Managing Corporate Lifecycles

Complete Edition

Ichak Kalderon Adizes

• Publisher: The Adizes Institute
• Year: 2019
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780578443249
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

Part I - What Is Going On?

Chapter 1 - Change and Its Repercussions

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Change has no precedents.

NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

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The Perpetuity of Problems

It might not be news to you if I were to say that we all experience change and change is a phenomenon that exists for as long as we can perceive anything.

Change gives rise to events that can be opportunities or problems.1 When we encounter changes, we need to make decisions and do something different because we face a different phenomenon. Think of walking down a street. When we come to an intersection—a change from what we have been experiencing—we confront a problem or an opportunity: Should we turn right, turn left, turn around, or continue straight ahead? We need to decide and act, and whatever we decide to do is itself a change that leads to new problems.

Every problem or opportunity introduced by change generates a solution, which causes more change, and we face a new reality and a new set of problems or opportunities.2

Thus, as long as there is change, there will be problems and opportunities.

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Nothing endures but change.

HERACLITUS

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And the corollary is:

Since change is here to stay, problems are here to stay
. . . Forever!!!

I was surprised when I reached that conclusion. After all, bookstores are full of books promising that if only we follow this or that recipe for success, our organizational problems will disappear. Many political ideologies and religions make the same promises: Follow these rules and you will inherit salvation or earn a place in heaven.

I suggest that those promises cannot be realized because change is life, and as long as we are alive, we will have problems.

Consider the saying, “Life’s a bitch; then you die.” What’s more, the “livelier” we are, the more problems we will have.

Take, for instance, a software company with which I consulted. The managers complained about the magnitude of the company’s problems. The company had taken less than two years to grow from zero to $180 million in annual revenues. “What do you expect?” I asked. “When will you have no problems? Only when there is no change. And that will happen only when?” They knew the answer. “When we are dead,” they replied.

If change is life and we have no problems only when we are dead, then slowing down the rate of change—one way to reduce problems—is tantamount to committing suicide. The dinosaurs did not adapt to change, and neither do many large corporations that currently rule the world. If they want to stay alive, they’d better learn to manage and lead change.

There is an old joke about two guys who went on a walking safari. They saw a lion approaching them. One of them started putting on his running shoes. “You can’t outrun the lion,” his companion said. “I’m not trying to outrun the lion,” the first guy responded. “All I need to do is outrun you!”

As change accelerates, the challenge to survive becomes more complex.3 Who survives? Those who make the right decisions the fastest and implement them the fastest.4

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It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

CHARLES DARWIN

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Making wrong decisions quickly and implementing them quickly is a prescription for disaster. You end up with worse problems than those you were trying to solve. Nor will you thrive if your competition can make the right decisions faster than you can, or if in spite of making the right decisions promptly, you take more time to implement them than the competition.

My observations are not comforting, but the truth is that solving one generation of problems does not mean clear sailing forever. Your solutions only give rise to the next generation of problems. I don’t know about you, but I admit that I still catch myself in the middle of the night wondering when my problems will all be over. And I know the answer: Never. I will stop having problems only when I stop being alive.

Growing up does not mean getting past all problems. Growing up means being able to handle bigger and more complex problems. Once I sent a New Year’s greeting card to my clients that said, “I wish you bigger problems next year.” And at the bottom of the card, I added in very small letters, “that you can handle easily.”

Each of us is as “big” as the problems we handle and struggle with. “Small” people deal with small problems: the kind of car they own and the quality of their neighbor’s kitchen wallpaper. “Big” people struggle with such problems as the quality of their children’s education, the environment they will leave behind, and the quality of life in their communities. Having fewer problems is not living. It’s dying. Addressing and being able to solve bigger and bigger problems means that our strengths and capacities are improving. We need to emancipate ourselves from small problems to free the energy to deal with bigger problems.

What’s new? It’s not change itself. Change has existed for billions of years. The news is that the rate of change is accelerating.5 More and more problems are confronting us at a faster and faster rate. We can become “smaller and smaller” people focusing on the more and more trivial, or we can grow to deal with what really counts for life.

I attend many executive committee meetings where people discuss necessary changes, and more often than not, someone will interrupt the proceedings to say, “Slow down. We are running with too many balls in the air.” But how can they slow down if the competition is putting on its running shoes?

Change is stressful. We all know that. People are stressed. Organizations are stressed. Societies are stressed. Psychologists have devised a way to measure stress, assigning a certain number of points to each of various life events: divorce, changing jobs, even going on vacation.6 What is the common denominator in each of those stress inducing events? Change.

So, should we slow ourselves and our companies?

Yes, if all the companies in our industry agreed to slow down. But even that wouldn’t work unless society as a whole also slowed down. But that would work only if the entire world slowed down. That is too much to ask. The solution cannot be to slow change. The dinosaurs tried that. The purpose of this book is not to show you how to slow change or how to survive it. Rather, my purpose is to show you how to accelerate finding and implementing the right solutions with a minimum of stress.

From Prediction to Acceleration

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That which can be foreseen can be prevented.

CHARLES H. MAYO

For a blind person, every obstacle is a sudden surprise.

ANONYMOUS

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I learned from my two young sons how to speed up solutions. When they were small, they would make me take them to an electronic arcade. Once there, they spent most of their time with their favorite game: racing cars. I realized to my surprise that although neither of them had ever driven a car in his life, they were always able to beat me in the race. The secret was that they had played the game so many times they knew the computer program by heart. They knew when a car would pass and where the turns were. They could drive proactively. Because I didn’t know what was coming next, every turn presented a crisis. I crashed. I tumbled. Not knowing the road ahead, I drove reactively, slower than their proactive driving. The game reminded me that when I drive in a foreign city I drive much slower than the locals who beep at me and make rude gestures. It’s not that they can drive better. They simply know the road ahead. They can afford to drive faster than someone for whom each and every intersection is a crisis that demands a new decision.

When we know the road ahead, we can drive faster because we drive proactively. Likewise, if we can predict change, we will know what is ahead for a corporation, and the problems will not surprise us. We will deal with them promptly because rather than being unexpected crises, they will be events for which we have planned and prepared ourselves.7

I have discovered that I can predict...

Table of contents

• Part I - What Is Going On?
• Part II - Analyzing Organizational Behavior
• PART III - Raising Healthy Organizations
• Part IV - Appendices