An Open Petition to Merriam-Webster: Redefine “Organization”

organization
/ˌɔːɡənʌɪˈzeɪʃn/
noun
a group of people who work together in an organized way for a shared purpose

That’s the current definition. And it’s wrong — or at least, outdated.

The world of work has changed more in the last five years than it did in the previous fifty. Yet our language, the very foundation of how we think, hasn’t kept up. If the dictionary is supposed to reflect the way humans understand and engage with the world, then it’s time for a revision.

The Problem With “People”

The critical word here is people. For centuries, that made perfect sense. People were the engine of every enterprise: the thinkers, doers, builders, dreamers. But they were also, and still are, the friction.

People have thoughts, feelings, wants, needs, fears, and forgetfulness. People hesitate. People argue. People have bad days. People create drama. The more people you add to an organization, the slower it tends to move.

To say this out loud isn’t anti-human… it’s honest. It’s an acknowledgment that, as we enter a new era of business, “organization” has evolved beyond its original human-only design.

The New Organizational Reality

We are witnessing the rise of a new kind of organization. It’s one that’s not exclusively built on people, but on nodes.

Some nodes are people.
Some nodes may be AI agents.

Together, they form networks that think, operate, and scale in ways traditional organizations never could. The modern organization is no longer a hierarchy of humans; it’s a dynamic web of nodes, each contributing to a shared purpose, sometimes with empathy and emotion, sometimes with machine precision.

The New Definition

Here’s the proposal:

organization
/ˌɔːɡənʌɪˈzeɪʃn/
noun
a group of nodes who work together in an organized way for a shared purpose.

This isn’t science fiction. It’s the operating model of today and the foundation for tomorrow.

Why This Matters

Words shape the way we teach, learn, and lead. Business schools have trained generations of leaders to manage people, but not nodes. Tomorrow’s founders and leaders will build hybrid organizations that think as fast as they act, scale without friction, and integrate human creativity with machine intelligence.

If we keep defining “organization” through an outdated, human-only lens, we’re preparing the next generation of leaders for a world that no longer exists.

A Call to the Gatekeepers of Language

To Merriam-Webster, Oxford, and every institution that defines the words that define our world: It’s time to catch up.

The meaning of “organization” has already changed — the dictionary just hasn’t noticed yet.

Let’s fix that before the next reprint :)