Insights · The living company
Organizational health assessment: examining your company like a patient
Most organizational health assessments are surveys and dashboards. They measure what you can point to. But much of what decides the health of a company sits beneath the skin: tension, history, loyalties, the atmosphere you feel when you walk in. We assess an organization the way a good doctor examines a patient: layer by layer, with attention and care.
By Dirk Jan Versluis, registered psychologist (NIP). Updated 15 November 2026.
Contents
What is an organizational health assessment?
An organizational health assessment looks at how healthy a company is, beyond its financial results. Many assessments use questionnaires and indexes. They are useful, but they mostly capture what people are willing and able to put into words.
We add another way of looking. The word organization comes from the Greek organon, instrument or organ. An organization is literally something that has organs. When you incorporate a company, you make it a body: English law even speaks of a “body corporate”. So we examine it like one.
This article draws on Dirk Jan Versluis’s book Je bedrijf is ook een patiënt (Your company is a patient too, in Dutch, December 2026). Read the summary of the whole book in organizational trauma: why your company is a patient too.
The body map: your company speaks the language of the body
Growth problems in a company can almost always be described as if they were about a human body. Listen to how entrepreneurs talk about them:
| Body | What you hear | What is often going on |
|---|---|---|
| Circulation | “It is not flowing.” | Decisions and information get stuck |
| Skeleton | “It does not stand right.” | The basic structure or core processes have grown crooked |
| Head | “We are too much in our heads.” | Too many rules, meetings and decision rounds |
| Heart | “It does not touch us anymore.” | The why and the spirit are out of sight |
| Hands | “Our hands are tied.” | Powerlessness, no room to act |
| Legs | “We are taking steps.” | Movement and execution, but in which direction? |
| Voice | “How do we come across?” | Communication and brand presence |
In an assessment we go through the heart and bloodstream, breathing, digestion, the immune system, the nervous system and the senses, and posture and movement. Each gives you a question to ask your company. Can he digest what comes in? Is he allergic to anything new, or does he let everything in? Is he fighting, fleeing or freezing?
And every body has its own build. A one-person business, a family company, an international group: each has a different constitution. A mouse has hundreds of heartbeats per minute, an elephant around thirty. Both are healthy.
Above and beneath the skin
What you can point to, measure and report sits on the surface: revenue, functions, processes, strategy, the website, absence figures. It matters. But beneath the skin lies what decides much of a company’s health:
- History, including scars that were never processed. Read more about organizational trauma.
- Tension, often a choice that keeps not being made.
- Loyalties, invisible lines, expectations and claims, often around owners and succession.
- Shame and leadership not taken: steps that need to be taken, but stall.
- Sticky leadership: everyone feels a decision is needed, but nobody at the top cuts the knot.
- Founder energy: a dominant founder who is everywhere in the field. Read about founder syndrome.
- Lethargy: collective tiredness when people lose contact with why they do it all.
Typical symptoms in organizations
- Circulation: sticky decision-making. Collaboration is not well oiled, until a kind of decision infarction occurs.
- Immune system: recurring conflicts. A conflict that keeps returning shows that the real source of the fire is being avoided.
- Vitality: drained team energy. A group of people who could reinforce each other, and instead drain each other. Usually linked to a lack of purpose.
- Expression: marketing that does not land. Often a problem with positioning or identity, or a company in transition that still speaks with an old voice.
Symptoms are not enemies. They are messengers.
Early warning: the escalation ladder
Problems are felt before they are seen, often months before they show in the numbers. An assessment helps you see where your company is on the ladder:
- Unease. Someone thinks: this is not right. Nobody says anything.
- Small malfunctions. Missed deadlines, grumbling, meetings that run late.
- Acute. A conflict breaks out, someone leaves, a complaint escalates.
- Chronic. It keeps coming back: absence, turnover, slowly falling margins.
- Structural. The body itself has to change: a major reorganization, a crisis.
- The end of this body. Bankruptcy, a takeover, closure.
The earlier you notice, the lighter the intervention can be.
A sober method, with clear limits
This approach does not replace finance, strategy or craftsmanship. It adds a way of looking. And it has limits: first stop the bleeding, then start feeling. In a real crisis, you act. People always come before the system. And we do not dig needlessly: when symptom relief is what a company needs, that is what we advise.
Perception is also subjective. That is why we always sense together with the leadership team, test what we find, and stay modest about it. Subjective is not the same as unreliable, but it does ask for care.
At Triunify
Putting your company on the table
With the ECA Leadership Framework (Energetic Corporate Anthropology) we examine your company together with the leadership team: the body map, what lies above and beneath the skin, the field, and where the company is on the escalation ladder. For the leaders themselves, the Deep Pattern Assessment maps the patterns beneath their leadership. The outcome is a shared picture of what your company needs to recover and grow.
Free and confidential, 45 minutes, online.
Frequently asked questions
What is an organizational health assessment?
An assessment of how healthy an organization is beyond its financial results: how decisions flow, how conflicts are handled, how much energy and purpose there is, and what history the organization still carries.
How is this different from a survey-based assessment?
Surveys capture what people can and want to put into words. We add a living-systems view: we examine the company like a body, including what sits beneath the surface and can be felt before it can be measured.
What are signs of an unhealthy organization?
Sticky decision-making, recurring conflicts, drained team energy, marketing that does not land, and problems that keep returning despite new initiatives.
Who takes part in the assessment?
Always the leadership team. The people who are in the company every day are the ones who can feel and investigate it best, with guidance.
Is this a spiritual approach?
No. It is grounded in language leaders already use, such as atmosphere, flow and gut feeling, and always works next to the figures, not instead of them.
Read also
How healthy is your company, really?
In a free 45-minute strategy session we explore what is going on and what a good first step could be. Confidential, under the professional code of the Dutch Association of Psychologists (NIP).