In 1990, while preparing for Panthers’ first ever rugby league Grand Final appearance, Roger Cowan read a management article that changed the way he thought about organisations.
The article was Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow, written by American management academic Larry E. Greiner and first published in the Harvard Business Review in 1972. It would become one of the most influential pieces of management writing Cowan ever encountered and the catalyst for a complete reassessment of how Panthers should be managed.
A Different Way of Looking at Growth
Greiner challenged one of the most common assumptions about successful organisations—that growth is simply a matter of becoming bigger.
Instead, he argued that growing organisations pass through a series of distinct developmental stages. Each period of relatively stable growth, which he called an evolutionary phase, eventually reaches a point where the existing structure, management style and systems can no longer cope with the organisation’s increasing size and complexity.
At that point, growth stalls.
Frustrations build.
Old methods begin to fail.
The organisation enters what Greiner described as a revolutionary phase—a period of crisis requiring significant organisational change before growth can continue.
His central message was both simple and powerful:
The practices that create one period of successful growth eventually become the obstacles to the next.
Successful organisations recognise these moments and adapt. Those that fail to change often stagnate or decline.
The Five Stages
Greiner identified five broad stages through which many organisations pass:
- Growth through Creativity – entrepreneurial energy establishes the organisation until stronger leadership becomes necessary.
- Growth through Direction – clearer structures and management systems bring stability but eventually create demands for greater autonomy.
- Growth through Delegation – authority is pushed down through the organisation, creating faster decision-making before coordination problems begin to emerge.
- Growth through Coordination – increasingly formal systems and procedures restore control but, over time, can create excessive bureaucracy or what Greiner called a “red tape” crisis.
- Growth through Collaboration – organisations move beyond rigid structures, relying more on teamwork, flexibility, shared responsibility and cooperation across traditional departmental boundaries.
Greiner stressed that these stages were not rigid rules applying to every organisation. Rather, they described a recurring pattern observed in many growing businesses.
Why This Resonated with Roger Cowan
As Cowan read the article, he came to a stark realisation.
Panthers had already experienced several of the evolutionary and revolutionary cycles Greiner described.
Looking back over twenty-five years, he remembered periods when growth appeared to stall, followed by difficult struggles to overcome new problems. Once solutions had been found, the organisation would enter another period of rapid growth before eventually confronting the next set of challenges.
What had previously seemed like isolated management problems suddenly appeared as part of a much larger pattern.
Most importantly, the conclusion he’d arrived at in 1990 was profound:
The Panthers employing 850 people was not simply a larger version of the Panthers employing 300 people. It had become a fundamentally different organisation.
The management systems that had delivered outstanding results during one phase of growth could not be assumed to work indefinitely. Panthers needed new ways of thinking if it was to continue developing.
A Beginning, Not an Answer
The Greiner article did not provide a blueprint for Panthers’ future.
Rather, it provided a framework for asking better questions.
For him, the issue was ultimately one of organisational unity.
It convinced Cowan that the club needed to rethink almost every aspect of its management philosophy and organisational structure. That realisation triggered an intensive period of reading, research and experimentation as Panthers searched for new ideas capable of supporting its next stage of growth.
Many of the management changes introduced during the early 1990s can be traced back to that moment of discovery.
Looking back years later, Cowan often described reading Greiner’s article as one of the defining moments of his management career—not because it supplied all the answers, but because it fundamentally changed the questions he was asking.
Source Material
For those readers who wish to read the Larry Greiner article (PDF) in full:
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Panthers, Passion & Politics - The Roger Cowan Years 