User:Shadizes/Ichak Adizes

Dr. Ichak Adizes is one of the leading organizational management and change experts in the world. For his contribution to management theory and practice, he has been awarded fifteen honorary doctorates, two honorary citizenships, the honorary rank of Major from the Israeli military, was elected a Fellow of the International Academy of Management and was appointed Honorary Scientific Advisor to IBS - Academy of Economics of the Russian Federation. For his contribution to humanity, he was selected by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations (NECO) Foundation to be the recipient of the 2010 Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

Dr. Adizes served as tenured faculty at UCLA, a Visiting Professor at Stanford and on the teaching staff of Columbia University. Today, he is the Founder and President of the Adizes Institute, an international consulting company, which applies the methodology for managing accelerated change for exceptional results that bears his name. Dr. Adizes has consulted to Prime Ministers and members of the cabinet in different countries, to companies from start-up to some of the Fortune one hundred, lectured to over one hundred thousand executive in fifty-two countries and published eleven books, some of them translated to twenty-six languages.

Dr. Adizes lectures in four languages, resides in Santa Barbara California with his family, is a strict vegan in his diet and for relaxation loves folk dancing, plays the accordion and practices meditation.

Personal Life and Education
Ichak Adizes was born on the 22nd of October 1937 in Skopje, Macedonia. His family descends from the Jews that were expelled from Spain in 1492 during the time of the Spanish Inquisition.

In March of 1943, Ichak Adizes and all 7,153 Jews of Macedonia were forced into a concentration camp by Bulgarian Fascists. Ichak was saved, along with his mother, father and paternal grandparents by obtaining Spanish passports and bribing guards. At the beginning of the last century, the Spanish consul to Yugoslavia found out that the Jewish community of Macedonia still spoke 15th century Spanish, Ladino, and seeing them as descendants of Spain, convinced the Spanish government to give them Spanish passports, which were honored by Bulgaria.

The Adizes family escaped to Albania via smugglers by pretending to be Bosnian Muslims escaping a blood revenge. Ichak's father, Soloman, protected his family by successfully pretending to be a medical doctor. More than 50 years later, it was found that the religious leader who hid the Adizes family was aware of their Jewish heritage. A documentary, of this story “I Want to Remember: He Wants to Forget” was made by Israeli television.

In 1948, the Adizes family moved to Israel where Ichak Adizes served in the Army and completed his undergraduate education. In 1963 he came to the United Sates and obtained a doctorate degree in business from Columbia University. From 1967-1982 he served as tenured faculty of UCLA. In 1982 he established the Adizes Institute, a consulting organization with offices worldwide that serves major corporations and governments. He has written and published 12 books, translated into 26 languages and lectured in 48 countries about how to manage change without destructive conflict.

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

Leading an organization through lifecycle transitions is not easy, or obvious. The same methods that produce success in one stage can create failure in the next. Fundamental changes in leadership and management are all required, with an approach that delicately balances the amount of control and flexibility needed for each stage. Leaders who fail to understand what is needed (and not needed) can inhibit the development of their companies or plunge them into premature aging.



The challenges that every organization must overcome at each stage of development first manifest themselves as problems that arise from the growth and success of the company and from external changes in markets, competitors, technology and the general business and political environment. This simple, unavoidable reality leads to the following five important insights about the nature of problems in organizations.

1. Problems are normal and desirable. Problems are the natural result of change. The only place on the lifecycle curve where there are no problems is the place where there is no change, which is Death. If you think that good managers are those whose organizations have no problems, think again. Your reward for successfully resolving the problems that confront you today, is a set of new problems tomorrow that will be larger and more complex. If your company faces a high rate of change in your markets, technology or industry, your challenge is magnified. The faster the rate of change, the faster problems appear and grow.

2. Your role as a leader is not to prevent problems or slow the pace of change. Instead, focus on accelerating your organization's ability to recognize and resolve problems. Your ability to work together as a team and quickly tackle any and all situations, or decide not to, is your ultimate competitive advantage.

3. Some of the problems you face are normal and some are abnormal. Normal problems are those that are expected for a given lifecycle stage. Abnormal problems are those that are not expected (or desirable) in a stage of the lifecycle. Since you will never have enough time or resources to address all the problems you face, focus on abnormal problems. Many normal problems can be ignored since they tend to resolve themselves during the natural course of growth and development.

4. You can drive your organization faster when you know the road ahead. Most of the issues you face are common to all organizations. There is no need for you to reinvent the wheel. You can save a lot of time and effort by thoroughly understanding the nature of all 10 stages in the lifecycle, and knowing what it takes to transition from one stage to the next. If you and your management team share a common understanding of this knowledge before problems arise, it will also help you attack the problems, instead of attacking each other.

