What Adolescents Can Teach Us About Organizational Lifecycles

First, don’t tell my sixth grader and high school sophomore I am writing this. They are in the life stage where embarrassment is a big deal!  Yesterday, I was catching up with a friend and colleague after many years, and I quipped, “Raising an 11-year-old and a 15-year-old is so very different than the early years. I have shifted from working to keep them alive to enabling them with tools for a lifetime to keep themselves alive and thriving.” I feel this every day – this phase of parenting is so very emotionally exhausting. As I was reflecting on this and an earlier meeting with a young organization going through rapid change, I noted that organizational growth and change have some of the same burdens and obstacles and some of the same opportunities. Below are a few essential lessons from child-rearing that carry over to organizational development.

Building Foundations

Just as with kids and the need to constantly remind them to brush their teeth and make their beds so their body is healthy and their environment is calm – organizations and companies need to do the same thing. The number of times I have encountered an organization that is going at full steam without taking care of some of its infrastructure and then tripping up is too numerous to count. You have to build the muscles before you can rely on them to keep you standing.

Run With It

I try to listen deeply to the kids and spy their emerging interests, and provide them with advice and guidance to chase it – I tell organizations the same thing – if it looks like you are interested in something and you are doing well with it – chase it – go after it and go deep on the parts and places you are already excellent and become more excellent rather than trying to manage 20 different things.

Don’t forget to Sleep

Being an adolescent can be exciting, but carving out time for rest is really important. The same can be said for organizations. You can’t run your workforce into the ground and expect them to produce amazing results over and over. Take care of your people.

Gather the Elders

I always suggest the kids seek out the advice of trusted adults – Love your English teacher? She may have some advice on how to navigate the science problem you are facing. Same for organizations – gather some good brains around you. Working deeply with a neighborhood, make sure you have neighbors guiding you - about to embark on a rapid expansion, gather some finance brains.  

I often return to the work of Susan Kenney Stevens on Nonprofit Lifecycles I studied in graduate school. So many lessons can be taken on the start-up to growth stage – and it is so very similar to tween to teen to young adult.