Strategy
Growth and crisis (Greiner)
the diagram below Growth and crisis model
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Growth and crisis (Greiner) vs Organisational growth model (Greiner)
The corpus marks this as a duplicate or close editorial overlap. Use the comparison to preserve provenance and decide which public article treatment is the better starting point.
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Organisational behaviour
Organisational growth model (Greiner)
Greiner’s growth model helps to identify the root cause of problems that a fast-growing organisation is likely to encounter, and makes it possible to anticipate them.
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Use this when.
Use it when growth is straining the organisation’s existing leadership, structure or coordination practices, and a transition could become a crisis.
Use the model when growth is exposing unclear authority, slow decisions, overloaded founders, fragmented business units or excessive process.
Extracted signals
Strengths, limits, and pitfalls.
Growth and crisis (Greiner)
- Identify the capability that the next phase requires before changing the organisation chart. Decision rights, leadership behaviour, information and incentives must reinforce one another.
- Diagnose the dominant management logic rather than assigning the business a label solely by age or headcount. Which practices currently enable growth? Where are they generating friction? Does the pattern resemble one of Greiner’s transition tensions, and would the practices associated with the next phase address the actual cause?
- Look for observable warning signals: decisions bottlenecking at the top, inconsistent local choices, procedures obstructing frontline work, meetings displacing customer attention, perceived unfairness in rewards or rising unwanted turnover. Validate the diagnosis through data and conversations across levels.
Watch for
- Do not treat the sequence as a law of organisational development. Firms can combine phases, skip patterns or face several tensions at once; use evidence to test the model’s fit.
Organisational growth model (Greiner)
- Identify the management practice that previously enabled growth but now constrains it. That transition point is more actionable than assigning the organisation a phase label.
- Work through the phases and compare their symptoms with evidence from your organisation. Look at decision delays, spans of control, employee discretion, cross unit conflict, customer responsiveness and the amount of management effort consumed by coordination.
Watch for
- Do not treat the sequence as inevitable or the suggested response as a prescription. Organisations can skip, combine or revisit phases, and similar symptoms can have different causes.
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Application bridge
Related templates.
Program Communications Management PlanProgram Communications Management Plan Purpose. Use this plan to determine which stakeholders need which programme information, at what level of detail, when, through which method and from which accountable sender. It operationalises the communications strategy and stakeholder engagement plan across cultural, organisational and expertise boundaries. Application. Develop the plan early and refine iProgram Stakeholder Engagement PlanProgram Stakeholder Engagement Plan Purpose. Use this plan to define how the programme will understand stakeholder expectations, address legitimate concerns and sustain the participation needed to deliver and maintain benefits. It builds on organisational strategy, the business case, programme charter, stakeholder register and stakeholder inventory. Application. Stakeholder engagement is not a camBenefits Realization PlanBenefits Realization Plan Purpose. Use this plan to define how the programme will convert component outputs into measurable organizational value. It identifies the intended benefits, their relationship to programme outcomes, the evidence used to assess them, the people accountable for them and the actions needed to transition and sustain them. Application. Develop the plan early, include it withinBenefits Realization ReportBenefits Realization Report Purpose. Use this report to show which programme benefits were realised during a defined period, which expected benefits were delayed or missed, and which new benefits have emerged. Each entry should trace to the business case and benefits-realisation plan so decision-makers can distinguish delivered value from completed activity. Application. Benefits become meaningful