Is change good or bad? How an organization answers this question says a lot about its stage in the corporate lifecycle. An organization’s vitality is a function of two competing forces – flexibility and predictability. Young companies tend to be flexible and unpredictable while those that are … [Read more...]
Is Microsoft in the growing or aging stage of its lifecycle?
November 3, 2010 By
The following Reuters article by Bill Rigby provides excellent insight into where Microsoft is in its lifecycle, how it got there and where it might be heading. http://www.reuters.com/article/comments/idUSTRE69P45I20101027 … [Read more...]
Great to Good
April 26, 2010 By
Tom Peters and Jim Collins wrote the 2 most popular and influential management books of the last 25 years. Unfortunately both were fundamentally flawed. Each described companies in the PRIME stage of the corporate lifecycle and the authors naively assumed they would stay there. That turned out to be … [Read more...]
Lifecycle Assessment
October 29, 2009 By
From 1999 to 2006 the average tenure of departing chief executive officers in the United States declined from about 10 years to slightly more than eight. Although some CEO’s stay a long time, a lot of them find that their stint in the corner office is remarkably brief. In 2006, for instance, about … [Read more...]
The Founder’s Trap
May 23, 2009 By
Eventually most start-ups reach the point where the growth of the company exceeds the growth of the person in charge. This crossroad is normal and healthy, according to consultant Ichak Adizes, whose books Corporate Lifecycles and Managing Corporate Lifecycles are among the most insightful on the … [Read more...]
Rejuvenating an aging organization
December 4, 2008 By
An organization’s vitality is a function of two competing forces – flexibility and predictability. Young companies tend to be flexible and unpredictable while those that are aging are usually predictable and inflexible. When an aging company looks out toward the technological, socio-demographic, … [Read more...]