Life Cycles

“life cycles”
Non profit management

MPA 545
Organizations evolve naturally
• "Various books, most of them aimed at for-
profit businesses, have documented life
cycle changes in organizations. These tell
us that
• Organizations evolve naturally.
• Organizational leaders have specific roles
in each stage of development.
• Leadership changes are inevitable and
necessary.
• Factors such as age of the organization,
size of the organization, industry in which
the organization is embedded, and
societal interest trigger transitions.
• "Much of this is true for nonprofit organizations,
as well, but their unique culture makes for
variations on the theme.... Armed with the
knowledge of nonprofit life cycle stages, staff,
management, boards, and funders can better
serve their constituencies. Leaders and
organizations that skillfully project future needs,
make decisions proactively, and anticipate
challenges are generally more successful...
• The ability of nonprofit leadership to recognize and
address critical junctures in the life of the organization is
vital to the success of the organization, and ultimately the
nonprofit sector." Quoted from The Five Stages of
Nonprofit Organizations: Where You Are, Where You're
Going and What to Expect When You Get There by Judith
Sharken Simon, with J. Terrance Donovan (St. Paul, MN:
Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, 2001), pp. 1-2.
USING "LIFE CYCLES" AS A METHOD OF
ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ANALYSIS
• A board member, executive director or

management consultant cannot
understand what is happening in a
nonprofit organization simply by analyzing
each management process successively,
as we have been doing in Weeks Three
through Thirteen. A nonprofit organization
is not a static reality.
USING "LIFE CYCLES" AS A METHOD OF
ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ANALYSIS
• It is not operated mechanically. It is

dynamic, changing, either growing or
declining. It is not a living organism exactly
the same as a plant, animal or human
being. But it is made up of human beings
and is constituted by legal, social and
economic contractual agreements between
human beings.
multiple "life cycle" models
• There is an obvious parallel here to the business
management world that is full of analyses of
"business cycles", "entrepreneurial business
cycles", "product life cycles" and similar.
• In my opinion, the current state of nonprofit "life
cycle" analysis is helpful and suggestive, but not
to be seen as complete or definitive. It warrants
attention but not uncritical acceptance. "It" also
needs to be understood as not a single model,
but multiple "life cycle" models.
Early descriptions
• Larry Greiner got a lot of attention in a
1972 Harvard Business Review about the
cycles or states of development for regular
businesses. He identified the key
variables in the for-profit sector as age of
the organization, size, stages of evolution,
stages of revolution and the growth rate of
the industry of the organization.
Early descriptions
• He created a model of five stages of evolution
each punctuated by a revolution, taking the
organization into the next phase. The first stage
was "Growth" with an inevitable crisis in
"Leadership". This phase was basically
entrepreneurial, product-oriented and usually
managed informally. The second stage was
"Direction" where the crisis was around
"Autonomy". The organization developed its
functional systems, became more formal in its
management style and initiated incentives for
motivation.
Early descriptions
• The third stage was "Delegation" with the crisis around issues of
"Control". The work, as it grows, is spread more widely. Profit
centers are initiated. Management becomes more decentralized.
Written communications are more prevalent. The fourth stage was
"Coordination" with the crisis related to the bureaucracy
developed. Company wide controls are needed. Different units
merge into product groups. Decentralization is mixed with
centralization. The fifth stage was "Collaboration" where the crisis
might come from several quarters. Interpersonal communications
become important again to overcome the bureaucracy. Real time
systems also bridge the diverse units.
Early descriptions
• Karl Mathiasen adapted this framework to nonprofits
first in 1982, focusing on "board passages," then on
organizational development. The first stage
in his adaption was described as "Creativity" (driven by
the cause and mission, with informal management by
initiating individuals), followed by a stage of "Direction"
(operations become more efficient, with centralized
direction and the introduction of performance standards
and merit increases), and then a stage of "Delegation"
(market expands and direction has to be decentralized
by delegation;.
Early descriptions
• There is more bottoms up activity and more
autonomy); followed by "Consolidation" (more
attention to quality and the role of line staff;
overall organizational planning is essential). In
the 1998 revision, "Organizational Life Cycles
Revisted," the stages are renamed "Informal",
"Structured", "Decentralized" and
"Consolidated".
Early descriptions
• In the business management world, Ichak Adizes, in
1988, wrote the well received Corporate Life Cycles:
How and Why Corporations Grow and Die and What to
do About It (New York: Prentice Hall, 1988). In the mid-
1990s, Eggers and Leahy, building on Adizes, wrote
about the "Development Dynamics of Entrepreneurial
Companies (Center for Creative Leadership, Issues &
Observations 1994 (vol. 14, no. 1). Their stages are
interesting. They conceptualized a seven stage
development dynamic, with intermittent spurts of
growth and occasional backsliding.
Early descriptions
• Conception- developing a viable product
and customer base;.
• Survival - establishing a market niche,
reaching break-even, but still vulnerable;
• Stabilization - stabilizing the niche and
customer base, eliminating problems that
drain cash, watching the environment for
changes;
Early descriptions
• Growth orientation - developing the
resources, capacity and management
systems for growth;
• Rapid growth - increase comes if the
market is there, cash flow can be managed
along with expense controls. Management
and ownership liable to be separated with
more professionalized management.
Early descriptions
• Maturity - organization has advantages of size,
financial resources, developed systems and
experienced professional staff.
• Decline or Regeneration - the market has
matured; how well can the organization react to
market changes? Will it be a stagnant
bureaucracy, or revitalize? Will it follow customers
or create new customers and new products?
Recent developments and assessment tools in
the nonprofit sector
• Thinking about developmental stages and

