Dr. Ichak Adizes Testimonials

We perceive the world in three different ways: What is going on, what we want to be going on, and what we believe should be going on. What is going on is simple. Right now, you are reading this blog. This is what is going on. But it might cross your mind that what you really want to do is go to the movies and what you should be doing is go to your desk and do some work you are behind on.

When a founder starts a company, profit is a distant dream. If a company is founded solely for the purpose of making profits, the founder is going to be disappointed . There are no profits in a start up and as far as the long run is concerned, it is not promised nor assured. 95% of startup bite the dust. A healthy start-up is one in which the founders started the company because they identified a need in the marketplace that was either not being satisfied at all, or that they believed they could satisfy better than others. With a start-up, the purpose of building a company is to satisfy a need.

The concept called “span of control,” refers to how many people report directly to you in your organization? Usually, this question is relevant for a Go-Go company where, since the start-up stage, everyone in the company reported to the CEO. He or she continues to hold on to this responsibility, even as the company is expanding and growing and changing.

Everything in this world is system. You as a human being, you are a system. A family is a business. A country is and so is business. The globe, planet is a system called an ecosystem. By definition, every system is comprised of subsystems. A company has a marketing subsystem, sales subsystem, production subsystem, financial, human, capital subsystems. A human being has the nervous subsystem, the blood flow subsystem, the respiratory subsystem, etcetera. And a country has the legal subsystem, the economic subsystem, the technological subsystem, the social subsystem.

Healthy Company How and Why?Presentation by Prof. Ichak Adizes to Merge FoundationAll these achievements I could not do if I was not healthy. So, how should we produce profits in the short and the long run? By being healthy. If the organization is not healthy, it cannot produce the profits. Maybe it can produce in the short run, but it will not be sustainable. I started asking myself : "What does it mean to have a healthy company?"

As the leader of the Adizes Institute, I insist that there are no secrets, save for proprietary information pertaining to our clients, which is sacred. What happens inside the Institute has to be totally transparent. This means if Joe comes to me and tells me something about Bill (perhaps something has happened that should not have happened), or he has some criticism of Bill which he puts in an email, I immediately forward that email to Bill—to let him know what Joe said about him.

The question that you assigned to me to deal with is, in general, what's holding developing countries from making the jump and becoming developed? What's holding them back? And specifically, what to do for the Balkan region? I'm not an expert on the subject, but I did work in '91 consulting to the Serbian Prime minister Zelenović. I did work with the Macedonian Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski and President Gligorov and at the time also consulted to Mitsotakis of Greece. And I worked for other countries outside the Balkan. ...

There’s a passage in the Jewish prayer that I never liked. I don’t pronounce it in my prayer. It is the Ata Behartanu, which translates as “You, God, have chosen us as your chosen people,” which could be taken to mean that we are better than anybody else—better than the people we live with, the Gentiles. It always bothered me, this superiority complex. So I always skipped reading it.

Some readers in their commentary asked me if it is the Scandinavian model of socially conscious capitalism. It is better than vulgar capitalism but it is not good enough. The tax rate in these countries discourages economic growth. By the way, at the beginning of the 1970's I was invited by the Prime Minister of Sweden to deliver a presentation on industrial democracy to the parliament. Later I was on stage with Olaf Palme, the future Prime MInister of Sweden. They were exploring what model to use. You can say Germany also has something better than vulgar capitalism. It is called co-determination where unions sit on the board of companies. More integration than the confrontative, adversary relationships the capitalist system fosters.

Children run, jump, and look happy. Old people do not move much and feel cranky. Is there a message? I believe so. It has to do with energy. When we have no energy, we feel tired, moody, unhappy. What gives us energy and what depletes our energy? The answers might tell us what will make us happy or unhappy.