E-tip No. 83 – Crisis? What crisis?

I’m not talking here about an early Supertramp album but the crises that companies and organisations go through as they grow.

One little known and wonderful simple model of identifying this – and how to come through it – was developed by a guy called Greiner back in 1972.  And I’ve experienced this (painfully) in my own organisations and come across many other organisations where this is so very true.

Greiner describes 5 phases of growth and the crises each one goes through as the organisation expands.  And more importantly, how they move forward:

• Phase 1: Growth through creativity (often from an owner manager), and then comes a crisis of leadership – the bosses ability to keep stuff in their head rather than  share it, or changing what the company does, or who does what, at a whim: staff eventually get p**sed off, frustrated becoming unproductive, and eventually leave (or generally the good ones do).  Growth comes from setting a clear strategy and objectives for the staff to pursue, and letting them get on with it.
• Phase 2: Growth through direction, and then comes the crisis of autonomy.  You know, a manager can generally successfully manage up to 12-17 people.  More than that it’s increasingly dificult for one person to micro manage individuals.  What’s needed is delegation of the day-to-day operations, and put in place an organisational structure.
• Phase 3: Growth through delegation leading to a crisis of control – sometimes too many chiefs or unclear lines of communication, responsibility and authority.  Just setting out who does what, when and how and then letting them get on with the job can make a huge difference.
• Phase 4: Gowth through co-ordination leading to a crisis of red tape – where system is overlaid over system and with endless procedures and form filling, often as a result of a silo/departmental mentality.  The way forward is in developing a culture of trust, sharing of information, simplification, teamwork, and joined-up thinking and action.
• Phase 5: Growth through collaboration leading to….?

The trick is to recognise the place where you or your organisation is at – and do something about it!  I learnt this the hard way.  Within 3 years the company I was running had grown to 16 staff.  Micro-managing, fire-fighting and working long hours was taking it’s toll – on the company, my staff, on me, and my marriage.  The company had grown by being creative and now needed a period of stabilisation so the Directors and staff agreed a strategy and allowed the team to get on with the operations.  I passed on my specialist skills to my staff and left (I’m not an operations person) to pursue my creativity in coaching and consulting, although it was a little too late to save my marriage.

Today’s experiment

• Have a look at the phases above and consider where your organisaiton  may be.  You may have worked this out yourself and already be doing something about it. Great!
• If not, then awareness of it and what to do next can be useful.  Consider the way forward, the next phase you need to take.  It may be painful but how painful is the alternative or just doing nothing – personally, professionally and organisationally?  Consider behemoths like governments or the NHS where effecting change is causing huge upsets because change has been left too late instead of progressive over time.
• And if you’re effecting change, consider the effect on others, and involve them in the process.  They will always have something useful to contribute (a little more on this in forthcoming e-tips).

Anthony

Copyright Anthony Davis 2007.  All rights reserved.