Introduction

This book is directed to consultants and organizational leaders who are responsible for managing organizational change.

It is not a collection of case studies nor is it based on rigorous statistical analyses. Neither is it a literature survey, although this book provides footnoted references. Rather, this is a progress report on my thirty years of experience with organizations, the patterns of behavior I have observed, and the approach I have taken in treating them. The Adizes Institute, headquartered in Los Angeles, California, has associates worldwide who are full-time trained prac- titioners of the methodology, and this book reflects their experiences as well.

The book's examples are collages of the many companies we have worked with over the years. Some of them are publicly known-through books and/or articles, as will be referenced later- as users of the methodology. Otherwise, names of clients of the Institute are kept confidential.

Domino's Pizza is one of those publicly known, as described in Torn Monaghan's book, The Pizza Tiger. 1 Domino's practiced the methodology and grew from $150 million to $1.5 billion in sales in seven years. Another of the better-known clients, the Bank of America-at the time, the second largest bank in the world with $120 billion in assets and 90,000 employees had reached a point in its Lifecycle where it was no longer growing and used the methodology to revitalize.

We have also used the Adizes methodology to help such non-profit organizations as the Los Angeles Department of Children's Services, the world's largest children's welfare organization. In Ghana's Ministry of Health, I facilitated the establishment of the Health Delivery Planning Unit, which the World Health Organization considered a model for third-world countries at the time.

I have used the methodology and consulted with the prime ministers and/or presidents of Sweden, Greece, Brazil, Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Israel, and El Salvador, mainly lecturing on how to reju- venate governmental bureaucracy and the political machinery. My associates and I have been involved in using the methodology to resolve some sensitive policy issues that remain confidential.

But not all clients are huge corporations or government agencies. We have worked with churches, a worldwide missionary organization, and TV channels. I can confidently say that the Institute has tested the methodology repeatedly under various conditions, and we can replicate results regardless of organizational culture, size, and technology. The one variable that can affect the efficacy of the methodology is the CEO, which must be committed to implementa- tion, and there must be positive chemistry between the CEO and the Adizes-certified associate who is leading the process.

While this book focuses primarily on corporations, it also points out similarities to marriage, the personal process of growing and aging, and the process of change in civilizations, biological systems, and even religions. Such comparisons are necessarily superficial, and I admit that I wouldn't be surprised if they are even wrong. But life has taught me that everything is related to everything. If we do not see a relationship, it is only because we don't understand it yet. Still, we must try to pierce the veil of separation. We must strain for at least a glimpse of the universality and the rules that govern this universality.

I have organized this enlarged and revised edition of Corporate Lifecycles into three parts. Part One describes what is going on. It describes the typical behavior of organizations through the lifecycle stages on the typical path organizations take, from Courtship up through Prime and aging to the end of the organizational lifecycle, and the normal and abnormal problems they encounter. Part Two, the analytical part, provides tools that explain why organizations grow and age. Part Three provides a short description of the interventions necessary to bring an organization to Prime, and this is Introduction xix the part complemented by Pursuit of Prime and Mastering Change. It also includes the principles of guiding an organization along the optimal faster path and describes how an organization behaves on that path. This is necessarily short because we have had insufficient experience with this path. It is a subject for further work and will be subsequently reported.

My hope is that this will not soon meet the fate of what Samuel Johnson gave as a review to a literary aspirant: "Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good." Nevertheless, I had fun writing it and hope you find it thought-provoking.

I learn from the experience of others and encourage you to communicate your ideas-whether critical or supportive, theoretical or experiential-through the Adizes Institute Journal for Organizational Transformation or communicate to me directly by e-mail at [e-mail]. I furthermore welcome you to visit our web page.

Ichak Adizes, Ph.D.

Santa Barbara, California