values to what he says and what he hears from “B”. “B” does likewise and they then agree on
the wording of the action, believing they know what the other intends. But “A” interprets everything in terms of
a ‘square’ organization-in-the-mind, and “B” interprets the same words and actions in terms of a ‘triangular’
organization-in-the-mind.

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Jean Hutton

Figure –2

The difference between them can be attributed to the way they have each experience their work and the lack of
communication skills which could have alerted them to the different images which each had, characterized by
‘Square’ and triangle’ in-the-mind. There is the further possibility that because they worked with different
values and beliefs and had different emotions, they had different institutions-in-the-mind. Since this was
unconscious they were unable to grasp how different they were.

In the example of the Housing Association, this latter explanation seems the most probable and this would
explain why the founder’s action appeared idiosyncratic and irrational to the national director.

We are seeing two kinds of difference here:

The difference in “A’s” and “B’s” minds with regard to organization-in-the-mind based on structure
and experience, as shown in the diagrams.

The difference between organisation-in-the-mind at a conscious level of experience, and institution-in-

the-mind which is influencing the encounter at an unconscious level.

In our Grubb Institute courses we sometimes invite members to work at these levels by drawing a picture which
describes how they see and experience their business, company, school etc, at that point in time. They are
invited to think of an imaginative image or metaphor, to avoid using words and to include themselves in the
picture. We suggest they consider their work relationships, events, purposes, groups, clients etc and their
feelings, and to try to encapsulate these in the drawing. When the resultant pictures are discussed in the group,
A not awareB of, nevertheless it is a basically purposive
it often shows some things to the artist which he or she was
and conscious level activity. Sometimes however a comment by another member on the picture reveals a deeper
level of insight into the unconscious institution-in-the-mind. This uncovers hopes, beliefs, values which may
affect the meaning of the image chosen, the way it has been expressed, what is included, and what is omitted.

However there can be another reason for this difference. We are looking at the emotional experience either of
the artist in the picture, or of “A’ and “B” in their interaction at work. As a manager or leader I may assert that
I want to be realistic, but I need to have the insight to understand that I engage in unconscious processes in order
to cope with the stress of the realities of my work. The more I understand about my own inner word, the more
I am likely to be able to deal with the realities constructively, because I will recognize that this is a natural
human process and conveys important information to me, not just about myself and my own behaviour but
about the state of the organization and its dynamics.

Melanie Klein7 suggest that as I, as a person, work in an institution, I introject (take into myself) aspects of
what is happening to me from people and events to form internal Objects and Part objects. These are symbols
of my external world which I use to think about my surroundings. These are real to me, but are not the same as
the ‘real’ people and things in my environment. Some of these objects will give me pleasure, others pain and
discomfort: some I will keep in front of me consciously, others I will forget, repress unconsciously. However,
even if I repress them they are still objects in my inner world and affect my behaviour.
As I face the fears anxieties of engaging with the real world I respond to these internal objects; as I feel, think,

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act I am prompted by them. I modify these internal objects which I draw upon (wholly or partly), or repress
(wholly or partly) in my unconscious. In order to know how to act, to make decisions and to work with others
as a leader / manager, I try to make sense of everything which I am conscious of inside me – all my thoughts,
feelings, ideas and ‘hard data’ available to me. This process includes my aims, plans and intentions, instructions
from others, regulations, responses to changes in the context, my memories of earlier work environments and
roles I have taken, and so on. Exactly the same process is going on in those around me with whom I work.

What the square and triangle model illustrates is that, as human beings interacting with others in our environment,
we monitor and control, for a variety of reasons, what we take account of in ourselves and in others. We are then
taken by surprise when we come up against some blotted out features which are active and powerful, because
they have been internalized unconsciously. We find ourselves suddenly angry, guilty, pleased or excited and
may not always know why. We also trigger unexpected reactions in others, which may be constructive or
destructive. Christopher Bollas, in his book, The Shadow of the Object 8, has this wonderful term, the ‘unthought
known’, to refer to those things which are affecting me from my inner world but I have not yet brought to
consciousness.

