However, if management has encouraged new product development and creative ancillary product development during the maturity phase, the decline phase can be stretched out for a longer period of time, and even reversed with the right management strategies. (HBR, 2003)
The focus in all of these stages is balance. Management must know in which stage the organization is at the moment, and must capitalize on that knowledge. At all times, management must be open with employees and investors with regard to the present stage and the plans to act upon that knowledge. Withholding financials and long-term goals from middle managers and investors does not create an environment in which the organization can successfully work towards increasing profits in the pioneering phase, lengthening the growth phase, managing liberally during the maturity phase to create new markets and hopefully avoiding the decline phase. (Dewar, 216)
Life cycles in organizations are as important for management to understand as are the market and the potential customers and supply chains themselves. Fighting the stage the organization is in, or denying it, does not create a successful venture at all. Instead, managers must acknowledge the stage before they can work to lengthen it or reverse it. For instance, if an organization refuses to acknowledge that it is in the maturity stage, it will fail to create new products or explore new markets, and the same old business model will tire and the decline stage will occur much quicker than earlier thought likely or even possible.
Or, in the pioneering stage, if the management team focuses too much on profit-taking, the growth phase may never be reached. Managers must understand that liquidity will be low and profits perhaps nonexistent or negative during the pioneering phase as new markets are being...
But interestingly, buy-in is a theme that pervades all of the stages. (Black, 42) Although it is most important in the pioneering phase, as mentioned above, buy-in is critical in asking investors and employees to understand and work with the particular life cycle phase the organization is in at that moment. Buy-in may no longer be necessary to justify market presence past the pioneering phase, but it is indeed necessary to institute strong management to the life cycles themselves.
In conclusion, life cycles are critical, and management's job is to understand and the persuade the organization to work with the life cycles, and certainly not against them, for the most efficient creation of a successful business environment.
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