The Greiner Model Explained

Any successful company will grow, hopefully. We will see growth in revenue, staff, production and footprint. All these come with challenges and issues that management needs to be aware of and mitigate as they arise. For some, these are areas of huge challenges as they face the issues of letting go of control and allowing growth to happen.

Fortunately for us, Larry Greiner developed his organisational growth model and published an article entitled Evolution and Revolution As Organisations Grow in the Harvard Business Review in 1972. This model identifies five phases in organisational growth — creativity, direction, delegation, coordination and collaboration, followed by a particular crisis and management problems. The framework shows the different phases a company goes through to achieve growth and the different types of crises that may occur during those milestones.

Each of these growth phases eventually leads to a crisis point that requires leadership intervention and change to continue developing. Greiner recognised that companies suffer growing pains and developed a model that helps anticipate the problems so leaders can prepare accordingly. Understanding your organisation’s current stage enables better strategic planning and crisis management.

Now, trying to assess your own business growth stage is all but impossible, simply because we as leaders are often the cause of the issue, or we are too close to the facts to see or understand them.

Having a Coach is highly recommended for this to help assess, plan and navigate the crisis point with confidence using proven tools and methodology. This allows for a smooth passage from one growth phase to the next.

Here is a simple and fun assessment that will help you begin, not assess where your company may be: http://bit.ly/4m9RI69