Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations

Business women shaking hands in a meeting

Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations

Much of the content of this topic came from this book:

Consulting and Organization Development - Book Cover

Sections of This Article Include

What Are Organizational Life Cycles?
Why Are They Important to Understand?
Example of a Simple Organizational Life Cycle Model
Product Life Cycles
Additional Perspectives on Life Cycles

What Are Organizational Life Cycles?

Simply put, organizations are social systems. They’re groups of people organized around a common purpose. Their activities include similar recurring practices, for example, strategic planning, business planning, product and service development, marketing, financial management and evaluations. Each activity usually includes formally or informally clarifying goals, taking steps toward those goals, deciding if the goals are being met or not, and adjusting activities to be even more effective and efficient in reaching the goals. The social systems can be focused primarily on the entire organization, teams, each product or service, or within a certain activity. Individuals themselves are systems, needing a clear purpose and activities to continually work toward that purpose.

Social systems go through common life-cycles ranging from, for example, from start-up to growth to maturity. For example, as people mature, they begin to understand more about the world and themselves. Over time, they develop a certain kind of wisdom that sees them through many of the challenges in life and work. They learn to plan and to use a certain amount of discipline to carry through on those plans. They learn to manage themselves. Meanwhile, they go through infancy, child-hood and early-teenage phases that are characterized by lots of rapid growth. People in these phases often do whatever it takes just to stay alive, for example, eating, seeking shelter and sleeping. Early on, many people tend to make impulsive, highly reactive decisions based on whatever is going on around them at the moment.

Why Are They Important to Understand?

Start-up organizations, team and internal practices are like this, too. Often, founders of the organization or program and its various members have to do whatever is necessary just to stay in business. Leaders make highly reactive, seat-of-the-pants decisions. They fear taking the time to slow down and do planning.

Experienced leaders have learned to recognize the particular life cycle that a system is going through. These leaders understand the types of problems faced during each life cycle. That understanding gives them a sense of perspective and helps them to decide how to respond to decisions and problems in the workplace and their lives and the workplace.

That understanding also suggests the priories that they need to soon address in order to evolve to the next stage. Systems that do not evolve often stagnate or decline between stages. Symptoms can be unclear priorities, unclear roles, increasing frustrations and conflict, and people leaving the organization. If the understanding of the life cycle is not known, then these problems are often not resolved.

When discerning the particular stage that a system is currently in, it does not depend on the age of the system. Rather, it depends on the nature of its current activities. For example, if the activities are mostly unplanned, high reactive and decisions are made primarily by certain personalities rather than by plans and policies, then that organization is operating more like an early stage organization.

Example of a Simple Organizational Life Cycle Model

Life cycles of social systems are so important to understand that there has been an increasing number of suggested frameworks and models for life cycles. Here is one simple model to further enhance your understanding of life cycles. In this example, the focus is on an organization-wide social system.

Some systems planners consider there to be an additional stage of decline that is after the maturity stage. That stage recognizes that not all systems are meant to exist forever. It also helps systems planners to avoid desperately staying in the maturity stage, lest the system “fails”.

Start-Up Features

Has compelling, exciting vision and purpose
People are motivated by exciting, charismatic leaders
Board is usually a hands-on (working) Board
People are recruited because they’re excited and want to chip in
People chip in wherever they feel they’re needed
Decisions are often reactive and spontaneous. Plans, if developed at all, are often not implemented
Resources (money, facilities, etc.) are continually sought, sometimes in crisis situations
Occasional confusion, frustration and conflicts can exist about who’s doing what, how and when
People begin to talk about the need for more planning and procedures
If there’s strong resistance to change, then crises increase, for example, cash shortages, conflicts and people leaving

Priorities in Growth Stage

Focus is on strengthening internal systems to support growth, while expanding services and markets
Leaders focus on managing change as much as on generating new ideas
Board evolves to more of a policy-Board with continued focus on plans, policies and full participation
Different departments and teams are appropriately coordinated for efficiencies
Planning is regular and systematic, and focused on goals, roles and deadlines
Progress is regularly monitored for status, learning and continuous improvement
Regular and routine activities are proceduralized for reliability and efficiencies
Internal systems are developed to systematically obtain resources, based on plans
Performance management practices are focused on personnel and the organization

Priorities in Maturity Stage

Focus in on sustaining momentum and renewal, especially to avoid entrenching in bureaucracy
Focus is also on creativity and innovation – sometimes to start new ventures, that start new life cycles themselves
Management priorities are especially on succession planning and risk management
More learning is shared with other people and organizations
Leaders seek to successfully duplicate their business model elsewhere
People attend to even longer-range planning, for example, 3-5 years out
Priority continues to be on managing change and transformation
Some organizations consider terminating the organization if its vision is achieved

Product Life Cycles

The recurring activities to plan, develop, implement, evaluate and then adjust the plans for each product and service is a essentially a systematic recurring set of activities. It is a system and has a life cycle like many other systems. The phases in the system might be described by the above simple diagram of phases.

Experienced product managers understand the stages of development of a typical product or service, and know what the typical traits of each stage are. Thus, they know what priorities to address to evolve the product or service to maturity. They understand that problems that can occur if the next stage is not reached. Consider the following articles.

