The Pursuit of Prime: Maximize Your Company's Success with the Adizes Program
Adizes prefers to be called an organizational therapist; he coaches and heals but does not consult. He established the Adizes Institute in Santa Monica, which grants advanced degrees in organizational therapy, and he has writtenCorporate Life-cycles: How and Why Corporations Grow and Die and What to Do about It(1988). His new book is an elaboration and follow-up on this earlier work. Adizes argues that organizations have definite life cycles, but their death is not inevitable, unlike living creatures, which grow and die. An organization's prime of life ("Prime") is at the peak of its life cycle. Before "Prime" comes courtship, infancy, go-go, and adolescence; after, stability, aristocracy, recrimination, bureaucracy, and death. The stages before "Prime" are characterized by flexibility; after, by control. "Prime" represents the optimal balance between control and flexibility, and Adizes demonstrates how to remain at "Prime" once it is attained and how to return to it from a period of decline. Adizes' program could attract a following among managers looking for remedies.David Rouse