Why do we repress these experiences in so much of our organizational life? Because as a person-in-role in my
institution I have my own needs and desires, fears and anxieties into which come the experiences from my
workplace. I ‘Monitor’ consciously and unconsciously what I will allow myself to ‘Know’ and perceive, for the
sake of my own survival, or for the sake of the institution, or for the sake of my own ambition.

Nevertheless, as Larry Hirschhorn suggest, the organization that is happening is not just out there – it is in me.
He calls it the ‘workplace within 9 ’.

If I am a good manager, I want to relate effectively with the institution of which I am a part. So I become caught
up in what Winnicott describes as ‘transitional phenomena’10. In a formal sense, these phenomena may include
defining aims, organising groups, making business plans, having discussions; and from these plans and encounters
I formulate my actions and behaviour toward the actual situations of my work as I perceive them in reality. In
fantasy I may have dreams and visions which impinge on me and affect my decisions and behaviour. But these
things may not harness my real feelings, anxieties, fears and aspirations. The drive from my inner world may be
unable to engage effectively with the real situation ‘out there’.

In Winnicott’s terms I need to discover a transitional object which can carry my inner feelings, thoughts,
imaginings etc, to surface my internal objects and bridge the gap between my inner world and the world outside
me, in which I have to act. Just as a teddy bear enables a child to handle his anxieties about discovering his own
separate identify from the reality which is his mother, this transitional object is for me as an adult manager
something that enables me to cope with the stresses and uncertainties of making decisions, taking risks and
being accountable for what I do. ‘Organisation-in-the-mind’ becomes the transitional object, which I need
to contain both my irrational thoughts and unformulated ideas as well as my rational ones.

The transitional object is itself paradoxical in that is both created by me (it emerges from my own internal
imaginings about the pattern I give to the components of organization-in-the mind), and discovered by me (the
pattern presents itself to me as if it were independent of me), often in unexpected, surprising ways and places.
Thus the transitional object is essentially a possession both created and discovered by its owner. It contains
aspects of irrationality because of its paradoxical nature and because of my inner contradictory feelings and
anxieties.

What I have been saying is about emotional experience and it would be easy to think of its as the property of the
individual manager or client. My former colleague, David Armstrong11, suggests that emotional experience is
very rarely located within a purely individual space’.
To explore this experience requires more than a psycho-analytic perspective, therefore, it requires a systemic

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perspective. In system terms, the emotional experience of the individual is the shared experience of everybody
in the system. What he experiences at this moment in time is experienced on behalf of the system and tells him
things about the state of the system. The emotional experience is important information helping him to understand
the realities of both organization –in-the-mind and institution-in-the-mind. [See also D Armstrong 1991]12.

Organisational Role Analysis

The origin of the concepts relating to organization-in-the-mind arose from the Grubb Institute’s work in group
relations conferences. The development of this framework came from a distinctive initiative from my colleague,
Bruce Reed, in inventing in 1973 the experimental model he called ‘Organisational Role Analysis’.

The distinctive aspect was to enable clients (usually executives, manager and professionals) to explore the
range of their experiences – personal, group and institutional – in a one-to-one setting, as an alternative to
attending a group relations ‘working conference’. Based on the assumption of organisation-in-the-mind, the
consultant hypothesized that the client ‘brought’ his entire company for study through his own experience. The
organizational Role Analysis model, (ORA for short), consisted of alternating between sessions with a consultant,
held offsite, where the consultant would engage with the experience of the client as he wished to express it, and
a period of two to three weeks before the following session for the client to engage with the actual life of the
organization. Thus he could test out any working hypotheses developed in the ORA sessions and take note of
his own behaviour, e.g. under stressful conditions. Each session was open-ended and the client decided in the
here-and-now of the session the working experience he wished to discuss. The desired outcome of the ORA is
that the client will learn how to make his optimum contribution to his institution through discovering how to
manage himself in his role in the ‘real’ dynamic situation he is working in. An important aspect in this is the
capacity to distinguish between the exercise of power and the taking of authority 13.

