The hidden costs of attachment

Adizes is today recognized, mainly, for the change management methodology that was patented under its name, and which allows huge corporations in the public and private spheres to carry out transformation processes both quickly and effectively, minimizing costs. of these kinds of attempts. In his analysis of the life cycle of corporations, Adizes points to a moment he calls "go-go", in which the company, having overcome the great challenges of its beginnings, begins to obtain the long-awaited success. At that moment, the threat, far from coming from outside the corporation's borders (competitors, bureaucratic obstacles, market positioning, income flow, etc.), comes from the least expected place: its founder.

called “founder's trap” is a product of the almost innate tendency of great men to believe themselves infallible, at the same time that, as reality provides circumstantial evidence to that belief of infallibility, the leader and his work begin to merge in the same entity. The phenomenon expands as the founder's ego accompanies the expansion . At the same time, while the growth of the corporation takes place and the need to delegate decisions, consolidate subordinate commands, generate alternative control systems, train future generations of decision makers, etc., the founder believes that he is losing command of his great work (which at this point is part of himself) and reacts in the opposite way: it concentrates power, it becomes more arbitrary, less predictable and, in its megalomania, generates a type of crisis which the vast majority of organizations seldom successfully overcome.

If the reader was attentive, I am sure that at some point he will have transferred this described phenomenon within the margins of a corporation, to the public sphere. Throughout my professional life as a consultant, I evidenced to a greater or lesser extent this phenomenon so well pointed out by Adizes, both in the business world and in the political sphere, with practically all its components. Those leaders who are not well led or advised in these stages of success and development succumb sooner or later to the siren calls of megalomania, arbitrariness and even paranoia.

A healthy awareness of the life cycles of Corporations, in tandem with personal work that allows successful people to plan their intimate development, is essential. Helping these great leaders understand that what they create and work for at a given time must be slowly released from the hands of their creator just to continue their growth, is key in both the private and public world.

In this last area, the leadership turnover, together with the conscious promotion and training of new generations of drivers, are absolutely essential for the consolidation of the republican system of government and for the health of the Nation.

In this sense, in on the eve of the economic and political crisis that we may be about to face, I wonder how determined will end up being the fact that, after the chants of that "all go" in 2001, the promotion of new figures and leaders, with their concomitant new ideas and opinions, continues to be a great pending account in our national political heritage.