It might seem surprising but many a times organizations behave quite similarly to humans in terms of their attributes during different stages of their life cycle. The evolution of an organization is quite similar to that of a human (in single life time).
Early stage – We know that small companies, startups are nimble, flexible and innovative. They bubble with energy, creativity and experimentation. They lack hierarchies and try to operate at least possible cost.
The child as well, is bubbling with energy, looks things from a learning perspective, show her creativity through things they do and learn (and grow) at a rapid pace.
Adult stage – As the organizations grow bigger, most of the times, these attributes start changing. Organizations get bloated with hierarchies, redundancies. Creativity and innovation are no longer the key drivers. Managers are more concerned with ‘playing safe’, taking lesser risks and getting promoted. Organizational politics increases proportionally. Growth can become slow, priorities change and retaining quality talents might become a challenge.
The human adult usually gets more rigid in her views as she grows up. She gets more influenced by her continuous learning, biases, perceptions formed through a variety of sources including friends, family, books, internet etc. She gets more risk averse as her priorities change in life. Entangled in maintaining a family and/or other chores, creativity and innovation may take a hit. Becoming wiser may lead to more politics with colleagues, friends etc.
Old Age –Organizations die due to multiple reasons: internal factors such as frauds, bankruptcies, competitors may kill them, changes in market, technology, ecosystem, customer segments and regulations etc.
Similar things happens with humans. They may get die by internal diseases, externally by our enemies, accidents or natural death.
I think this co-relation arises from the fact that organizations are the creations of human race. It is run by people, their emotions and their minds. And this causes the similar things getting implanted in the organization’s DNA as well.