# Adizes Four Management Styles > *Adizes Four Management Styles* describes four "concern structures" that shape management attention and action: Producing, Administrating, Entrepreneuring, and Integrating. Each is essential but also in tension with the others. The framework suggests that no individual can excel in all four, but diverse teams can work together to balance short-term and long-term goals effectively and efficiently. SEE ALSO: [[Motivation Opportunity Ability (MOA)]] RELATED FUNCTIONS: [[Governance]], [[People Operations]] <div class=iframe-container> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VnvoT1S8BjA" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> ## Producing, Administrating, Entrepreneuring, Integrating (PAEI) Management consultant Ichak Adizes describes “four concern structures” as part of his broader Organizational Lifecycle Theory, which explores how organizations evolve and change over time. The four concern structures represent core ways of making sense and taking action in the organization, all of which are necessary for durable success: **Producing, Administrating, Entrepreneuring, and Integrating (PAEI)**. Each plays a unique role in maintaining the health and balance of an organization over time. ### Overview of the PAEI Framework Adizes’ model suggests that for an organization to thrive, it must effectively balance these four core functions. Every individual, department, or leader within an organization embodies a mix of these roles, though it is rare for one person to excel in all four (since they live in tension with each other). The framework provides insight into organizational strengths and weaknesses, highlighting how an imbalance in these roles – or poor communication between them – can lead to dysfunction. Each role corresponds to one of four quadrants defined by two dimensions: short-term/long-term and effectiveness/efficiency. Here, *effectiveness* means “obtaining results which somebody needs,” and *efficiency* means “conducting activities with minimal waste.” 1. **Producing (P)** - **Focus**: Results and performance (short-term effectiveness) - **Concern**: Delivering outputs and meeting the organization’s primary and immediate goals. - **Description**: The Producing role is concerned with getting things done. It focuses on productivity and achieving tangible outcomes, ensuring that the organization meets its short-term goals and objectives. - **Extreme**: The cartoonish extreme of the Producing role is a "Lone Ranger" – a perpetually busy manager who only cares about short-term results. 1. **Administrating (A)** - **Focus**: Efficiency and systems (short-term efficiency) - **Concern**: Structuring processes, rules, and maintaining control. - **Description**: The Administrating role focuses on organization, structure, and consistency. This role is essential for creating systems, establishing policies, and ensuring processes run smoothly and efficiently. The Administrating role is concerned with compliance, minimizing chaos, and maintaining control through rules and procedures. - **Extreme**: The cartoonish extreme of the Administrating role is a "Bureaucrat" – a manager with hyper focus on proper protocol at the expense of concrete or tangible results. 1. **Entrepreneuring (E)** - **Focus**: Innovation and future opportunities (long-term effectiveness) - **Concern**: Adapting to changes, taking risks, and driving new initiatives. - **Description**: The Entrepreneuring role provides vision and ambition to the organization, focusing on growth, innovation, and adapting to future challenges. This role seeks new opportunities, brings creative thinking to the table, and challenges the status quo. The Entrepreneuring role is essential for strategic direction and is often the source of energy behind expansion and innovation. - **Extreme**: The cartoonish extreme of the Entrepreneuring role is an "Arsonist" – a manager infatuated with an endless stream of bold visions for the future, and a destructive disdain for current practice or short-term progress. 1. **Integrating (I)** - **Focus**: Cohesion and collaboration (long-term efficiency) - **Concern**: Building relationships, fostering teamwork, and aligning internal efforts. - **Description**: The Integrating role ensures that different parts of the organization work together harmoniously. This role is focused on creating a cohesive culture, facilitating communication, and fostering collaboration. The Integrating function prioritizes the human element, aligning people with the organization’s mission and maintaining internal unity. - **Extreme**: The cartoonish extreme of the Integrating role is a "Super Follower" – a manager that avoids conflict or disagreement at all costs, favoring whatever current mood, tone, or expedient consensus is at hand. ![[PAEI_Matrix.png]] ### Balancing the PAEI Roles In any organization, all four roles are critical, though their emphasis might vary depending on the stage of the organization’s lifecycle. A lack of balance between these roles can create challenges: - Too much **P** may lead to burnout and short-term thinking. - Overemphasis on **A** can result in bureaucracy and rigidity. - Excess **E** can create chaos and instability. - Overfocus on **I** might lead to indecisiveness or lack of accountability. In the ideal scenario, an organization balances these roles to meet immediate needs while positioning itself for long-term success. ### PAEI and Organizational Lifecycle Adizes also discusses the dominance and balance of these four roles in various stages of an organization's lifecycle, from inception to maturity to potential decline (see also [[Nonprofit Lifecycle]]). 1. **Courtship Phase: Dreaming the Future** - **Role Emphasis:** Entrepreneur (E) - In this initial phase, the focus is on envisioning what the organization could become. Entrepreneurs drive this stage with their innovative ideas and high aspirations. 