Product Description

From start-up enterprise to mature corporation, this latest edition of the best-selling original explores the seven predictable stages of organizational growth. It also identifies what must be accomplished in each stage to ensure continued development and provides practical guidance for implementing management systems. Thoroughly updated to reflect recent business developments, it contains all-new chapters on strategic planning and structure, along with many new company success stories including those of Starbucks, Jamba Juice, PacifiCare, and American Century Investors.

Click hereM to read the introduction to this important book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #411752 in Books
• Published on: 2000-03-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Library Journal
The entrepreneurs who need this book are already successful, experiencing spectacular growth. Of limited use to small business owners, Flamholtz's principles are more helpful for major firms trying to analyze potential or actual problems. Flamholtz's style is erudite, almost textbookish in tone, but he makes a genuine contribution to management literature. He offers a unified prescription for management, integrating ideas on topics ranging from product life cycle to leadership styles to organizational structure. He contrasts and explains entrepreneurial and professional management styles, explaining which is needed when, and why the use of the wrong style has led to the demise of some very large firms. Paul Hawken's Growing a Business (S. & S., 1987) is more popular in approach with more nitty-gritty advice for small businesses. Flamholtz is recommended for management collections.
- Sue McKimm, Cuya hoga Cty. P.L., Cleveland
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"...whose clear analysis, audit tools and real life case studies make it an invaluable complement [to The Essential Guide to Managing a Small Business]..." (Financial Times, 18 September 2003)

Kirk J. Perron, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Jamba Juice Company, December 1, 1999
"A must-read for any entrepreneur, board member, or manager of a company that's evolving from an entrepreneurial to a professionally managed organization. Flamholtz and Randle have created an invaluable framework for guiding all stages of a company's evolution that will help to minimize the many obstacles that all growth companies experience."

Customer Reviews

A Must Read...
This book is a must read for anyone in business. For the entrepreneur, it can be used as a guide. For the more experienced business person, it can be used as a dose of reality. Having just completed my MBA and writing my thesis on this very topic, I only wish I had read this book 6 months earlier.

The authors provide an excellent framework for growing a business along with relevant case studies. And while it may look like a typical text book, it is less theory than most. This is one to be kept for years to come!

Great for beginning CEOs
After 2 successful startups and serving as an executive in three Fortune 500 enterprises, I was doubtful there would be much to learn here. I was surprised to find the book to be rich in insights for both the budding CEO and the experienced enterprise corporate officer. Especially valuable are the maps of where effort needs to be concentrated at various stages of growth and the discussion on the benefits and consequences of different leadership styles. I use the book now to train new corporate leaders.

Easing by understanding the trauma of corporate adolescence
Many entrepreneurs are unprepared for the rigorous organisational demands of rapid growth. As firms mature, the loose, informal management styles that drove them to success become inadequate. Original systems are strained, profits decline, and founders are ousted to make room for more experienced managers.

Drawing on the case studies of recent success stories, the authors show entrepreneurs how to make the successful transition from humble start-up to professionally managed firm without sacrificing the unique spirit that inspired the company in the first place. They provide readers with a framework they can use to evaluate their firm's growth objectively, anticipate problems, pinpoint solutions, and plan strategies that will move their company towards desired goals. They outline the seven predictable stages of organisational growth and identify what must be accomplished in each stage to ensure the company's continued healthy development.

Growing Pains provides the entrepreneur with many proven principles of professional management, offering guidance in such key areas as strategic planning, organisational structure, management development, organisational control, leadership, and corporate culture management. Thoroughly updated to address the realities of today's business environment, this book will help company founders deal with the personal and professional challenges they must confront as they transform their companies into professionally managed firms.

Eric G. Flamholtz is professor of management at UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management and president of Management Systems Consulting Corporation, which he cofounded in 1978. The author of more than one hundred articles and chapters on a variety of management topics, Flamholtz has also published four books. Yvonne Randle is lecturer at UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management's entrepreneurial studies program and vice president of Management Systems Consulting Corporation where she has been a consultant since 1983. She is the author of two books and numerous articles on increasing organisational effectiveness.

See also my review of: MAKING THE CISCO CONNECTION: The Story Behind the Real Internet Superpower David Bunnell with Adam Brate John Wiley & Sons, 2000 ISBN 0-471-35711-1