life cycles in the nonprofit context was
moved forward significantly, moving into
the new millennium, when Carolyn Curran
wrote a substantive piece on "Managing
Organizational Growth" (2001) for the third
edition of The Nonprofit Management
Handbook (see Resources).
Recent developments and assessment
tools in the nonprofit sector
• She noted that organizations are people and that the
for-profit and not-for-profit models were growing
closer. While not limiting her analysis of
organizational growth to the "life cycles" model, she
did use a five stage developmental model. The
model was not a model for a model's sake; the whole
effort was a kind of self-assessment check-out for
nonprofit organizations. The key variables were on
the vertical axis:
• a) The people in the organization--board,

staff, volunteers;
• b) The nature of the organization's programs
and the extent of outreach and marketing;
• c) The money situation--how much in and out;
• d) The state of administration and whether or
not not the organization had a facility.
• The development stages, on the horizontal axis of the
matrix, were:
• Birth: e.g., everyone does everything; mission drives the
organization; few dollars; few systems; rented or donated
facility.
• Growth, focus on Staff: e.g., paid staff, management by
crisis; define clients; plan for a year; chase grants and raise
funds; set up an office; inconsistent quality.
• Growth, focus on Board: e.g., board takes on governing
responsibilities, works out relationship with executive, deals
with staff burn-out; organization begins to professionalize,
better marketing, better systems; expand the funding base;
begin to build cash reserve; overall more productive.
• Maturity: board and staff have good relationship;
targeted marketing; diversified funding; multiyear
planning, moving from small to major donors; using
technology well; may own their facility
• Recycle, Decline or Terminate: how the organization
deals with turnovers of leadership, resolves conflicts,
revitalizes the mission, keep entrepreneurial spirit,
evaluates self honestly, solidifies relationships with
partners; makes new partners, etc., all determine
whether the organization continues to grow in a healthy
manner or declines, perhaps even to termination.
• Even more recently, two self-help books for
nonprofit managers and organizations have
been been published, almost simultaneously.
The first is The 5 Life Stages of Nonprofit
Organizations by Judith Sharken Simon (see
Resources). In her analysis, she describes the
developmental phases as:
• Imagine and Inspire - the "vision or idea stage";
the big question is: "can this dream be realized?"
• Found and Frame - - the startup and early
development stage; the big question is: how are
we going to pull this off?"
• Ground and Grow - the next stage is building a
system base and growing the activities; the big
question is: "how can we build this to be viable?"
• Produce and Sustain - the high level production
and focus on sustainability stage; the big question
is: "how can the momentum be sustained?"
• Review and Renew - the next stage is the need to
reinvent or reinvigorate the organization; the big
question is: "what do we need to redesign?"
• For each stage, Simon analyses opportunities
and threats, and works out the stage in terms of
implications and changes in activities for--
• Governance;
• Staff Leadership;
• Financing;
• Administrative systems;
• Staffing;
• Products and services; and
• Marketing
• Accompanying the analysis is an
organizational assessment tool ("The
Wilder Nonprofit Life Stage
Assessment") that describes three
charactistic behaviors for each of the five
stages for each of the seven leadership
and management functions (#1-7 above).
• Organizational leaders assess the behaviors in
their organization and find the results mapped
out to see at what level of development are
these seven key functions. Are they all at one
stage, or spread over two or more stages? The
goal, of course, is increased self understanding
and the ability to bring greater balance and
consistency to the organization's overall
development.
Susan Kenney Stevens
• Susan Kenney Stevens, also a management consultant
in Minneasota, published for uses in workshops, at the
same time, a seven step "Lifecycle Capacity
Placement" (See Resources). She describes the
"seven stages of nonprofit capacity" as:
• Idea - "There is no organization only an idea to form
one."
• Start up - "An organization that is in the beginning phase
of operation."
• Growth - "An organization who services are established
inthe marketplace but whose operations are not yet
stabilized."
Susan Kenney Stevens
• Maturity or Established - "an organization that is well established
and operating smoothly."
• Decline - "An organization that is operating smoothly but is
beginning to lose market share."
• Turnaround - "An organization that is losing money, is short of
cash and is in a state of crisis."
• Terminal - An organization that no longer has a reason to exist.“
• The focus is on capacity and marketplace. The consultant and
organization use the information to manage itself better by
analyzing what needs to be done next in each of these stages.
Paul Light
• Most recently, Paul Light, a professor at the
Wagner School of Public Service at New York
University, and fellow at the Brookings
Institution, has written the book, Sustaining
Nonprofit Performance (see Resources) with a
focus also on capacity building. He describes the
stages as "spirals" and emphasizes that an
organization can be moving up or down the
spiral according to shifts in its capacity. Each
stage becomes a "landing" area and he
describes five typical ones:
Paul Light
• The First Landing - The Organic Nonprofit -
that establishes a presence and seeks to
make a difference.
• The Second Landing - The Enterprising

Nonprofit - that begins to impact and looks to
where and how it can expand.
Paul Light
• The Third Landing - The Intentional Nonprofit - that focuses,
specializes, reorganizes, to increase impact.
• The Fourth Landing - The Robust Nonprofit - that endures, insures

against vulnerabilities and looks to its futures.
• The Fifth Landing - The Reflective Nonprofit - that continues to

explore, asking: what kind of legacy will we leave? How can we
lead? Change for the future? How do we manage freedom?
• Light derives his understanding of capacity levels from detailed

