Something that functions very well is a well-oiled machine. Idioms similar to 'Well-oiled machine'. All idioms have been editorially reviewed, and submitted idioms may have been edited for correctness and completeness. Buy our lists of British English, American English and Animal idioms in PDF format. One technique that can often “cut through” this blockage—and that builds on the body of work of Gareth Morgan on the application of the notion of “images” to organizational analysis18—is to ask people to describe their organization and how it operates by providing an image in the form of either a simile (“my organization is like a well-oiled machine”) or a metaphor (“my organization is a dinosaur”) (see Table 5.3). As a metaphor, Gareth Morgan notes that operating like a well-oiled machine works well to describe many organizations; however, it’s not the only one that is viable. Organizations can also be described as organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, and several others concurrently at any given time.