Review by Will Phillips

Of the thousands of corporate management books, this is one which should be on every CEO's and top executive's desk. It is a lifetime reference on understanding the organization and how to keep it healthy, or how to return it to health. The author, Ichak Adizes, developed this view of organizations while consulting to hundreds of organizations, small and large, in over a dozen different countries, including businesses of all kinds, non-profit arts organizations, and government. This book provides one of the most wide-ranging views of organizations, still after more than two decades.

As you know, financial statements basically document historical reality—the present value of past decisions that you and others have made in the organization. Using your financial statements to drive forward is akin to using your rear view mirror to drive your automobile. What we really need is something that looks into the future and tells us where we're heading so we can make changes now in order to steer the course more successfully.

Organizational Lifecycles is just such a tool. Of course, it is not as precise as a historical document, but it is extraordinarily accurate in predicting how your organization will perform up to three to four to five, sometimes even 10 years into the future. Once you've seen your organization's future, you might decide it's not so attractive and you would like to change it. This book will give you simple and basic change agendas—not always easy to implement—but the right ones.

Understanding the concepts in this book is important because of the extraordinary and immediate pressure that comes from the demand for short-term results. In a publicly held company, these pressures run quarter by quarter. In privately held businesses, your horizon might extend out to a year or two. The material in this book will give you a counter balancing force of a long-term view with enough physics so it can stand up against the short-term pressure.

Lifecycles As A Developmental Principal To Organizations

Most of us can relate to a human lifecycle, beginning with courtship, leading to an infant and then growth, and, eventually, adolescence, maturity, and aging. Adizes makes an powerful argument that organizations, too, move through various developmental stages, regardless of the industry or national roots. Two interesting dynamics are discussed by Adize: chronological age is not related to the lifecycle stage and organizations can move between organizational stages to avoid aging and eventually death.

The first part of this book describes the major stages in an organization lifecycle, and some of the organizational pathologies that can emerge. The later chapters talk about the fundamental process of change for each of the various stages in the organization. There are two types of changes that would interest you. The first is the constructive change necessary to move from one healthy developmental stage to the next. The second is advice on how to move out of pathology, back into healthy developmental.

It is important to realize that during the transition from one lifecycle stage to another, you need new sets of guiding principles. Thus, the successful strategies that enabled you to grow will not give you the conceptual guidance on how to move and continue into the next stage of maturity.