Barbarians to Bureaucrats: Corporate Life Cycle Strategies: Corporate Life Cycle Strategies

Excellent book. With so many "here's what's wrong with your company" books available, this is one of the best. Not only does the author suggest what's wrong...i.e., which part of the life cycle is your company in, he tells you how to do something about it.If I'd only been able to read just one book, I am glad I choose this one.

It's not necessarily that as a company grows from the garage into the boardroom that bad things happen . . . it's that some things are inevitable and are a function of growth.This book sumarizes the multiple facets involved in such growth and allows the reader to compare the growth cycle of companies at varying stages. It's impact on people, org behavior, culture, awareness and other areas that the "garage shop" does not need to consider at early stages. It's a key read and assessment as companies find themselves in transition from a heavily entrepreneurial spirit to a more entrenched corporate being and notes many of the patterns such growth requires. Read between the lines and you may find companies who are currently faltering because of a lack of transition mindset to allow them to sustain managed growth or the new "size." Overall, it's a great academic read.

By comparing the lifecycles of corporations to those of civilizations, this book helps to explain how all sorts of organizations, not just corporations, can become "sick" through bureaucracy and poor leadership. This book helped me to understand why there is so much institutional opposition to correcting even localized corruption and dissolution in a large, bureaucratic GOVERNMENT institution. It helped save my sanity. I with the author would write a similar book dealing with governmental organizations. Another book which may help if you are trying to "fight city hall" is Stanley Milgram's Obedience to Authority.

An interesting book about the different life cycles a company goes through as it grows, matures and declines. This book may help you understand that giant corporation you are trying to partner with while trying to avoid being squished by them.

Excellent summary of identifying, working with, and maneuvering around the types of executives that inhabit today's corporate environment. With valid parallels drawn to both business and world history, this book helps the reader place themselves and those with whom they work into personality types, that eventually create a corporate personality. More importantly, the book outlines the progression/regression characteristics and tools for moving from one personality type to another (either personally, or as a business), or enhancing one type with characteristics from another.Well worth reading for anyone in middle management, and required understanding for top executives.