Product Life Cycle Stages
Product Life Cycle diagrams
Product life cycle (Wikipedia)
Best Practice Report: Product Lifecycle Management
What is the Product Life Cycle? Definition and Examples
Ultimate Product Life Cycle Management Guide
Product Life Cycle Examples
Exploit the Product Life Cycle

Additional Perspectives on Life Cycles

Also consider

This Article is in a Series About Understanding Organizational Structures and Design

This article is the fourth in the series which includes:

1. What is an Organization?
2. What Makes Each Organization Unique
3. How They’re the Same: They’re Systems
4. Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations
5. Basic Overview of Organizational Culture
6. Legal Forms and Traditional Structures of Organizations
7. Driving Forces and a New Organizational Paradigm
8. Emerging Nature and New Organizational Structures and Design
9. Basic Guidelines for Organizational Design
10. Wrap Up: Grasping the Big Picture in Organizations (video)

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizations

In addition to the information on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

Related Library Topics

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

January 18, 2022February 22, 2023

Understanding Organizational Structures and Design: What They Are and How They Work

Lady standing close to a while board in a meeting

Understanding Organizational Structures and Design: What They Are and How They Work

Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:

Strongly Suggested Pre-Reading

Organizational Performance Management

Description

Be sure to read the description in Organizational Performance Management to understand that organizational structures are ultimately strategies to help increase the performance of the organization.

To successfully decide the best structures for your organization — or to improve the health of an already established organization — you need some basic understanding of organizational design. You should know what an organization really is, including its parts and how they all work together. Too often, this information is not understood. As a result, leaders and managers add or modify activities within their organizations and without meaning to, they adversely affect the other activities.

You should understand the parts that are the same across all types of organizations — and the parts that are highly unique between them. Otherwise, you might miss out on the vast free resources for assistance to you because you believe your organization and its problems are truly unique.

You should know how to recognize the typical features of a new and start-up organization (in its first life stage) as compared to a well established one (in its mature life stage). Without knowing that information, you can have unrealistic expectations of your start-up organization, resulting in increasing confusion,
frustration and conflicts. You won’t know what is needed to evolve to the next level.

You should be able to recognize the differences in cultures between organizations. Otherwise, you will not understand why other people have such different values and expectations than yours — and that theirs is not wrong.

You also should know about how organizations are changing significantly because of numerous driving forces today. These changes are also causing changes in the nature of the leadership and management within them. Those coming changes are likely to affect you.

This purpose of this series of articles is to convey the core concepts in all of that information to you. You should proceed through the series by going through the articles in the following order.

(Those who naturally prefer to focus on the “business side” in organizations, rather than the “human skills” side, might particularly appreciate this topic on organizational structures.)

Various (and Sometimes Contrary) Perspectives

Go Through This Series in This Order

This article is the first in the series which includes:

1. What is an Organization?
2. What Makes Each Organization Unique
3. How They’re the Same: They’re Systems

4. Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations
5. Basic Overview of Organizational Culture
6. Legal Forms and Traditional Structures of Organizations
7. Driving Forces and a New Organizational Paradigm
8. Emerging Nature and New Organizational Structures and Design
9. Basic Guidelines for Organizational Design
10. Wrap Up: Grasping the Big Picture in Organizations (video)

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizational Theory

In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to Organizational Theories. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

Also consider

Organizational Change
Organizational Evaluations
Organizational Performance Management

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

January 18, 2022September 15, 2022

Basic Dimensions in Organizations

Common Dimensions in Organizations

Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:

When we think about a house, we usually take certain features into consideration, e.g., how many rooms it has, the color of its walls, slope of its roof, etc. A person can consider the following dimensions when analyzing an organization.

Sections of This Topic Include

Structural Dimensions
Contextual Dimensions
Additional Perspectives on Dimensions of Organizations

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Dimensions of Organizations

In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to Dimensions of Organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

Also consider
Related Library Topics

Richard Daft in his book, Organizational Theory and Design (West Publishing, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1992), organizes these dimensions into categories of structural and contextual.

Structural dimensions:

Centralization
– the extent to which functions are dispersed in the organization, either in terms of integration with other functions or geographically

Formalization
– regarding the extent of policies and procedures in the organization

Hierarchy

– regarding the extent and configuration of levels in the structure

Routinization

– regarding the extent that organizational processes are standardized

Specialization

– regarding the extent to which activities are refined

Training

– regrading the extent of activities to equip organization members with knowledge and skills to carry out their roles

Contextual Dimensions

Culture
– the values and beliefs shared by all (note that culture is often discerned by examining norms or observable behaviors in the workplace)

Environment
– the nature of external influences and activities in the political, technical, social and economic arenas

Goals

– unique overall priorities and desired end-states of the organization

Size

– number of people and resources and their span in the organization

Technology

– the often unique activities needed to reach organizational goals, including nature of activities, specialization, type of equipment/facilities needed, etc.

Additional Perspectives on Dimensions of Organizations

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

January 18, 2022March 24, 2023

How to Design Your Organization

Woman Holding Portable Pad in a Group Meeting

How to Design Your Organization’s Structures

Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:

Assembled by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD

Suggested Pre-Readings

Information about organizational design will have more context and meaning
if you have read the following articles and in this order:

Sections in This Topic Include

General Principles of Organizational Design
Practical Advice About Organizing or Reorganizing
Additional Guidelines for Organizational Design
Developing Organization Charts

General Principles of Organizational Design

The section after this one shares practical advice about designing the structure of your organization. However, it might be interesting first to read about the general principles that the practical advice is following.

Some years ago Albert Cherns, an important figure in the Norwegian work redesign efforts highlighted some important Principles of Social and Technical Systems Design. The Principles of Organization Design have been known for 30 years in the academic and consulting community. Knowing the principles and implementing them are clearly two different things. First, I will detail the principles and following that I will highlight what has made the implementation so difficult.

