Many businesses attempt to impose an organisational structure on those people involved in the organisation.  Although most participants in the business will attempt to respect this structure, it often relies on them acting out predefined roles and behaving in predetermined ways.

While this may be of value in some organisations which deal with known and repeatable processes, it can be of less value where workers are dealing with unknown and uncertain situations.  When an organisation enters the unknown, it will either attempt to maintain its structure by disengaging from the opportunity, or experience some organisational breakdown as it engages with the unfamiliar.

When organisational breakdown occurs in unfamiliar territory, there is often a divergence between company policies and actual behaviour.  The company vision and values that seemed to make so much sense in the spa retreat now have little relevant meaning.  Immersed in this meaningless situation, confusion and apathy are often experienced as people try to relate mission statements to volatile circumstances.

However, in an Ambient Organisation, people tend to naturally self organise around where they find collective meaning.  Instead of meaning being applied to them externally in the form of vision and mission statements, they experience what they find meaningful being reflected back to them.  These reflections come from Persons who they have strong I-You connections with, and also from Objects, Places and Events which reflect back projected identity and identified meaning.  We usually find most meaning where our authentic identity is most strongly reflected.

A true Ambient Organisation transcends the theories of  Niels Bjørn-Andersen in which he describes an unobstrusive communications infrastructure. An Ambient Organisation is an assembly of Ambient Selves that can identify meaning amongst the chaotic and disruptive, and see its own identity reflected in the value that it creates.