You are the top managers of a rapidly growing company that has been having great success in developing websites for large Fortune 500 companies. Currently, you employ over 150 highly skilled and qualified programmers, and to date you have operated with a loose, organic operating structure that has given them considerable autonomy. Although this has worked, you are now experiencing problems. Performance is dropping because your company is fragmenting into different self-contained teams that are not cooperating and not learning from one another. You have decided that somehow you need to become more bureaucratic or mechanistic, but you recognize and wish to keep all the advantages of your organic operating approach. You are meeting to discuss how to make this transition.

Question:

1. What kind of crisis are you experiencing according to Greiner’s model?

2. What kind of changes will you make to your operating structure to solve this crisis, and what will be the problems associated with implementing these changes?

3. Think as if you are part of the management of this company. What would you do and why?