The Downside of
Organizational Maturity

BIG IDEA In A Few Words

From the standpoint of organizational development, maturity makes an organization vulnerable to insularity. Insularity reduces corporate empathy. The reduction in empathy limits creativity. Insular organizations that increasingly limit meaningful engagement with “outsiders” diminish empathy by stifling their corporate limbic system, making it harder to understand key layers of their constituency and more difficult to relate to them effectively. Diminished empathy doesn’t completely eliminate creativity. It makes us much more vulnerable to wasting precious resources solving problems none of our constituents care about or providing overcomplicated solutions that only make the problem worse.