(92f) Understanding Leadership Challenges in an Aging Organization

Excerpts from the writings of Meg Wheatley, Ichak Adizes, and Daniel Hershey will be presented. The aging organization exhibits characteristics analogous to the lifecycles of humans, evolving from youthful through maturity, to death (if there are no corrective measures taken). The leader/manager faces different challenges, depending on his/her organization's particular lifecycle. In general, as organizations age, there are more overlapping activities, there is more verticality in the structure, more uniform distribution of power, more shadow organizations are developed, and information flow becomes less efficient. In this presentation, the change process in open and closed systems will also be discussed.