5. Prime is the Fountain of Youth for Organizations. One key difference between the lifecycle for human beings versus organizations is that living things inevitably die, while organizations need not. The "age" of a company in terms of its lifecycle is not related to its chronological age, the number of employees, or the size of its assets. Instead, the lifecycle age is defined by the interrelationship between flexibility and control. There is a fountain of youth for organizations called Prime. An organization that is in Prime has achieved a balance between control and flexibility. A Prime organization knows what it is doing, where it is going, and how it will get there. It also enjoys both high growth and high profitability. Once an organization reaches Prime, leadership must work to sustain that position.

Management Styles and the PAEI Code
An organization is well managed when the organization is healthy – and “healthy” is defined as being effective and efficient, both in the short and in the long term.

There are four roles that management must perform – P, A, E, and I - if an organization is going to be well managed. Management can be defined by these four roles,because each one of them is necessary, and together they are sufficient for good management.

Each combination of roles creates a style. If that style is deficient in performing one or more of the roles, it is a mismanagement style. If each role meets at least the threshold needs of the task, it is a management style. Finally, if the (I)ntegration role is performed well in addition to at least one other role, and none of the roles is deficient, it is a leadership style.

Although all four (PAEI) roles are necessary, they are rarely if ever performed by a single individual simultaneously for each decision that an individual has to make. All four roles must be performed – but by several people. For good management, people who act and think differently need to be brought together in a complementary team. In this kind of team, the different styles will generate conflict and miscommunication, which need to be managed.

Author

 * Adizes, I. Industrial Democracy, Yugoslav Style. New York: New York Free Press (1971). Republished by Adizes Institute. Translated and published in Spanish and Japanese
 * Adizes, I. How to Solve the Mismanagement Crisis. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones/ Irwin (1979). Reprints by Adizes Institute. Translated and published in Danish, Swedish, Hebrew, Norwegian, French, Spanish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Farsi, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Serbian, Croatian, and Chinese (mainland and Taiwan).
 * Adizes, I. Mastering Change: The Power of Mutual Trust and Respect in Personal Life, Family Life, Business & Society. Santa Monica, CA: Adizes Institute, 240 pp. (1991). Translated and published in Danish, Hebrew, Norwegian, Swedish, Portuguese, Serbian, Macedonian, Albanian, Slovenian, French (Quebecois), Chinese, and Russian.
 * Adizes, I. Corporate Lifecycles: How and Why Corporations Grow and Die and What To Do About It. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 361 pp. (1988). Translated and published in Danish, Norwegian, Portuguese, French, Serbian, Hungarian, Hebrew, and Chinese (mainland and Taiwan).
 * Adizes, I. Managing Corporate Lifecycles: An updated and expanded edition of Corporate Life Cycles. Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall Press (1999). Additional printings by the Adizes Institute Publications. Translated and published in Portuguese, Serbian, Russian, and Chinese (mainland and Taiwan).
 * Adizes, I. Pursuit of Prime. Santa Monica, CA: Knowledge Exchange (1996). Additional printings by the Adizes Institute Publications. Translated and published in Portuguese, Serbian, Swedish, Chinese, and Russian.
 * Adizes, I. The Ideal Executive: Why You Cannot Be One and What to Do About It. Santa Barbara, CA: The Adizes Institute Publications (2004). Translated and published in Russian, Ukrainian, and Chinese.
 * Adizes, I. Management/Mismanagement Styles: How to Identify a Style and What to Do About It. Santa Barbara, CA: The Adizes Institute Publications (2004). Translated and published in Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Serbian, and Chinese.
 * Adizes, I. Leading the Leaders: How to Enrich Your Style of Management and Handle People Whose Style is Different From Yours. Santa Barbara, CA: The Adizes Institute Publications (2004). Translated and published in Russian and Chinese.
 * Adizes, I. Managing Cultural Organizations published in Serbian
 * Adizes, I. and E. Mann-Borgese, Eds. Self-Management: New Dimensions to Democracy. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC/CLIO (1975). Republished by Adizes Institute.

Awards and Honors

 * Hebrew University Prize for scholarly excellence (1961).
 * Distinguished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, New York (1968),
 * Visiting Fellow, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Santa Barbara, Calif. (1972).
 * Ranked among the Top 30 Leadership Consultants in the United States by Leadership Excellence Magazine (2005-2008).
 * Doctor Honoris Causa, St. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, Macedonia (2005).
 * Doctor Honoris Causa, State University of Management, Moscow (2006).
 * Doctor Honoris Causa, Russian Academy of Economics, Moscow (2007).
 * Doctor Honoris Causa, Sigmundum University, Belgrade (2007).
 * Doctor Honoris Causa, IECD University, Bled, Slovenia (2007).
 * Doctor Honoris Causa, Academy of Finance of the Russain Federation (2007).
 * Elected Academician of the International Academy of Management, (2007).
 * Honorary rank of Major, Israeli Defense Forces (2007).
 * Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Montenengro (2008).
 * Doctor Honoris Causa, International Academy of Business, Almaty, Kazakhstan (2008).
 * Doctor Honoris Causa, IBS University, Vilnius, Lithuania (2008).
 * Ranked among the Top 30 Thought Leaders of America by Leadership Excellence Journal (2008).