2. **Infancy Phase: First Steps into Reality** - **Role Emphasis:** Producer (P) - As the organization begins operations, Producers take charge by turning ideas into tangible products or services. The focus is on achieving initial goals and proving the concept's viability. 3. **Go-Go Phase: Burst of Energy** - **Role Emphasis:** Entrepreneur (E) and Producer (P) - This phase is characterized by rapid growth and exploration of new opportunities. However, there is a risk of over-centralized control, which can stifle growth if not managed properly. 4. **Adolescence: Streamlining for Maturity** - **Role Emphasis:** Administrator (A) - As the organization matures, the focus shifts to organizing and streamlining operations. Administrators play a critical role in introducing formal structures and ensuring efficiency. This phase may involve internal conflicts as new management styles are integrated. 5. **Prime: Balanced Growth** - **Role Emphasis:** All PAEI roles - In this stage, there is a balanced interplay of all four roles, leading to harmonious growth. The organization effectively pursues new ventures while maintaining structured and reliable operations. Integrators ensure collaboration and a healthy organizational culture. 6. **Decline: Aristocracy, Bureaucracy, Recrimination, and Death** - **Role Emphasis:** Imbalance between roles - Adizes describes many stages of decline and fall when the four roles become imbalanced. This post won't explain them in detail, but you can find a full discussion in Adizes' *[Managing Corporate Lifecycles](https://amzn.to/3YlnRxg)*. The PAEI framework emphasizes that organizations must balance these four roles to navigate their lifecycle stages successfully. Each role addresses specific challenges at different phases, ensuring that the organization adapts effectively to internal and external changes. A lack of balance can lead to dysfunction and hinder performance. If a mature organization is not able to balance all roles, it becomes highly vulnerable to losing fitness or fit within a changing world (see graphic below). ![[PAEI_LifeCycle.png]] *IMAGE SOURCE: [Adizes Institute Worldwide](https://www.adizes.com/organizational-lifecycle)* --- ## Video Transcript What if I told you there were four types of managers and that you were probably dominantly one of them? Hi, I'm Andrew Taylor. I'm on the faculty of Arts Management at American University in Washington, DC. And this is ArtsManaged, a series of resources about Arts Management: what it is, how it works, how you can get better at it. In this video, we're exploring the management framework of management consultant and scholar Ichak Adizes. He also calls it a "concern structure" because he tries to describe four dominant concern structures that each kind of manager might bring to their work. And the purpose here is not to suggest there's just four kinds of people in the world or the working world. The purpose is to suggest that each of us brings a dominant concern to the work; a dominant way of paying attention; and a dominant understanding of what it means to be productive in the workplace. Each of these four approaches is essential to a successful and thriving enterprise. But each of them also lives in tension to the three others. So it's quite unusual, in fact probably impossible, for one person to be fully dominant in all four structures. More likely, according to Adizes, you have one dominant structure, and then you have a second you might have learned to be capable in over time. So let's talk about each of them. And you can listen to see which sounds most resonant to you and the energy you bring to your work. Producing has a primary focus on getting things done. It's about immediate and tangible action. It's about checking off the things on your list and adding more things to that list to get done next. The producing energy isn't particularly comfortable with discussion or reflection or abstraction. The goal is to move and to move forward. And to get things into the world. Administrating has a focus not on doing things, but on doing things right. Administrating energy tends to be more quiet and cautious. It is uncomfortable in spaces that are unstructured or improvisational or spontaneous. The administrating energy is really about doing things efficiently, rather than doing things quickly. The Entrepreneuring energy is about looking into the distant future, imagining what might be next and how the world is changing, and how the work will change as well. Entrepreneuring doesn't tend to be interested in today's tasks, but rather tomorrow's possibilities. The Entrepeneuring energy tends to be charismatic and talkative. It draws people to it because it talks about a future that's exciting and new. And finally, Integrating is a focus primarily on people, on the team, the community, on listening to motivations and emotions and energies, on what pulls people together and makes them feel like they're part of a team. So that gives us four primary concern structures: P, A, E, and I. Producing, Administrating, Entrepreneuring, and Integrating. According to Adizes' extreme shorthand, "P's do, A's think, I's listen, E's talk." There's lots to learn and explore about these four ways of being and doing as a manager. And maybe one of them is already speaking to you as a primary concern for you. If not, it might be worth thinking: Where do you go when you're under stress? Where does your attention and energy go when things are going sideways? Do you double down and get the work done that's in front of you? Are you a producing energy? Do you pause and think about what's the better system to manage this process? Rather than getting it done now, let's get it done right? Making you an administrating energy? Do you focus on a distant future and say, Well, maybe what is in front of me now is really not the useful thing. Maybe there's something bold and new and different I should be thinking about? Or is your impulse to check in with others and your team and see how they're doing and what they're doing and how they're finding focus in their own energy in this moment? Another way to explore your own