research with 25 nonprofit organizations, and invites further
research to help nonprofits find the right strategies to deal with
different levels of capacity needs.
Concluding Reflection
• Think about it. Human beings have size--weight
and height, changing over the years. Height
increases to a point, stays stable a long time,
may decrease. Weight increases over a period
and may stay stable or may increase depending
on lifestyle habits. Organizations have size,
changing over the years: increases in board
size, staff size, number of volunteers, with
possible decreases at any given time.
• Human beings have motor skills,
connected to the multiple systems that
make up their composition: nervous,
skeletal, muscular, respiratory, digestive,
hormone, and so on. These skills can
grow, or atrophy.
• Organizations are built on processes that
transform input into outputs: governing,
planning, market analysis, product or service
development, services delivery, fund
development, financial management, human
resources management, and so on.
Consequently, organizations have internal
capacity that is a reflection of the skills of
individuals and the growth and sophistication of
the management systems that have been put
into place.
• Individuals seek to develop a personal
identity, a purpose and meaning in life.
Nonprofit organizations are build on
mission, vision and values. The
organization seeks its identify
by developing a market niche and a
special image or reputation to its customers
and constituents.
• Individuals acquire things: possessions, clothes, means of
transportation, things for recreation. Nonprofit organizations acquire
resources that are appropriate for the production of its services and
programs. Its personnel need a working environment and the
means of production: capital resources.
• Human beings socialize. Nonprofit organizations build "social
capital" along with physical capital.
• Human beings have crises in their lives, or experience events that
cause major change. Organizations are part of fluctuating
environments. They experience both sudden or slow changes in the
environment. They experience moments or movements that cause
small, almost imperceptible changes, or major change, or even
"organizational transformations".
How does one conceptualize and integrate all
this? How do leaders lead such an organic
process?
• How do governing board members, executive
directors, and senior staff assess and track the
internal capacity, the level of growth and
development of the organization? How do they
track and anticipate or react quickly to changes
in the environment? How do they keep in close
touch with their consumers' needs and wants,
with their contributors' interests and investment
desires, with their constituents' perception of the
organization's reputation and comparative value
in the community?
How does one conceptualize and integrate all
this? How do leaders lead such an organic
process?
• All this activity is constant and interdependent. The
quality of it, the impact of it, the "success" of it, is
intimately tied up with the level of development
and sophistication of the organization. Would that
we could describe it better or even scientifically.
But for the moment, many find it helpful and
insightful to assess where this or that organization
is in terms of its "life cycles" or "stages of
development". Where has it currently "landed"
and it that where we want it to be? And, if not,
what it then to be done next?
READINGS AND RESOURCES
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• THE LIFE CYCLES OF NONPROFIT
ORGANIZATIONS
• Because neither of our regular resource texts
has a section on life cycles or organizational
development as such, and because recent
publications on organizational development are
probably not available to most participants, our
initial resources for the week will be from the
Internet. There we will locate materials that
reflect the leading descriptions of life cycle
patterns in nonprofit organizations.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• The "life cycle" approach or model as a method of
organizational analysis got a boost from a July 1972
