Growing Pains?

Recently we read an article about growing pains and the author states the ten most common organizational ones, which are quite interesting. Since our group needed to teach this module, we found it was published in 1990 and the examples might have been out of date; thus, we tried to look for updated ones in order to make the teaching session more interesting. However, we spent a lot of time searching and it's a pity that little information could be found related to this topic. Most can be looked up on internet is about human's growing pains. Though it has nothing to do with organizational growing pains, it occurs to me that the pains come into existence when facing a transition from one stage to the next no matter it happens to people or companies.

I have worked for a big telecom firm for several years and this article reminds me a lot of the situations as I was working there. For example, people are not aware of what other people are doing, there are too few good managers, most people feel that meetings are a waste of time, and so on. I observed that the most serious problem there is the unclear defined roles and responsibilities. Also, most employees spend a lot of time in meetings which usually are neither well organized nor planned; therefore, they waste a lot of time and do nothing productive to the firm. It makes me wonder that those problems exist not only in a growing organization because my former company is a very stable one. The management team is the one who should be responsible for those pains.

Another interesting point is the ninth organizational growing pain: Some people feel insecure about their place in the firm. I heard my ex-colleague said it is obvious that there is little business in the company for the 3th and 4th quarters of 2008; most employees feel insecure and are trying hard to grab other co-workers' jobs. As we date back the economical history in Taiwan, there has been a great deal of large cutbacks in personnel from several years ago, the telecom industry was no exception. People feel insecure when the company doesn't run well or has no business. This pain does not only exist in the growing organizations, but also in those which are unstable or of little business opportunity.

Reference:
Flemholtz, E. G. (1990). Growing Pains: How to make the transition from an entrepreneurship to a professionally managed firm. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.