Dr. Conchita L. Manabat l February 21, 2024 l Business Mirror
“Life is full of surprises and serendipity. Being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. If you try to plan every step, you may miss those wonderful twists and turns. Just find your next adventure – do it well, enjoy it and then, not now, think about what comes next.”
—Condoleeza Rice
AS a continuing student in organizational development, I am observant of developments and always use Ichak Adizes’s corporate lifecycle as a primary reference. Below is an abstract from the Adizes’s basic concept of Corporate Lifecycle.
The Corporate Lifecycle
ACCORDING to Adizes, all organizations are like all living organisms. They have a lifecycle and undergo very predictable and repetitive patterns of behavior as they grow and develop. The development has stages and each stage is faced with unique set of challenges. How these challenges are managed and how the transition from one stage to the next is handled impact on the success or failure of the organization.
Basically, the stages include:
1. Courtship
2. Infancy
3. Go-go stage
4. Adolescence
5. Prime
6. Stable
7. Aristocracy
8. Bureaucracy
9. Death
The framework may be used in any organization. The life cycle may start with the founder’s idea, an idea that may become almost an obsession. Likened to a courtship, it may end to just an affair. However, if there is deep commitment to the idea, it may lead to birth then, infancy. The growth may be stunted and end with infancy death. If it survives infancy, it graduates to go-go stage, adolescence, prime with high point at stability until it declines to aristocracy, further down to bureaucracy. The bureaucracy may come in stages and eventually yield to death.
How the organization evolves depends on a number of factors. It is given birth at infancy where it is action-oriented and opportunity driven. A go-go entity has achieved success where the pains of trials during infancy are forgotten. ‘Continued success may quickly transform this confidence into arrogance, with a capital A.”
At adolescence, it is reborn for the organization has to find life apart from the founder. Like an adolescent, it seeks independence and unsteadily develops to further success or deteriorates to disaster. If successful, the organization transitions to prime, it reaches the optimal flexibility but not necessarily the peak. It represents growth and aging as well.
Stability is the top of the curve but organizations should not stay there for it represents loss of vitality and aging. If a business entity it may have a strong balance sheet showing cash but where to? Aristocracy represents risk averseness and increasing short term outlook. With less long-term view with low-risk financial goals, the climate gets stale. If the decline caused by aristocracy is not reversed, bureaucracy comes in. At this stage, rebirth may occur with refreshed commitments but if the bureaucratic ills deepen with no commitment to be reborn, death becomes inevitable.
With this basic framework, each of us can situate our respective organizations. Likewise, we can situate where our country is. Then, what’s next?
*** Dr. Conchita L. Manabat is the President of the Development Center for Finance and a Trustee at the University of San Carlos, Cebu City. She is a member of the Stakeholder Advisory Council of the Public Interest Oversight Board and chairs the Advisory Council of the International Association of Financial Executives Institutes.