The role of the ORA Consultant

In the Grubb Institute we believe this role requires skilled and trained organizational analysts. We have only
used staff who have had experience in staff roles in group relations conferences and with considerable
understanding of the associated psycho-dynamic and behavioural concepts.

The Institute has developed an ORA consultant training programme which involves being an ORA client,
observing an ORA, taking one under supervision, and participating in group relations conferences and seminars
on the conceptual framework and theoretical tools.

Key concepts
Since the ORA model was first devised in 1973, several concepts have become critically significant in examining
working experience, and have been defined in terms which we use differently from other behavioural scientists.

Four of these concepts and how they mutually interact are illustrated in the following Venn diagram conceived
by Reed.

Figure 3
PERSON SYSTEM

Working
Experience

Working Experience describes the feelings, thoughts, desires and reactions of a person who is engaging with
T
C

ROLE

O
X

N E
T

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 Working with the concept of Organisation in-the-Mind

a system by taking a role. This is differentiated from ‘personal experience’ where the person cannot find the
role by which to manage their work – their contribution to the system Reflection upon current working experience
is a way of monitoring a person’s understanding of themselves, the system and its purpose, and the way the role
is being made and taken.

Person, as used here, relates to the client. The construct in the mind of the consultant is distinguished from that
of individual. Whereas individual points to separateness, person implies connectedness and relatedness with
others. The consultant is sensitive to the part objects and projections the client is experiencing which transcend
group and institutional boundaries, (see Armstrong), and are continually fluctuating. They constitute the emotional
life of the person which influences his values and beliefs. The client’s self-knowledge, history and awareness of
competencies and learned behaviours is being affected by these factors and shown in the way he is working and
evaluating his performance.

System is the working context of the person as construed by the consultant, following Gregory Bateson’s
definition of a system as ‘activities with a boundary’14. For the client initially, ‘system’ covers the constructs of
organisation-in-the-mind and institution-in-the-mind in the ORA process, but on a daily basis it is where he
works and has responsibility for contributing to the success of the workplace according to his position within it.
I hope it is clear I am speaking here of an organic, living system, not a mechanical one. Von Bertalanffy in
“General Systems Theory”15 speaks of a living cell as a system with permeable boundaries, receiving inputs and
expelling outputs into the environment.

Role is the critical construct of the ORA process and is a central point in its work. Its definition derives from the
Tavistock tradition but has been uniquely developed by my Institute. All I can do here is to introduce its
principals and to distinguish our use of role from that of others. For further discussion of role see Reed16.

In the Venn diagram, role is seen as linking person to system. It implies that to work for the benefit of the
system, the person has to function in role. When joining a system, a person is generally given a position, a job
title, and a task to carry out, but none of these is role in our terms. A ‘Role’ cannot be given to anyone by
anyone17. The person has to discover there is a role for him, then to make that role, and finally to take that role.
Properly understood, we suggest that the induction period offered to new staff can be the opportunity provided
for them to begin to find, make and take their roles.

For example a person needs to learn what the purpose of their company / institution is, to decide whether, in
their new position they can work for the benefit of the system and not just for their own career. That is, they
begin to discover if there is a role for them to take.

The ORA develops as the consultant offers hypotheses to the client based on his working experience, which
begins to lead to the transformation of his behaviour as he takes his role. The person ‘ makes’ the role by
identifying not only the aim of the system but also its structures, technologies, ethics, cultures and the types of
people who work there with their expectations.

