- Word From Founder -
Why this work exists? Ousia Consulting was born out of frustration.
For years, I worked in and around strategy, product, and organisational decision-making. The conversations were familiar and often intelligent: metrics, optimisation, roadmaps, growth. Yet again and again, these conversations failed to explain something that was plainly visible.
Why do some organisations inspire loyalty, attachment, and meaning far beyond what their products alone justify? Why do others, equally capable and well-funded, struggle to gain adoption or trust despite doing “everything right”?
The standard explanations (quality, distribution, marketing, execution) are insufficient. In many cases, competitors match or exceed them on those dimensions. And yet outcomes diverge radically.
Something essential was missing from the picture.
What people actually choose
People do not choose organisations purely rationally. They do not engage only with products or services. They engage with what those organisations allow them to be.
Nike is not footwear. It is agency.
Starbucks is not coffee. It is permission to pause, belong, and be seen.
Heineken is not beer. It is a recognisable social posture.
These organisations are chosen because they offer coherent identities that people can step into. That coherence is not accidental, and it is not produced by persuasion alone. It is structural.
When this coherence is present, loyalty appears irrational. When it is absent, even objectively strong offerings struggle.
The missing language
For a long time, business lacked a language to describe this properly.
Philosophy addressed meaning, but not scale. Business addressed performance, but not identity.
The two remained separated, as if incompatible. Aristotle’s concept of ousia, the essence that makes a thing what it is, pointed in the right direction. Many thinkers followed, across philosophy, psychology, and systems thinking. Yet few translated these insights into something organisations could actually work with.
Instead, identity was reduced to branding, culture, or storytelling, expressions without structure.
The insight that changed everything
When studied closely, organisations behave psychologically no differently than people. They:
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express coherence or contradiction
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enable or restrict agency
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invite identification or resistance
People do not merely use organisations. They project parts of themselves onto them. They complete, express, or suppress aspects of identity through them. Once this is understood, behaviour that previously appeared irrational becomes predictable:
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loyalty without incentives
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resistance to objectively superior products
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growth without aggressive persuasion
Not because people are emotional, but because identity is structural.
Why Ousia exists
Ousia Consulting exists to make this visible and usable. Not as branding. Not as storytelling. Not as ideology. But as structure.
When identity is coherent, strategy simplifies. When essence is clear, recognition replaces pressure. When alignment is restored, behaviour no longer needs constant enforcement. This work is not about inventing identity. It is about removing the contradictions that obscure it.
A closing thought
Ousia names an old insight modern business largely forgot:
that beneath performance lies identity, and beneath identity lies essence.
Organisations that endure do not convince.
They allow people to recognise themselves.
That is not accidental.
It is chosen.