Every leader, at least in their dreams, aims for the ideal company: a properly built structure, a great team, an effective reward system, well-running processes. And, of course, a strong development strategy. Some even manage to get there, after putting in serious effort. But before long, change starts happening, and that carefully assembled picture breaks apart into pieces, and conflict appears. At the core of nearly all of these business problems is disintegration — the thing that makes it so hard to put the pieces back together as a whole. Irina Sotnikova, an organisational development expert, consultant, and co-founder of A.maze.s, explains how Dr. Adizes’s methodology helps companies build a durable skill of integration.

— As we know, the Adizes Institute works with companies in nearly 80 countries, and over recent years the methodology has only kept growing in popularity, especially in Eastern Europe. A great many companies around the world use the Adizes approach and see genuinely visible change as a result. What exactly are these approaches? What’s the real «secret sauce» of the methodology — its key distinguishing features?

The thing is, every business problem is systemic in nature. They come from how companies respond to change, and that response leads to disintegration. And we mean disintegration of everything and everyone: the interests of people, including owners and leaders, as well as business processes, organisational structure, the reward system, employee authority, and individual departments. Large companies, especially fast-growing ones, experience the most disintegration of this kind. And if you look closely at almost any problem, you’ll find it emerged because something that was once whole has come apart into pieces — disintegration in action. And eventually, the business itself becomes disconnected from its own market.

What’s the actual nature of a crisis, or of any difficult moment in the economy? Broadly speaking, all of them happen because the pace of change is faster than usual. And the change is significant enough that a company simply can’t afford to ignore it. If internal disintegration already exists, the company has no energy — or not enough of it — to integrate with the market. So we see the organisation become rigid: trouble implementing change, trouble managing projects, trouble building employee engagement, and so on. The company can’t respond to the situation, and the reason is genuinely simple: the disintegration of the whole.

What «whole» are we talking about? In the Adizes methodology, it consists of four core building blocks.

Disintegration that occurs within these four blocks — and between them — significantly reduces the organisation’s ability to integrate with the market.

It’s a common assumption that people respond to change with fear and distrust. And that’s true. Why? Because people sense that change will disintegrate something whole — something that will then be genuinely hard to put back together. And many have lived through exactly that. We often start improving something, breaking existing connections, and then forget to reconnect those pieces with the rest of the whole. Over time, companies accumulate that kind of experience. Beyond that, things like company size and the speed of its development matter too.

Some might conclude that the answer is to simply not change anything in the company at all. But does that actually work? We can absolutely build perfect business processes, hire highly qualified people, design an effective reward system. It’s entirely possible to build a perfect structure and a perfect strategy. But sooner or later, some change happens — and the whole perfect picture falls apart into pieces all over again, disintegrated once more.

So how do you actually handle this? Say we’ve poured enormous resources into building a successful company. But how does it stay successful and keep developing? The answer is simple: every company needs a durable skill of integration. Think of it as comparable to literacy in an educated person. Disintegration happens — the company integrates again. And on it goes, link by link. So how do you actually build this skill?

Ichak Adizes developed an organisational transformation system made up of 11 stages. Over the course of this transformation, the company builds that durable integration skill.

A company’s first time going through the programme can be difficult, unfamiliar, and fairly long — up to a year or two. But the steps after that come more easily and deliver greater impact.

At the very start, external consultants specially trained in the Adizes methodology help guide companies through it. Later on, employees inside the organisation take ownership of all the relevant techniques, and the company starts driving the change itself, building its integration skill independently. It’s hard to believe, but within a single year a company can change its structure, roll out a new reward system, rework its financial flows, improve management accounting, build a strategy, and resolve personnel issues. And all of this happens at a calm, steady working pace, without conflict and without serious upheaval. Sounds impossible? Now imagine this is also a large company, with a workforce numbering several thousand. It’s genuinely achievable — and there are plenty of real examples of it.

Let me walk through the 11 stages of transformation in more detail.

7–10. The stages that follow are all about improving on the results achieved so far. This includes what’s sometimes called «wringing out» the company — squeezing out everything unnecessary, much like wringing out a damp towel. At this point, the organisation is at the peak of its effectiveness, which makes genuinely outstanding results possible. We also cascade the change downward through these stages — to lower levels, to subsidiary units.

11. In the final stage, we make significant changes to the reward system for key employees. And by this point, we genuinely have the opportunity to build a system that accounts for the interests of every specialist, balancing out any distortions that may have crept in during the change process. It matters that people were told from the very beginning that this was where things were heading.

After going through all 11 stages of transformation — which takes around a year — we start the cycle again. And eventually, over time, the company genuinely acquires this skill, becoming well-trained when it comes to change. There’s a saying that implementing one major change every ten years is practically unbearable. But in our case, where the company is changing constantly, that becomes simply its way of life. No external shift will trigger major upheaval any more — the company adapts quickly and integrates with the market. No crisis will be able to knock it off course.