dominant energy is to think about the things in the workplace that really drive you nuts. What are the responses or approaches or people even that lead you to get really frustrated and want to walk out of the room? Often, that's going to be an energy that is contrary to your dominant focus. So it's difficult for you to understand, and it actually stands in the way of you doing the work the way you want to do it. The tensions at work in this framework, according to Adizes, are on one hand, effectiveness and efficiency, and on the other hand, short term and long term. Adizes defines effectiveness as "obtaining results that somebody needs." And he defines efficiency as "conducting activities with minimal waste." So you can imagine that both Producing and Entrepreneuring focus on effectiveness, on doing the right things, while Administrating and Integrating focus on efficiency: doing things right. On the other dimension, you can imagine a short-term and a long-term focus, as well, that would be in tension with each other. For the short term, Producing and Administrating both focus on short term outcomes: either doing the right things or doing things right. However, in the long term, you really need to focus on the distance and how that distance might be achieved over time. Here, the Entrepreneuring energy and the Integrating energy are really important. Entrepreneurs look to the distant future and imagine what might be true next. Integrators tend to think about the community and the people around them and how they might be more coherent, cohesive, and connected in the ways they work together. And these also suggest that each of these energies and, in fact, different combinations of these energies, are essential over the changing lifecycle of any organization or endeavor. And we'll talk about lifecycles in another video. And a final way of exploring these four concern structures or management styles is to think about the extremes. And Adizes describes four cartoonish, unrealistic extremes that really bring the message home. See if any of these resonate with you and your own work, or the people in your organization that drive you nuts. First, the extreme of the Producing energy is the Lone Wolf. This is an individual that moves forward despite others, despite process, despite the visions of the future. They just keep working, and they take all the work and keep it for themselves. The extreme of the Administrating energy is the Bureaucrat, the person who stops everything all the time to make sure everyone is following process and procedure and protocol. The extreme of the Entrepreneuring energy is the Arsonist. They basically set everything on fire all the time, because the current and present need is uninteresting to them. And what matters is bursting that apart and moving to what's next. And finally, the extreme of the Integrating energy is what Adizes called the Super Follower. This is somebody who will move in any in every direction, depending on which way the wind blows, which way the group's moving, which way that they need to move to fit in. So the point of this framework is not to suggest you should excel in every one of the four concern structures. The point is, in fact, to say you can't. You're going to have a dominant energy that you go to when you're stressed, that actually moves you forward and contributes to the work of the organization. And you may have a secondary area that's not quite as strong, but that you've learned over time. But you won't have three and you won't have four. And your purpose therefore is to find and join and find ways of working with a complex team of diverse energies and interests, where together you can get the work of the enterprise done in the short term and the long term, both effectively and efficiently. And you're going to annoy and obstruct each other all along the way. Because these energies conflict with each other. They can't quite live in partnership and harmony all the time. But that's the way the world works. And your goal as a team with different strengths is to make that world work for you and the purpose you have together. --- ## Sources - Adizes, I. (1979). *How to Solve the Mismanagement Crisis*. Homewood, Illinois: Dow Jones-Irwin. - Adizes, I. (1991). *Mastering Change: The Power of Mutual Trust and Respect in Personal Life, Family Life, Business and Society*. Santa Monica, California: Adizes Institute Publications. - Adizes, I. (1999). *Managing Corporate Lifecycles: How and Why Corporations Grow and Die and What to Do About It (Revised Ed.)*. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. - Adizes, I. (2004a). *The Ideal Executive: Why You Cannot Be One and What to Do About It*. Santa Barbara, California: Adizes Institute Publishing. - Adizes, I. (2004b). *Leading the Leaders: How to Enrich Your Style of Management and Handle People Whose Style is Different from Yours*. Santa Barbara, California: Adizes Institute Publishing. - Adizes, I. (2004c). *Management/Mismanagement Styles: How to Identify a Style and What To Do About It*. Santa Barbara, California: Adizes Institute Publishing. - Aldrich, H. E. (1979). *Organizations and Environments*. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. - Andrews, K. R. (1971). *The Concept of Corporate Strategy*. Homewood, Illinois: Dow Jones-Irwin. - Chandler, A. D. (1962). *Strategy and structure: Chapters in the history of American industrial enterprise*. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. - Peters, T. J., & Waterman, R. H. (1982). *In search of excellence: Lessons from America's best-run companies*. New York: Harper & Row. - Szilagyi, A. D., & David M. Schweiger. (1984). “Matching Managers to Strategies: A Review and Suggested Framework”. *The Academy of Management Review*, 9(4), 626-637. - Tichy, N. M. (1982). “Managing change strategically: The technical, political, and cultural keys”. *Organizational Dynamics*, Autumn, 59-80. ## Tags (click to view related pages) #frameworks #functions/people_operations #functions/governance #video