• Courtship
• Infant
• Go-Go
• Adolescent
• Prime
• Ageing
• Preliminary Lifecycle Analysis

THE LIFECYCLE CONCEPT

Organisations, like all living organisms, have a lifecycle and they exhibit predictable and repetitive patterns of behaviour as they grow and age. Each stage of this lifecycle brings new and unique challenges. How well or how poorly leadership addresses these issues by making the changes needed to transition from one stage to the next will determine the success or failure of the organisation.

Adizes: Corporate Lifecycles (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1988)

The lifecycle position of an organisation has nothing to do with its chronological age. Organisations can be two years old as easily as they can be eighty five years young. What causes an organisation to age is a function of two other things – flexibility and control.

Young, growing organisations are highly flexible but not very controlled. Old, ageing organisations are very controlled but not very flexible.

For a preliminary lifecycle analysis of your organisation CLICK HERE to complete the questionnaire

Use the buttons in the left margin to see the typical challenges your organisation will encounter as well as high level prescriptions of what to do about them.

LIFECYCLE ASSESSMENT WORKSHOP

The bigger the challenge you are facing, the more energy your organisation will require to address it. It is not enough that senior leaders want change – the collective consciousness of the organisation must also embrace it. For many of our clients, our Lifecycle Assessment Workshop was the “breakthrough” event that precipitated wide spread dissatisfaction with the status quo and created the will and commitment required to sustain large-scale change.

It is for this reason that we begin many interventions by bringing together a team from your organisation to conduct this assessment. This fast paced highly interactive 2 to 3 day session is designed to achieve the following four objectives:

• Perform a detailed identification and analysis of the major areas for improvement within all parts of the company, including an analysis of the root causes of those problems.
• Assess the organisation’s lifecycle position. If “growing” are there abnormal problems which may threaten the organisation’s survival? If “ageing” what are the ageing factors that need to be addressed for the organisation to regain its vitality?
• Legitimise the need for change and move “ownership” for action from 1 or 2 visionaries onto the energised shoulders of all the workshop participants.
• Develop a high level game plan for getting the organisation to PRIME, the optimal stage of the lifecycle.

"When you haven’t been involved in a particular business for very long -- there is no way you will ever get a better return for two days’ worth of effort, in terms of understanding your business and its issues, than by going through a Lifecycle Assessment Workshop"

Mike Tansey, CEO Thomson Scientific and Healthcare

WHAT THE PARTICIPANTS SAY:

"This was a historic event. This is the beginning of a process that will change the company more than anything that has happened in the last 140 years."

"This was a huge step in bringing the company and the union together."

"These two and a half days were wonderful."

"I'm inspired by the ease with which people were able to talk about difficult issues and I appreciate the common sense approach of the process we used."

"This is the best listening and participation we have ever had in our organisation."

"This was exciting but in many ways tough. When you feel you've exhausted yourself something must have gone right."

"I appreciate the frankness we had in this room. It bodes well for the future."

"We've learned to look at problems in a different way. We're focused and the level of urgency is high."

"This was very historic."

"I've been frustrated over the last couple of years by our efforts to change. In the last two days I've learned we've been doing it the wrong way."

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