Corporate Lifecycles: How and Why Corporations Grow and Die and What to Do About It

by Ichak Kalderon Adizes

Likens corporations to living organisms and traces their developmental stages, discussing the normal, even healthy problems that lead to growth at these stages, as well as the unusual problems that can cause a company's death

Genres: Business, Management, Nonfiction, Leadership, Entrepreneurship

384 pages, Paperback

First published October 28, 1987

About the author

Ichak Adizes is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading management experts. Over the course of more than 40 years, he has developed and refined a proprietary methodology that enables corporations, governments, and complex organizations to accomplish exceptional results and manage accelerated change without destructive conflicts. Leadership Excellence Journal named him one of the Top 30 Thought Leaders in the United States, and Executive Excellence Journal put him on their list of the Top 30 Consultants in America.

In recognition of his contributions to management theory and practice, Dr. Adizes has received 14 honorary doctorates, is a Fellow of the International Academy of Management and has been made an honorary citizen of two Eastern European countries. He also received the 2010 Ellis Island Medal of Honor, which is awarded by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations Foundation for contributions to humanity.

Dr. Adizes has served as a tenured faculty member at UCLA; was a visiting professor at Stanford, Tel Aviv and Hebrew Universities; and taught at the Columbia University Executive Program. He also served as Dean of the Adizes Graduate School for the Study of Leadership and Change, and is currently an academic advisor to the Graduate School of Management of the Academy of National Economy of the Russian Federation.

Dr. Adizes is founder and president of the Adizes Institute, based in Santa Barbara, California, an international consulting company that applies the Adizes Methodology for clients in the public and private sectors. In 2011, the Adizes Institute was ranked as one of the top ten consulting organizations in the United States by Leadership Excellence Journal.

In addition to consulting to prime ministers and cabinet-level officers throughout the world, Dr. Adizes has worked with a wide variety of companies ranging from startups to members of the Fortune 50. He lectures in four languages, and has appeared before well over 100,000 executives in more than 50 countries.

He has written 14 books that have been published in 24 languages. His book, Corporate Lifecycles: How Organizations Grow and Die and What to Do About It (subsequently revised, expanded and republished as Managing Corporate Lifecycles) was named one of the Ten Best Business Books by Library Journal.

Dr. Adizes lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his family. In his leisure time he enjoys folk dancing, playing the accordion, and practicing meditation.

Reviews

[Manohar_shresthahotmail.com]

What this book is about?
This book is the Bible or the Gita of organization and if you are more into science, it is equivalent of “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life), 1859, by Charles Darwin with regards to organizations.

However you won’t even get a review on google because despite being such an insightful book, somehow it did not catch the attention of key influencers.

This book consists of 4 logical parts:
Part 1 : The lifecycle of corporation
Part 2 : The Adizes theory of Management: tools for predicting, analyzing and treating corporate cultures
Part 3 : Using tools to predict Behavior
Part 4: How to change organizational Cultures

This diagram is sufficient to understand the gist of the whole book, and that is the beauty of this writers’ mind.




Check this link for more details on each stage:
https://adizes.com/lifecycle/

PAEI roles
The authors uses this framework throughout the book to make diagnosis and recommendations for organizational problems,
Every organization must do 4 actions:
P for Perform : get results at any cost : sales is everything: effectiveness
A for Administer: sales isn’t everything: profits count: efficiency
E for Entrepreneurship: be proactive: don’t sit on your laurels effectiveness in the long run
I for Integrating: unify all; eliminate destructive conflict; efficiency in the long run

Adizes firmly believes that the job the many manager is to make decision, and this books gives make frameworks to analyze one’s decisions like PAEI.

For example leadership styles based on stages of corporate lifecycles he recommends are:

Stage ==> PAEI level (Caps mean more, small means less)
Courtship ==>PaEi
Infancy ==>PaEi
Go-go ==> pAEi
Adolescence ==>pAeI
Prime ==>paEI
Stable ==>PaEi
Aristocracy ==>PaeI
Early Bureaucracy ==>Paei
Bureacracy ==>?
Death ==> ?


Finally the goal of all this knowledge is to :
Understand why your organizations is having problems (because it is part of the process of corporate lifecycle like a sudden roughening of the voice in a teenager)
To which stage do your symptoms belong to
How to treat yourself out the disease of that stage by changing the culture

This book is far more advanced than any MBA course, that sadly don’t mention him, probably because his methodology is too engineering like or medical like. However for the layman, the diagram I put at the beginning is more than enough to understand this book and even try the 3 goals of this knowledge i just mentioned.
How is it useful to you in your :
Life
x
Business
As a management consultant I use the frameworks in this books a lot to understand why a client organization is facing the kind of problems it called me to solve. The amazing thing it is so accurate.

Although Adizez uses a “11 Phases of managing corporate culture” which is highly complex, you can try this out:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w...



Career
x

[N013e · Rating 3 out of 5]

Если выкинуть каждое второе предложение, книга ничего не потеряет. Полезная, но чудовищно мыльная книга. Видимо автор попал в Ловушку Основателя и не допустил никакого редактора к рукописи.

[Janie D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! Truly made my life as a manager easier by identifying which issues are normal for the growth stage and which ones are abnormal and need fixing!

[Mitko Andonov · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book that explains a lot about organization's life. As everything else, every company is born, grows, matures and has an end. It helps when we recognize the period. What is interesting is that it also applies to countries. And You will never guess which country is in the stadium of aging.
Different methods should be applied to companies in different stadiums.
I think it is one of the few books I will re-read. And I am going after his other books.

[Anna Chudnovsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exellent structure of the book, the system is so exciting as physical formulas describing how the Universe runs, in so short words, so clear as a poetry, with crystal logic and lively examples. My pleasure during reading could be compare only with understanding how the system works.
With best to author!

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

Profound wisdom, but it felt like so much work to get there. The author creates an elaborate vocabulary which is required to keep tracking throughout the book. Because if its complexity I will probably retain less than I might otherwise. I wish there was a version of this book included only the essential truths.

[SP · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never thought I could rave about a business management book, but this one is really good and explains so well so much of what I've observed about organisations. It's well-researched, practical, insightful, realistic, and a really useful tool for building healthy, growing organisations.

[Roman Shaternik]

Крутая теория жизненного цикла компании. Можно анализировать, смотреть нормальные, аномальные и паталогические проблемы, а также искать способы их разруливания. Но довольно сложный язык. И в конце малость перебор про привязку концепции к библии и мирозданию :)

[Mehdihajikarimloo · Rating 4 out of 5]

So realistic management book with a good system view to organization that discribe corporates in diffrent stage and shows how to act in that stage

[Josh Allan Dykstra]

Insightful and organic perspective on organizations. Drifts into technical profile-speak in second half in regards to the Adizes method.

[Irene Mazepa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth rereading several times

[Dara B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Influenced greatly the way I see any system now, be it a corporation or a family or a nation-state. So I’d say it’s not without its share of idiosyncrasies (God as an entrepreneur, anyone?) but it comes highly recommended, and not only to corporate folks.