“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 of organizational development, I always use Ichak Adizes' corporate lifecycle as a primary reference. Below is an abstract from Adizes’s web site on the basic concept of Corporate Lifecycle.

 The Corporate Lifecycle

At the foundation of effective management for any organization is the fundamental truth that all organizations, like all living organisms, have a lifecycle and undergo very predictable and repetitive patterns of behavior as they grow and develop. At each new stage of development an organization is faced with a unique set of challenges. How well or poorly management addresses these challenges, and leads a healthy transition from one stage to the next, has a significant impact on the success or failure of their organization.

This framework may be used for any organization. The lifecycle 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 when 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 and 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. A business entity 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 and 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, we can situate where our respective organizations are in the lifecycle, and then re-evaluate and re-engineer how it should evolve. The same could be applied to where we are as a nation.

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Dr. Conchita L. Manabat is the president of the Development Center for Finance and a Trustee at Holy Name University. She is also a member of the Consultative Advisory Groups of the International Auditing & Assurance Standards Board and the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it