EO's work is bases the design of Extraordinary Organizations on five core beliefs about the nature of people and how they come together in organizations to do collaborative work including:

• Purpose: people organize to build an organization and an enterprise as a means to fulfilling their own needs. However, they must generate exceptional enterprise results and customer benefits to do this.
• Structure: An organization has no hierarchy - Authority over another comes only when a person grants it to you in return for some service and can be rescinded if that service is not provided.
• Equality: Members are equal in rights and status- All are equal in basic rights even though they have different capabilities.
• Freedom - Members are free to do as they wish as long as it does not interfere with the freedom of others. Members must agree on how to act when their behaviors interfere with each other.
• Ownership - Members own the returns resulting from their efforts. These returns are after paying adequate compensation for all resources provided from outside the enterprise. Invested money is no more than one of these resources.