Harvard Business Review article by Larry E. Greiner,
"Evolution and revolution as organizations grow". The
article is available in libraries and reprints. The article
was revised and reappeared in the May-June HRB. A
summary of the article can be viewed:
www.hbsp.harvard.edu, after doing a "Search" and
entering the author's name and the first few words of
the article title.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• Greiner's approach was adapted to
nonprofit organizations by Karl Mathiasen
III in several articles over several years.
They are available as "Organizational
Life Cycles Revisited" and "Board
Passages: Three Key Stages in a
Nonprofit Board's Life Cycle" at:
www.managementassistance.org.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• The web site is the home page for The Management
Assistance,a for-profit consulting firm. The articles may be
viewed but not downloaded without obtaining copyright.
Click on the menu on the left for "Boards" and there you
will find "Organizational Life Cycles Revisited" by Karl
Mathiason III, Susan Gross and Nancy Franco. The earlier
article was "Board Passages: Three Key Stages in an
Nonprofit Boards Life Cycle."
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• Another take on life cycle frameworks can
be found at www.managementhelp.org.
Select "Organizations" from the matrix;
then "Basic Overview of Organizational
Life Cycles". The article links to
Mathiasen, summarizes some
organizational theory of Richard Daft, and
provides a very brief summary of Judith
Sharken Simon (see below).
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• From there you can also click to a short related piece
on "Barbarians to Bureaucrats". This is a summary
of some ideas of a book by the same title
by Lawrence Miller. You see another "life-cycle stage"
matrix with various factors or criteria on the horizontal
axis and stages on the vertical axis. By now you
should have the idea.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• Looking at specific types of organizations, there is an
interesting short article on "The growth and
development of nonprofits: Life cycles of small arts
organizations" by Arthur Melville Pearson for the
Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation at:
www.gddf.org/interest/articleDetail.asp?objectID=567
. Pearson adapted and excerpted the article from a
paper by Cora Milhollin, who was an intern at the
Foundation.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• A caveat not to get too literal with life cycle
interpretations can be seen in "Growing Pains"
by Samantha Stainburn for Who Cares
magazine. The article is shared through the
"Nonprofit Genie" at
www.genie.org/op_whocares03.htm. (The
article has been archived, so you will have to
scroll down through a list of many past titles to
find this particular piece. It is not the most
important among the readings.)
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• Four major more recent works, taking the
analysis to new levels of organizational
assessment and detail. have received
substantial attention in the nonprofit sector
but are not available on the internet. There
are several publications, not substantively
available on the Internet. Here are the
bibliographical references and, where
available, something about the book on
the internet.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• "Managing Organizational Growth" by
Carolyn J. Curran, in The Nonprofit
Management Handbook, Third Edition,
edited by Tracy Daniel Connors (New
York: Prentice Hall, 2001), pp 42-79. See
the lecture about content.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• The Five Life Stages of Nonprofit
Organizations: Where You Are, Where
You're Going and What to Expect When
You Get There by Judith Sharken Simon,
with J. Terence Donovan (St. Paul, MN:
Amherst H. Wilder Foundation and
FieldstoneAlliance Publications, 2001).
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• Basic information on the book is at the
web site for Wilder and FieldstoneAlliance:
www.FieldstoneAlliance.org. (To access
