Limits to Growth Archetype

PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR

In each of these structures, the limit gradually becomes more powerful. After its initial boom, the growth mysteriously levels off. The technology company may never recapture its capabilities for developing breakthrough new products or generating rapid growth.

Eventually, growth may slow so much that the reinforcing spiral may turn around and run in reverse. The law firm or consulting firm loses its dominance in its market niche. Before long, morale in the firm has actually started on a downward spiral, caused by the reinforcing circle running in reverse.

Limits to growth structures often frustrate organizational changes that seem to be gaining ground at first, then run out of steam. For example, many change efforts fail, despite making some initial progress. As intended changes start to be implemented, problem solving and results start to improve, which strengthens commitment to the intended changes. But the more successful the changes become, the more threatening they can also become, and those threatened begin to undermine the change implementation. In The Dance of Change fieldbook,5 we identified several specific ways such balancing processes can thwart otherwise promising change initiatives: control-oriented managers who are threatened by new levels of openness and candor; delays in metrics that show costs of changes but take time to show benefits; polarization and competition between converts to a new way of doing things and people trying to conserve mainstream culture; and fragmented management structures that thwart relationship building among different groups of innovators.

As a consequence of the balancing forces, the implementation of desired changes rises for a time—then plateaus and typically declines. Often, the response of the advocates of the disappointing results makes things worse. The more aggressively the advocates try to drive their desired changes, the more people feel threatened and the more resistance arises.

You see similar dynamics with implementing “Just in Time” inventory and other “lean” or “flexible” manufacturing systems, all of which depend on relationships of trust between suppliers and manufacturers. Initial improvements in production flexibility and cost are not sustained. Often, the supplier in these systems eventually demands to be a sole source to offset the risk in supplying the manufacturer overnight. This threatens the manufacturer, who is used to placing multiple orders with different suppliers or playing suppliers off against one another in bidding wars. The manufacturer’s commitment to the new supply system then wavers as will the supplier’s. Both sides may then hedge their risks by returning to multiple suppliers and multiple customers, undermining the trust this JIT arrangement requires.6