Anthropomorphism Baby!

Ever noticed how often people speak as if organisations think, feel, or desire something?

“The organisation wants us back in the office.”  “The business doesn’t care about wellbeing.”  “Leadership feels this is the right move.”

This is organisational anthropomorphism, the tendency to attribute human traits to abstract systems. And it’s more common, and more consequential, than we often realise.

Why do we do it?

• It simplifies complexity.
• It helps us make moral sense of difficult decisions.
• It gives us something human-shaped to relate to, or resist.
• It even helps preserve relationships by shifting blame from people to “the system”.

But there’s a risk: when we turn organisations into pseudo-persons, we can also blur accountability, reinforce powerlessness, or unquestioningly accept ‘what the business wants’ as if it were somehow sovereign.

In my coaching and consulting work, I often invite leaders to pause and ask:

“Who exactly is ‘the organisation’ in this sentence?”
“Whose decision is this really?”
“What identities are being protected, projected, or avoided here?”

As AI, bureaucracy, and complexity increase, so does our need for clarity in how we narrate power, intention, and agency. Language isn’t neutral, it’s a mirror of our assumptions.