The Organisation LifeCycle, developed by Ichak Adizes (1989) and informed by the work of Larry E Greiner (1972), is the most advanced map of how organisations are founded, grow, get into trouble, restructure and hit optimum - yet all too often slide into a bureaucratic decline.

This 2-day interactive workshop is aimed at generating understanding amongst participants about the natural and unnatural ways organisations develop and what kinds of traps and diversions are likely to occur at different stages. It will also provide insight into what kinds of intervention are most likely to be effective at what stages.

The course covers:-

• The stages of the Organisation LifeCycle
  How an organisation starts from the Founder's dream, survives to become a successful entity, has to mutate into a professional corporation to reach the ideal state of Prime and then is faced with resisting the natural drag to Bureaucracy and eventual Death.
  This section considers the various crisis phases the organisation will inevitably experience and the vital changes it must undertake to make the transitions work positively.

• Key Roles throughout the LifeCycle
  Adizes identified 4 roles - Production, Administration, Entrepreneurialism and Integration - and here we examine the way the roles are more or less naturally dominant as the organisation goes through the LifeCycle.
  Since it is natural for the objectives of the roles to conflict with one another, it is crucial that senior managers understand the nature and roots of such conflicts and thus can manage them without undue detriment to the organisation.

• Thinking Styles to match the Key Roles
  This section uses the vMEMES concept of Spiral Dynamics to illustrate the kind of thinking typically most likely to be found in a role and thus most likely to influence an organisation at stages where that role is dominant.
  In this context, we consider the styles of leadership most appropriate to each stage.

• Leadership and the Role of Integration
  From their years of hands-on research, Greiner and Adizes came to realise how vital it is for organisations to understand the stages of development and anticipate how they are likely to experience each stage. Those that do will be more able to minimise the disruptive aspects of each transition and accelerate progress to stage peaks.
  Adizes sees it as Integration's job to coordinate the development of an organisation. Here we look at just what Integration needs to do to get an organisation to Prime and keep it there.

This programme spreads the content over 2 days but builds in tools for identifying in more depth just where your organisation is on the LifeCycle, the relative strengths and 'healthiness' of the 4 roles and the kinds of interventions needed to point the organisation clearly in the direction of Prime. Participants should emerge from the sessions with a structured plan to progress their organisation.

Contact me to find out how training in these powerful concepts can be geared to maximise benefit to your organisation.