Initially, a venturer or entrepreneur acts as a catalyst and product champion during the birth and
early youth stages of organisational development. As the organisation progresses to early maturity,
the entrepreneur will be supplemented or replaced by professional managers. These people are good
at running an established business and achieving further growth using their expertise in strategy,
organisation and finance.
However, the danger is that the successful organisation becomes unwieldy or complacent in the maturity
stage (see comments in Chapter 1 about the decline of ‘excellent’ firms in the section evaluating the goal
model of effectiveness) and the managers become overly bureaucratic. In other words, the departments
and divisions within the firm become major barriers to effective communication and problem solving,
and the use of fixed rules results in risk aversion and lack of innovation. Stagnation leads to decline, and
reversing this decline will require a Heraclean effort from managers with very special qualities. Cowen
(1984) suggests these Heraclean managers (the term derives from the Greek hero Heracles, better known
as Hercules) fall into two types:
a) skilled seasoned veterans, who see a challenge and know exactly what they are doing (Lee
Iacocca’s work in turning around Chrysler in the USA is given as an example);
b) those who do not know enough about the business to believe ‘it can’t work here’ and turn
it around by ignoring the normal rules (the turnaround of United Airlines by Ed Carlson is
quoted to exemplify this).