Dr. Ichak Adizes who has been helping companies, global corporations and governments to manage change for 35 years has written more than a dozen books on change management and organisational change over the last thirty years. They have been translated into 26 languages and are sold in millions of copies all over the world. Some of them are considered to represent the foundation of change management and are compulsory reading for management students at the biggest universities around the world.
His latest book entitled In Pursuit of Prime is based on the author’s experience that he gained over the 35 years of work with various organisation in more than 15 countries. He deals with the lifecycle of companies, which the author claims do not necessarily need to follow the lifecycle of living beings that are born, achieve prime and die. Dr. Adizes believes companies can remain in prime indefinitely and can even return to prime from the decline stage. Dr. Adizes uses straightforward and interesting, living language to present the lifecycle of companies, the normal and abnormal problems that occur in individual stages as well as solutions to these problems. Because he uses expressions from everyday life, psychology and widely-known medical terminology, the book appears alive, is easy to remember and is therefore certainly a unique publication on the market of business and management books. The author talks about the courtship between the idea and the future entrepreneur, the company’s infancy, adolescence, prime, ageing and death. He also writes about the stages of affairs and recrimination in the company and manages – by using such colourful language – to capture the essence and lead each entrepreneur towards delving into their own depths and the depths of the company, and finally start healing it. According to the author, organisational health or the stage of prime in a company’s lifecycle is represented by an ideal balance between adaptability and control that serve as help and support to one another. This stage is not a point on the lifecycle curve but rather a state that can be maintained, preserved and regained after the company has already passed it. The author explains what needs to be done from the point of view of management, company structure, strategy, rewards, planning and goals in order to avoid abnormal problems or in order to be able to manage them.
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