1. Complementarities

How we go about restructuring needs to be compatible with what we are trying to achieve by the restructuring. The process of design must be complementary with the objectives. This means the design and implementation process is critical. If you want flexibility and participation within the work group as an output of the design, then how you go about designing the organization has to be flexible, interactive and participatory.

If the completed work system will depend upon high levels of meaningful flexibility in accomplishing the work, then it is through a process of meaningful flexibility that the system needs to be built. The “means” have to be complimentary with the “ends”. In other words, if you want a system where people assume responsibility, then people have to be responsibly involved in creating the work system or you won’t get it. We do not get participative highly effective organizations by fiat.

2. Minimal Critical Specification

New technologies require people to learn and change. These abilities have to be developed through the work itself. Therefore, specify as little as possible concerning how tasks combine into jobs and how people are to interact within jobs. The creation of a well-designed work team must involve dialogue and decisions being made by the people involved. Most teams struggle from over-structure, which is based in job descriptions and compensation schemes, which result in “that’s not my job”. The trick in building a team that works is to specify no more than is absolutely necessary about the task or how jobs relate to the task, or how people relate to individual jobs. To build a high performance team the rule is to FIX as little as possible. This means to identify and specify no more than what is absolutely critical. Generally the critical information is about output expected. The vision of results is very important and has to be co-constructed with the group but more than anything you want to build an organic ability to learn and change into the team.

3. Variance Control

Support and reward groups that deal with errors at the point of origin. Effective teams need the legitimacy to find out where things go wrong and deal with variance where it occurs. The goal is to minimize exporting problems to others. The assumption that is safe to make is that people know what good work looks like. Exporting problems and unsatisfied customer needs is the mark of a team that lacks options.

4. Clear Goals and Flexible Strategies

Define what is expected in terms of performance early and clearly and then support adaptations toward appropriate means by which the group can achieve ends. (Do not over-specify.) This is an adaptability principle, which recognizes that we are designing living systems rather than machines. With living systems, the same ends can be reached by different means. There are a lot of ways to solve problems and meet a customers needs.

What is critical here is the definition and understanding of the end goal. The “What” is to be highly specified. The “How” is open to local decision and initiative. This enables learning and an increased sense of “efficacy” on the part of team members. Efficacy is the sense that we are effective as a team that we can make a difference and do the job well. Efficacy is fragile and needs to be supported by continuous learning and improvement. High performance teams constantly “tinker” with the means by which they accomplish their results. They seldom settle on “one best way”

5. Boundary Location and Control

Supervisors and managers have to grow to become more comfortable performing a role as a group resource, a beacon of coming changes and a coordinator across task group boundaries.

Traditional organizations group by: time, technology or territory. The weakness of this is that boundaries interfere with the desirable sharing of knowledge and experience and so learning suffers. The consistent social-technical message is if there are supervisors, they manage the boundaries as a group resource, insuring the group has adequate resources, coordinating activities with other groups and foreseeing coming changes. More and more these resource positions are disappearing as groups become more self-regulating. Often the presence of supervisors is an indication of a lack of success in a groups design, or unwillingness at higher levels to trust based upon a poor job of building the structure. When it is done right supervisors are superfluous at best and harmful at worse.

6. Information Flow

Teams have to be deeply involved to determine what and where information is needed for self-direction. There needs to be a management commitment to provide information for task performance and learning. Information has to be provided where it is needed for self-direction, learning, and task improvement. Control has to be subordinated to achievement.

7. Support Congruence

Goals, reward and support systems that integrate required behaviors have to be consistent. The reward and support systems have to be consistent with goals. Incentives have to be realigned to support team-based work structures. Individual based compensation systems are being modified continually to support many different team structures. Skill-based schemes and gain sharing are foundations for high performance.

8. Design and Human Values

Task and organization design has to be oriented toward improving both the technical and the human components of the organization. The process of design must address the need for variation and meaning in work. It has to take into account the needs for continuous learning, involvement in decision-making, help and support between colleagues, and meaningful relationship between work and outside society, a desirable future. A re-design enterprise will be successful only if it unites a process of organization development, which includes work restructuring combined with a planning process that is both interactive and participatory.

9. Incompletion

Design is a continuous commitment, a reiterative process. A design is a solution, which inevitably has to be changed, therefore it is critical to build learning and change ability into the team. Management has to appreciate that organization design toward high performance is a continuous process. What has to be learned is the process of design because it is a never-ending necessity. Deep in our organizations, people have to learn how to periodically re-fashion their organizational arrangements. Everything falls out of balance and has to be reviewed with an eye toward deciding upon changes necessary. In the early stages learning how to redesign is often more important than the design itself. The design will change over time and learning how to do it is a team life skill.

The basic message is that if you want people to assume responsibility for the work process you have to involve them in the work redesign process itself. Responsibility is the essence of self-management. To accept responsibility people have to define and make decisions. The tendency is for management to hand the operational people an output of redesign thinking done by others, and expect them to work it. Expecting also, the supervisors to supervise the implementation of a design which management has completed. The trick of organizing for real teamwork is getting everyone involved in the total systems improvement.

Practical Advice About Organizing or Reorganizing an Organization and Its Employees

The following article shares advice about preparing for organizing and re-organizing, and then the practical advice to doing any of that.
Organizing or Reorganizing an Organization and Its Employees .