the book, click "publishing" at the bottom
of the home page, to go to
FieldstoneAlliance Publishing.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• Use the Search feature, by clicking "title" on the pull
down menue, and by typing in "Five Life Stages".
Under the picture of the book, there is a line "Click for
more information". That will take you to a page where,
by scrolling around, you can see the complete table of
contents, see the bibliography, get information on the
author, or actually complete a FREE online "Nonprofit
Life State Assessment" if you are willing to complete
all the items in the basic survey tool.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• Nonprofit Lifecycles: Stage-Based Wisdom for
Nonprofit Capacity by Susan Kenny Stevens (Long Lake,
MN: Stagewise Enterprises, Inc., 2001; available through:
www.stagewiseenterprises.com). See the lecture for basic
content.
• In 2004, Paul Light of the Brookings Institution, added a
book and article on capacity building, but using a life cycle
type framework. In this instance the book has been partially
summarized and excerpted in a recent journal article,
– The book is Sustaining Nonprofit Performance: The Case for
Capacity Building and the Evidence to Support It by Paul C.
Light (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004).
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
o The article is "The Spirit of Sustainable Excellence"
by Paul C. Light, appearing in The Nonprofit
Quarterly (Winter 2004), 56-64. The article can be
read online by going to: www.nonprofitquarterly.org
, then doing a search for "Paul C. Light, Spirit of..."
The article may be accessed directly at:
www.nonprofitquarterly.org/section/639.htm. See
the lecture for some comments on content.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• In 2005-06, more material has been
appearing as foundations and funders of
nonprofit organization have begun to use
the "life cycles" framework in their
organizational analyses of organizations
seeking funding. Here are several recent
examples and some Internet resources:
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy (April 6, 2006), pp
41-45, has a feature piece, "Getting Over
Growing Pains" by Holly Hall, that discusses the
work of Judith Sharken Simon and Susan Kenny
Stevens, updates the latest work of Ichak
Adizes, and adds a recent title published by
Board source, Navigating the Organizational
Lifecycle: A Capacity-Building Guide for
Nonprofit Leaders, by Paul M. Connolly.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• The web site for the Chronicle is:
www.philanthropy.com. (You may not be
able to access the article, if not a
subscriber to the paper, or not registered.)
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• You can read the Table of Contents and
the two page introduction to the Connolly
booklet (BoardSource, 2006. 101 pp) by
going to the BoardSource web site (http://
www.ncnb.org) and typing in "Life Cycles,
Connolly" in search.
FOR WEEK FOURTEEN
• The Association of Fundraising
Professionals has added a power point
presentation, "The Life Cycle of Nonprofit
Organizations" by John Durel, PhD, and
Anita Nowery Durel, CFRE, on its web site
(15 pp). You can view it by going to:
http://www.afpnet.org/content_documents/LM4.
.

Life Cycles

Загружено:

Сведения о документе

Исходное описание:

Авторское право

Доступные форматы

Поделиться этим документом

Поделиться или встроить документ

Параметры публикации

Этот документ был вам полезен?

Это неприемлемый материал?

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

Life Cycles

Загружено:

Авторское право:

Доступные форматы

“life cycles”

Non profit management

• A board member, executive director or

• It is not operated mechanically. It is

• Thinking about developmental stages and

• a) The people in the organization--board,

• The Second Landing - The Enterprising

• The Fourth Landing - The Robust Nonprofit - that endures, insures

• The Fifth Landing - The Reflective Nonprofit - that continues to

• Light derives his understanding of capacity levels from detailed

Вам также может понравиться