Читать книгу Growing Pains - Flamholtz Eric G. - Страница 6

While this edition of Growing Pains focuses on the entire life cycle of an organization (versus exclusively on the transition from an entrepreneurship to a professionally managed organization) and what it takes to build a sustainably successful enterprise over the longer term, its title has remained unchanged. The title Growing Pains is still very relevant, even for the advanced stages of growth, and even when growth has ceased. For the absence of growth is, in a sense, a growing pain as well. Our research and practical experience in working with a wide variety of organizations over almost 40 years suggest that all organizations experience growing pains as a normal part of their development. Growing pains indicate that the company has outgrown its infrastructure and that it must develop new systems and processes, as well as a new structure, to support its size. When organizations ignore growing pains, significant problems and even failure can result.

The book's underlying framework and content are applicable to all organizations, from very small startups to very large companies, nonprofits, and even mega-companies such as IBM, Johnson & Johnson, and Walmart. In earlier editions, Starbucks was used as an example of a rapidly growing entrepreneurial company that had applied many of the concepts and methods in this book. Today, Starbucks has joined the elite group of world-class giants. The concepts, frameworks, methods and tools described in this book are still relevant to Starbucks and to other organizations of all sizes.

This book is divided into three parts. Part One begins with a chapter that provides an overview of the issues facing entrepreneurs and CEOs as they attempt to grow their organizations. It examines both the personal and the organizational issues and related transitions required. This is followed by four chapters that focus on frameworks for understanding organizational effectiveness and transitions: an organizational effectiveness model, an organizational life-cycle model, and a model to explain the origin and underlying causes of “growing pains” that occur when an organization has not developed the “infrastructure” required by its size and complexity at a given stage of growth. The organizational effectiveness model, termed the Pyramid of Organizational Development (discussed in Chapter 2) explains the variables that must be managed by companies to give them the optimal (most likely) chance of long-term success. The life-cycle model (discussed in Chapters 3 and 4) identifies seven stages of growth from a new venture (corporate birth) to an established organization in decline and requiring revitalization. Chapter 3 focuses on the first four stages of growth from a new venture to a mature organization, while Chapter 4 focuses on the advanced stages of growth in the organizational life cycle. The growing pains framework is discussed in Chapter 5.

Part Two presents the most significant managerial tools that can be used to build sustainably successful business enterprises: strategic planning, organizational structure, control/performance management systems, management and leadership development, and corporate culture management. Although the tools of planning, structural design, and the like may be, at least superficially, familiar to some readers, our approach to these key components of a management system differs in some very important respects from others; there is also an integrative aspect to the set of management systems components overall.

Part Three deals with some special issues and topics relating to organizational development and transitions. It includes a chapter dealing with the application of the concepts and frameworks to nonprofits. It also introduces the concept of a leadership molecule and deals with the key aspects of strategic and operational leadership. Finally, Chapter 13 presents several comprehensive case studies of companies that have used the concepts, methods, and tools described in this book to support their continued success.