Also see
Organizing (how to arrange resources in organizations so people can work well together)

Additional Guidelines for Organizational Design

Developing Organization Charts

Organization charts (or “org charts” as they affectionately are known) are graphical depictions of the official roles/positions in the organization and their relationship to each other, e.g., the top position and authority in the organization and then what other positions formally report to which other positions throughout the organization. Org charts are very common, especially in organizations with 5 or more people. The following guidelines will help you to understand org charts and how to develop them for your own organization.

This Article is in a Series About Understanding Organizational Structures and Design

This article is the ninth in the series which includes:

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizations

In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

January 18, 2022September 10, 2022

Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations

Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations

Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:

This Article is in a Series About Understanding Organizational Structures and Design

This article is the fourth in the series which includes:

1. What is an Organization?
2. What Makes
Each Organization Unique
3. How They’re the Same: They’re Systems
4. Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations
5. Basic Overview of Organizational Culture
6. Legal Forms and Traditional Structures of Organizations
7. Driving Forces and a New Organizational Paradigm
8. Emerging Nature and New Organizational Structures and Design
9. Basic Guidelines for Organizational Design
10. Wrap
Up: Grasping the Big Picture in Organizations (video)

Sections of This Article Include

What Are Organizational Life Cycles?
Why Are They Important to Understand?
Example of a Simple Organizational Life Cycle Model
Product Life Cycles
Additional Perspectives on Life Cycles

What Are Organizational Life Cycles?

Simply put, organizations are social systems. They’re groups of people organized
around a common purpose. Their activities include similar recurring practices,
for example, strategic planning, business planning, product and service development,
marketing, financial management and evaluations. Each activity usually includes
formally or informally clarifying goals, taking steps toward those goals, deciding
if the goals are being met or not, and adjusting activities to be even more
effective and efficient in reaching the goals. The social systems can be focused
primarily on the entire organization, teams, each product or service, or within
a certain activity. Individuals themselves are systems, needing a clear purpose
and activities to continually work toward that purpose.

Social systems go through common life-cycles ranging from, for example, from
start-up to growth to maturity. For example, as people mature, they begin to
understand more about the world and themselves. Over time, they develop a certain
kind of wisdom that sees them through many of the challenges in life and work.
They learn to plan and to use a certain amount of discipline to carry through
on those plans. They learn to manage themselves. Meanwhile, they go through
infancy, child-hood and early-teenage phases that are characterized by lots
of rapid growth. People in these phases often do whatever it takes just to stay
alive, for example, eating, seeking shelter and sleeping. Early on, many people
tend to make impulsive, highly reactive decisions based on whatever is going
on around them at the moment.

Why Are They Important to Understand?

Start-up organizations, team and internal practices are like this, too. Often,
founders of the organization or program and its various members have to do whatever
is necessary just to stay in business. Leaders make highly reactive, seat-of-the-pants
decisions. They fear taking the time to slow down and do planning.

Experienced leaders have learned to recognize the particular life cycle that
a system is going through. These leaders understand the types of problems faced
during each life cycle. That understanding gives them a sense of perspective
and helps them to decide how to respond to decisions and problems in the workplace
and their lives and the workplace.

That understanding also suggests the priories that they need to soon address
in order to evolve to the next stage. Systems that do not evolve often stagnate
or decline between stages. Symptoms can be unclear priorities, unclear roles,
increasing frustrations and conflict, and people leaving the organization. If
the understanding of the life cycle is not known, then these problems are often
not resolved.

When discerning the particular stage that a system is currently in, it does
not depend on the age of the system. Rather, it depends on the nature of its
current activities. For example, if the activities are mostly unplanned, high
reactive and decisions are made primarily by certain personalities rather than
by plans and policies, then that organization is operating more like an early
stage organization.

Example of a Simple Organizational Life
Cycle Model

Life cycles of social systems are so important to understand that there has
been an increasing number of suggested frameworks and models for life cycles.
Here is one simple model to further enhance your understanding of life cycles.
In this example, the focus is on an organization-wide social system.

Some systems planners consider there to be an additional stage of decline that
is after the maturity stage. That stage recognizes that not all systems are
meant to exist forever. It also helps systems planners to avoid desperately
staying in the maturity stage, lest the system “fails”.

Start-Up Features

Has compelling, exciting vision and purpose
People are motivated by exciting, charismatic leaders
Board is usually a hands-on (working) Board
People are recruited because they’re excited and want to chip in
People chip in wherever they feel they’re needed
Decisions are often reactive and spontaneous. Plans, if developed at all, are often not implemented
Resources (money, facilities, etc.) are continually sought, sometimes in crisis situations
Occasional confusion, frustration and conflicts can exist about who’s doing what, how and when
People begin to talk about the need for more planning and procedures
If there’s strong resistance to change, then crises increase, for example, cash shortages, conflicts and people leaving

Priorities in Growth Stage

Focus is on strengthening internal systems to support growth, while expanding services and markets
Leaders focus on managing change as much as on generating new ideas
Board evolves to more of a policy-Board with continued focus on plans, policies and full participation
Different departments and teams are appropriately coordinated for efficiencies
Planning is regular and systematic, and focused on goals, roles and deadlines
Progress is regularly monitored for status, learning and continuous improvement
Regular and routine activities are proceduralized for reliability and efficiencies
Internal systems are developed to systematically obtain resources, based on plans
Performance management practices are focused on personnel and the organization

Priorities in Maturity Stage

Focus in on sustaining momentum and renewal, especially to avoid entrenching in bureaucracy
Focus is also on creativity and innovation – sometimes to start new ventures, that start new life cycles themselves
Management priorities are especially on succession planning and risk management
More learning is shared with other people and organizations
Leaders seek to successfully duplicate their business model elsewhere
People attend to even longer-range planning, for example, 3-5 years out
Priority continues to be on managing change and transformation
Some organizations consider terminating the organization if its vision is achieved

Product Life Cycles

The recurring activities to plan, develop, implement, evaluate and then adjust
the plans for each product and service is a essentially a systematic recurring
set of activities. It is a system and has a life cycle like many other systems.
The phases in the system might be described by the above simple diagram of phases.