The person needs to know himself and the intellectual and emotional contributions which he can offer to the
system. He also needs to be knowledgeable about the context in which the system operates in order to take
account of threats and opportunities for its well-being. As can be easily seen, at all phases of this exploration
the client will continue to find, make and take his role – it is a never-ending recurring process.

Since the head of the client institution is the one on the outer boundary, interfacing both internally and externally
with the context, we prefer to start with him as the client and then to work with other people in the organizational
structure who manage subsidiary boundaries, although some will also work on the outer boundary with the
head.
Central to the ORA process is the construct of organisation-in-the-mind, which will also be subject to new

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perspectives as the ORA proceeds. The more the client can become sensitive to the unconscious construct of
institution-in-the-mind, the more he is likely to find new energy and see new possibilities for his work,
personally and corporately. This will be enhanced if the client is able to think and experience the systemic
dimension of his behaviour as being influenced by and influencing colleagues and others.

An illustration of the effect of ORA in practice comes from an ORA with the head teacher of a secondary school
in central London. This school took pupils from socially disadvantaged homes and had a local reputation for
being a ‘sink’ school for failing pupils. She drew a picture of her school which showed a marked contrast
between the warm and caring environment of the lower school and the pressured and chaotic environment of
the upper school, where students were achieving very poor academic results on which the school’s reputation
was being based.

In the process of the ORA she saw that they had so compensated the ‘poor’ pupils in the lower school by being
sorry for them as they came into the school, that when they were in the rigours of the upper school, faced with
the reality of public examinations, they were not equipped for the pressures of entry into adult life.

The organisation-in-the-mind now compelled her to see that she was not coping with holding the whole system
together as an educational institution. She had split the school into a ‘good’ lower school and a ‘bad’ upper
school, and had organised the school to fulfill those projections. She then began to realize that her unconscious
institution-in-the-mind was that she was running the school as if it were a social work agency. She had to face
up to whether she could take the staff along with her to enable the school to be transformed into a place of
education and learning.

Footnotes and references

This paper is developed from an earlier paper : J. Hutton, John Bazalgette, Bruce Reed (1997) “Organisation-in-the-mind” in Developing
Organisation al Consultancy, Routledge. See also: J. Hutton (1997) ‘Re-imagining the Organisation of an Institution’, in Integrity
and Change, Routledge.
W. Carr (1999) “Can we speak of the spirituality of Institutions?” in The Hidden Spirit, CMR Press, Matthews NC
Bruce Reed (2000) “Just Prisons” in Prison Service Journal, July 2000 No 130
E. Shapiro & W. Carr (1991) Lost in Familiar Places: making new connections between individual and society, Yale UP, New Haven
Throughout the paper ‘he’ is used to mean he or she.
Bruce Reed conceived this model in the course of developing Organisation Role Analysis.
M. Klein (1963) “Our Adult world and its Roots in Infancy” in Our Adult World and Other Essays, Heinemann, London.
C. Bollas (1987) The Shadow of the Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known Free Association Books, London.
L. Hirschhorn (1990) The workplace within: Psychodynamics of Organisational Life MIT Press, Cambridge Mass
D. W. Winnicott (1971) “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena” in Playing and Reality, Tavistock Publications, London.
D. Armstrong (1992) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chandler, New York
D. Armstrong (1991) The Institution in the Mind: Reflections on the relation of psycho-analysis to work with institutions, The Grubb
Institute, London
B. Reed (1999) ‘Organisational Transformation’ in Leading, Managing, Ministering – Challenging Questions for Church and Society,
Canterbury Press.
G. Bateson (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chandler, New York.
L. Von Bertalanffy (1968) General System Theory, Harmondsworht: Penguin (1973)
B. Reed (2000) An Exploration of Role, The Grubb Institute, London
Role as used here is differentiated from the behaviour expected of the person by others, i.e. assumed in their minds. The role I as a person
assume we call ‘psychological role’; the role which others expect of me we call ‘sociological role’, which becomes part of the
context in my finding, making and taking the psychological role.