The Practice of Professional Consulting

Changes in Client’s Business and Organization Needs

For most of the twentieth century, companies built their success on the principles of stability, order, and control. Stability was achieved by constraining investment, cost controls, formal structures, and conservative performance targets. Slow and steady growth was combined with tight controls and predictable managerial behavior. For a few companies that aspired to national or global success, stability was also achieved by dominating an industry and its markets to become as close to a monopoly as legally possible. In this environment, management’s organizational model of running a business directed change at rational growth in size and increased order and control. Change was often limited to ...