Experienced product managers understand the stages of development of a typical
product or service, and know what the typical traits of each stage are. Thus,
they know what priorities to address to evolve the product or service to maturity.
They understand that problems that can occur if the next stage is not reached.
Consider the following articles.

Product Life Cycle Stages
Product
Life Cycle diagrams
Product life cycle
(Wikipedia)
Best
Practice Report: Product Lifecycle Management
What
is the Product Life Cycle? Definition and Examples
Ultimate
Product Life Cycle Management Guide
Product
Life Cycle Examples
Exploit
the Product Life Cycle

Additional Perspectives on Life Cycles

Organizational
Life Cycles (Wikipedia)
The
Five Phases Organizational Life Cycle
Five
Life Stages of Nonprofit Organizations
Life
Cycles of an Organization
Organizational
Life Cycles (it helps to see different diagrams)
Barbarians to Bureaucrats
Life
Cycle Approach to Strategic Planning (in-depth and dated, but relevant)

Also consider
Systems Thinking,
Systems Tools and Chaos Theory
Entrepreneurship
— Product and Service Development

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizations

In addition to the information on this current page, see the following blogs
which have posts related to organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see
various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the
blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

Library’s
Consulting and Organizational Development Blog
Library’s
Leadership Blog
Library’s
Nonprofit Capacity Building Blog

Related Library Topics

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

Related Library Topics

Recommended Books

January 18, 2022September 10, 2022

What is an Organization?

People Leaning On Wooden Table While Having a Business Meeting

What is an Organization?

Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:

This Article is in a Series About Understanding Organizational Structures and Design

This article is the first in the series which includes:

What is an Organization?
2. What Makes Each Organization Unique
3. How They’re the Same: They’re Systems
4. Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations
5. Basic Overview of Organizational Culture
6. Legal Forms and Traditional Structures of Organizations
7. Driving Forces and a New Organizational Paradigm
8. Emerging Nature and New Organizational Structures and Design
9. Basic Guidelines for Organizational Design
10. Wrap Up: Grasping the Big Picture in Organizations (video)

Sections of This Article Include

Basic Definition
Organization’s Purpose and Priorities
Critical Roles of Leadership and Communications

Basic Definition

Most of us have worked in an organization of people — even a family is a type of organization. The word is so widely used that its meaning can sometimes be lost. The word means a collection of resources that are working together somehow to achieve a common purpose. When we talk about an organization, we are usually referring to a group of people.

Organizations of people come in many forms. They might be a random group of people who spontaneously came together to address a short-term need, such as collecting litter along a certain stretch of road. Or, it might be a carefully collected, aligned and integrated group of people who came together for the long-term to address a long-term need, such as stopping poverty in a certain country.

An overall organization can have a variety of small organizations within it, for example, various departments and teams of people. The way that people work together in an organization depends on a variety of factors, including the values in their culture, the nature of their leadership and types of current needs they are working to address. See What Makes Each Organization Unique.

Let us look at some other definitions of the word “organization” and some more about how an organization works toward a common purpose.

Organization’s Purpose and Priorities

Mission

All of the people in an organization should be working toward a common purpose. That purpose is often referred to as the mission. The mission might be implied to its members or explicitly expressed to them.
When explicitly expressed, it is often in the form of a mission statement. The statement is often reviewed during a process called strategic planning.

Vision

The organization’s vision is an image of what success would look like at some point in the future, both
for the people that the organizations serves and for the organization itself. It can be very inspirational and motivational to explicitly articulate that vision in a statement like the mission statement during strategic planning.

Values

The organization’s values are the overall priorities in the nature of how the organization wants to work
toward its mission. Values can be reflected in how the people in the organization are actually working together. These might be referred to as real or enacted values. Values can also be about how the organization wants it members to work together. These might be referred to as desired values.

Strategic Priorities

These are the overall, most important matters and activities for members to attend to, when working toward the mission. Similar to the mission, vision and values, they might be implied or explicit among members. The priorities might be associated with assignments for who is address which ones and by when. The priorities are often referred as “strategic goals” during a strategic planning process.

Thus, it could seem to be a major challenge when working to lead, manage or improve an organization. Fortunately, there are some things in common to all types of organizations — because they all are systems. We will review more about systems later in this series of articles.

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizations

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics,
available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

January 18, 2022March 29, 2023

Basic Overview of Organizational Culture

Photo Of People Near Cork Board Having a Meeting

Basic Overview of Organizational Culture

Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:

Sections of This Article Include

What is Organizational Culture?
Some Types of Organizational Culture
Understanding the Culture of Your Organization
Influencing the Culture of Your Organization
Additional Resources About Organizational Culture

Also consider

How to Change Organizational Culture

What is Organizational Culture?

Basically, organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organization members and their behaviors. Members of an organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. Culture is one of those terms that’s difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. For example, the culture of a large, for-profit corporation is quite different than that of a hospital which is quite different than that of a university. You can tell the culture of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what they brag about, what members wear, etc. — similar to what you can use to get a feeling about someone’s personality.

Corporate culture can be looked at as a system. Inputs include feedback from, e.g., society, professions, laws, stories, heroes, values on competition or service, etc. The process is based on our assumptions, values and norms, e.g., our values on money, time, facilities, space and people. Outputs or effects of our culture are, e.g., organizational behaviors, technologies, strategies, image, products, services, appearance, etc.

The concept of culture is particularly important when attempting to manage organization-wide change. Practitioners are coming to realize that, despite the best-laid plans, organizational change must include not only changing structures and processes, but also changing the corporate culture as well.

There’s been a great deal of literature generated over the past decade about the concept of organizational culture — particularly in regard to learning how to change organizational culture. Organizational change efforts are rumored to fail the vast majority of the time. Usually, this failure is credited to lack of understanding about the strong role of culture and the role it plays in organizations. That’s one of the reasons that many strategic planners now place as much emphasis on identifying strategic values as they do mission and vision.

Some Types of Organizational Culture

There are different types of culture just like there are different types of personality. Researcher Jeffrey Sonnenfeld identified the following four types of cultures.

Academy Culture

Employees are highly skilled and tend to stay in the organization, while working their way up the ranks. The organization provides a stable environment in which employees can development and exercise their skills. Examples are universities, hospitals, large corporations, etc.

Baseball Team Culture

Employees are “free agents” who have highly prized skills. They are in high demand and can rather easily get jobs elsewhere. This type of culture exists in fast-paced, high-risk organizations, such as investment banking, advertising, etc.

Club Culture

The most important requirement for employees in this culture is to fit into the group. Usually employees start at the bottom and stay with the organization. The organization promotes from within and highly values seniority. Examples are the military, some law firms, etc.

Fortress Culture

Employees don’t know if they’ll be laid off or not. These organizations often undergo massive reorganization. There are many opportunities for those with timely, specialized skills. Examples are savings and loans, large car companies, etc.

Understanding the Culture of Your Organization

Quite often, a leader has a very good sense of the culture of their organization. They just haven’t made that sense conscious to the extent that they can effectively learn from, and lead within, the culture.

Different people in the same organization can have different perceptions of the culture of the organization. This is especially true regarding the different perceptions between the top and bottom levels of the organization. For example, the Chief Executive may view the organization as being highly focused, well organized and even rather formal. On the other hand, the receptionist might view the organization as being confused, disorganized and, sometimes, even rude.

Here are some basic guidelines to help a leader assess the culture of their organization.

Understand some of the major types of cultures. There are a number of research efforts that have produced lists of different types of culture. You can start by reviewing the very short list in the previous subsection, Major Types of Cultures.
Describe the culture of your organization. Consider what you see and hear, not what you feel and think. Answer the following questions.
a. Who seems to be accepted and who doesn’t? What is it about those who are accepted as compared to those who aren’t?
b. What kinds of behaviors get rewarded? For example, getting along? Getting things done? Other behaviors?
c. What does management pay the most attention to? For example, problems? Successes? Crises? Other behaviors?
d. How are decisions made? For example, by one person? Discussion and consensus? Are decisions made at all?

Note that there may not be close alignment between what the organization says it values (for example, creativity, innovation, team-building) as compared to what you’re actually seeing (for example, conformity, individualism). This disparity is rather common in organizations. You might explain this disparity to other leaders in the organization. An ideal time to address this disparity is when developing a values statement during the strategic planning process.

Influencing the Culture of Your Organization

There are four primary ways to influence the culture of an organization.

Emphasize what’s important. This includes widely communicating goals of the organization, posting the mission statement on the wall, talking about accomplishments and repeating what you want to see in the workplace.
Reward employees whose behaviors reflect what’s important.
Discourage behaviors that don’t reflect what’s important. There is no need to punish or cause prolonged discomfort. Rather, you want to dissuade the employee from continuing unwanted behaviors by giving them constructive feedback, verbal warnings, written warnings, or firing them.
Model the behaviors that you want to see in the workplace. This is perhaps the most powerful way to influence behaviors in the workplace. For example, if you want to see more teamwork among your employees, then involve yourself in teams more often.

Cultural change is a significant form of organizational change. Therefore, be sure to review the materials in Guidelines, Methods and Resources for Organizational Change Agents.

Here are several articles with guidelines about changing the culture of an organization.

Cultural Change That Sticks
How to Change Your Culture
What Creates Cultural Changes?
How Do You Change an Organizational Culture?

For many more resources about systematically changing the culture of your organization, see the topic
Guidelines, Methods and Resources for Organizational Change Agents

This Article is in a Series About Understanding Organizational Structures and Design

This article is the fifth in the series which includes:

1. What is an Organization?
2. What Makes Each Organization Unique
3. How They’re the Same: They’re Systems

Additional Resources About Organizational Culture

Also consider

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizational Culture

In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to Organizational Culture. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizations

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

January 18, 2022September 10, 2022

Key Concepts in the Design of an Organization

People Looking On Laptop While Discussing

Key Concepts in the Design of an Organization

Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:

A house should be designed to meet
the needs of the people living in it. Builders of houses must
consider, e.g., the number of people in the house, how much the
owners can afford to pay, etc. The ultimate design of an organization
should be whatever structure best helps the organization to achieve
its goals. The following are the standard concepts in the design of an
organization.

Also consider
Related Library Topics

Key Concepts in Design of Organization

Span of control

– the range of employees who to report to
a managerial position

Authority

– the formally-granted influence of a position
to make decisions, pursue goals and get resources to pursue the
goals; authority in a managerial role may exist only to the extent
that subordinates agree to grant this authority or follow the
orders from that position

Responsibility

– the duty to carry out an assignment or
conduct a certain activity

Delegation

– process
of assigning a task to a subordinate along with the commensurate
responsibility and authority to carry out the task

Chain of command

– the lines of authority in an organization,
who reports to whom

Accountability

– responsibility for the outcome of the process

Line authority

– the
type of authority where managers have formal authority over their
subordinates’ activities (the subordinates are depicted under
the manager on a solid line in the organization chart); departments
directly involved in producing services or products are sometimes
called line departments

Staff departments

– the
type of authority where managers influence line managers through
staff’s specialized advice; departments that support or advise
line departments are called staff departments and include, e.g.,
human resources, legal, finance, etc.

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

Related Library Topics

Recommended Books

January 18, 2022March 23, 2023

Organizational Sustainability

Organizational Sustainability

Organizational sustainability is often misunderstood to mean primarily financial sustainability. That misconception occurs because, when an organization becomes unsustainable, the symptoms of that problem show up in the finances. However, organizational sustainability — or the surviving or even thriving of an organization — depends on much more than effectively managing the organization’s finances. Just like the sustainability of individuals and families, there are many complex and dynamic dimensions that must be sustainable in organizations, as well. However, in an organization, there are some primary dimensions that, if they are managed well, will ensure the sustainability of the organization.

If You’re Looking for the topic of Sustainable Business Development (e.g., “Green” Sustainable Development), then see Sustainable Business Development
Guidelines for accomplishing nonprofit sustainability are included in the books Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development with Nonprofits, Strengthening Nonprofit Performance: A Funder’s Guide to Capacity Building and Coping With Cutbacks: The Nonprofit Guide to Success When Times Are Tight .

Sections of This Topic Include

Primary Dimensions of Organizational Sustainability
Sustainability of For-Profit and Government Organizations
Sustainability of Nonprofit Organizations
Suggestions to Address Current Sustainability Problems

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizational Sustainability

In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to Organizational Sustainability. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

Also consider
Related Library Topics

Primary Dimensions of Organizational Sustainability

1. Strategic Sustainability — Ensure Realistic Vision and Goals

If an organization is trying to do far too much, it will likely not have enough resources, including not enough money to do what it wants to do. One of the most important considerations to have a realistic vision and goals for the organization. If these are not realistic, then many of the other activities in the organization will not be realistic, as well. The solution is not to keep trying to get more money.

2. Product and Program Sustainability — Ensure High-Quality Products, Services and Programs

If your organization does not have high-quality products, services and programs, then customers’ and clients’ participation will eventually decline as will funding. That’s why it’s so important to do a few things very well, rather than a lot of things not so well. The solution is not to keep trying to get more money to offset deficits. The solution is to pick which products, services and programs you can do very well, do them — and keep proving your strong results.

3. Personnel Sustainability — Ensure Personnel Can Effectively and Reliably Perform

If your personnel do not fully understand their jobs or are not resourced to do their jobs, then your products, services and programs will be not be as effective as they could be. As a result, you’ll make less money than you expected or the money you do make will not generate as much profit. Be sure personnel are fully trained and supervised well. Also be sure that, if a member of the organization cannot do his/her job, that someone else can do that job in a timely fashion.

4. Financial Sustainability — Conduct Financial Reserve and Contingency Planning

If the above 3 dimensions are not effectively addressed, then symptoms show up in the finances when there’s not enough money. However, there are two financial practices you should be doing regardless of whether you have enough money or not, and they include:

Achieving a financial reserve — obviously this is done over time and before a financial crises occurs.
Doing contingency planning — plan for what will happen if you get 10% less money than planned for the upcoming year and for what will happen if you get 30% less.

The following sections and links will help you address the above dimensions for your for-profit, nonprofit or government agency.

Avoiding Sustainability Issues in For-Profit and Government Organizations

Strategic

The following links will help ensure that your strategic planning results in realistic visions and goals.

Strategic Planning

In the topic at the above link, be sure to see the following articles:

Also consider
Strategic Planning

Products, Services and Programs

One of the best ways to ensure that these are carefully planned — or reviewed — is to do business planning. (There is often confusion about the different between strategic planning and business planning. Strategic planning is planning for the entire organization. Business planning is focused on a particular product or service.)

Also consider

To Develop and Implement Organizational Sustainability Plans

Avoiding Sustainability Issues in Nonprofit Organizations

Strategic

The following links will help ensure that your strategic planning results in realistic visions and goals.

Strategic Planning

In the topic at the above link, be sure to see the following articles:

Products, Services and Programs

Personnel

Financial

Financial Management (Nonprofit)

If You Resort to Trying to Get More Funds, Then See

Fundraising (Nonprofit)

To Develop and Implement Nonprofit Organizational Sustainability Plans

Suggestions to Address Current Sustainability Problems

If you currently have problems in sustainability, the following links to resources will be helpful. Your most immediate concern now is very likely that of insufficient financial resources. Keep in mind that financial problems are usually a symptom of other causes, which usually can be addressed by following the guidelines in the resources linked from the above sections of this topic. However, for now, it’s very likely most important to address a shortage of financial resources. There are a variety of strategies in the resources from the following links. After addressing the financial issues, you should review the guidelines referenced from the links in the above sections to help your organization to avoid financial crises in the future.

Suggestions for For-Profits

Suggestions for Nonprofits

Many of the problems faced by nonprofits are also faced by for-profits. So it’s useful to review some of the resources in the above suggestions for for-profits.

Additional Library Resources in the Category of Organizational Sustainability and Change

January 18, 2022February 17, 2023

Some Types of Organizational Diagnostic Models

Some Types of Organizational Diagnostic Models

Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:

Sections of this Topic Include:

Critical Role of Organizational Diagnostic Models
Some Types of Diagnostic Models for Organizations

Critical Role of Diagnostic Models in Evaluations

An evaluation could collect a vast range of information. However, unless there is some framework around which to know what information to collect and how to make judgments about that information, the analysis will likely become a very overwhelming and confusing endeavor. This is where a diagnostic model is very useful. A good diagnostic model will:

Suggest some standard of performance about how a high-quality organization should be operating, including about the quality of its overall intended outcomes, practices within the organization and how those practices are integrated with each other. The standards might be, for example, best practices or standards of excellence.
Suggest what types of information need to be collected in order to compare the current performance of the organization with the suggested standard of performance.
Facilitate the comparison of the current performance of the organization to the preferred standard of performance in order to generate recommendations to improve the performance of the organization.

You will select your diagnostic model later on, while you are designing your evaluation plan in the next topic. There are numerous types to choose from.
Some Types of Diagnostic Models for Organizations.

Some Types of Diagnostic Models for Organizations

Well designed models to improve the performance can also be very useful diagnostic models, depending on the reason for using the model and how it is used.

The following descriptions are general and brief. Follow the link to get more information about each of the approaches. There certainly are other approaches than those listed below for a planned, comprehensive approach to increasing organizational performance. It may very well be that the vast majority of approaches used in organizations are highly customized to the nature of the organizations, and therefore not publicized or formalized in management literature.

Balanced Scorecard: Focuses on four indicators, including customer perspective, internal-business processes, learning and growth and financials, to monitor progress toward organization’s strategic goals

Benchmarking: Using standard measurements in a service or industry for comparison to other organizations in order to gain perspective on organizational performance. For example, there are emerging standard benchmarks for universities, hospitals, etc. In and of itself, this is not an overall comprehensive process assured to improve performance, rather the results from benchmark comparisons can be used in more overall processes. Benchmarking is often perceived as a quality initiative.

Business Process Reengineering: Aims to increase performance by radically re-designing the organization’s structures and processes, including by starting over from the ground up.

Quality Management: Focuses on ensuring the highest quality of activities to produce the highest quality of products and services to customers and clients. That includes diagnosing errors in the activities as well as recommendations and actions to avoid those errors.

Cultural Change: Cultural change is a form of organizational transformation, that is, radical and fundamental form of change. Cultural change involves changing the basic values, norms, beliefs, etc., among members of the organization.

Knowledge Management: Focuses on collection and management of critical knowledge in an organization to increase its capacity for achieving results. Knowledge management often includes extensive use of computer technology. In and of itself, this is not an overall comprehensive process assured to improve performance. Its effectiveness toward reaching overall results for the organization depends on how well the enhanced, critical knowledge is applied in the organization.

Learning Organization: Focuses on enhancing organizations systems (including people) to increase an organization’s capacity for performance. Includes extensive use of principles of systems theory. In and of itself, this is not an overall comprehensive process assured to improve performance. Its effectiveness toward reaching overall results for the organization depends on how well the enhanced ability to learn is applied in the organization.

Management by Objectives (MBO): Aims to align goals and subordinate objectives throughout the organization. Ideally, employees get strong input to identifying their objectives, time lines for completion, etc. Includes ongoing tracking and feedback in process to reach objectives. MBO’s are often perceived as a form of planning.

Outcome-Based Evaluation (particularly for nonprofits): Outcomes-based evaluation is increasingly used, particularly by nonprofit organizations, to assess the impact of their services and products on their target communities. The process includes identifying preferred outcomes to accomplish with a certain target market, associate indicators as measures for each of those outcomes and then carry out the measures to assess the extent of outcomes reached.

Program Evaluation: Program evaluation is used for a wide variety of applications, e.g., to increase efficiencies of program processes and thereby cut costs, to assess if program goals were reached or not, to quality programs for accreditation, etc.

Strategic Planning: Organization-wide process to identify strategic direction, including vision, mission, values and overall goals. Direction is pursued by implementing associated action plans, including multi-level goals, objectives, time lines and responsibilities. Strategic planning is, of course, a form of planning.

Systems-Based Model to Diagnose For-Profit Organizations: The model follows a logic model format, and specifies which management functions should be addressed and in which order. It is aligned with this online organizational assessment tool.

Systems-Based Model to Diagnose Nonprofit Organizations: The model follows a logic model format, and specifies which management functions should be addressed and in which order. It is aligned with this online organizational assessment tool.

Total Quality Management (TQM): Set of management practices throughout the organization to ensure the organization consistently meets or exceeds customer requirements. Strong focus on process measurement and controls as means of continuous improvement. TQM is a quality initiative.

NOTE: There are various other approaches that, if used comprehensively with strong focus on achieving organizational results, can be used to increase organizational performance, e.g., Statistical Process Control and Quality Circles.

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizational Performance

In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs that have posts related to organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related resources.

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.