4 ways of organizing and ways of leadership in each of them

The media company’s CEO, Darren, saw everything correctly on paper.
The team wanted to accelerate work, involve more people, and expand capabilities. The market was heating up, competitors were moving ahead. But something inside him resisted.

That feeling is often a signal that the organization’s real “season” doesn’t match the team’s ambitions. If you try to move at a summer pace when the company is actually in its spring or autumn phase, a management mistake becomes inevitable.

Below is a practical model describing the four “seasons” of an organization — their signs, main decisions, and transition rules. The goal is simple: to understand which season you’re in now and how to lead so that growth is sustainable, not short-lived.

The Seasons Model

An organization’s life can be seen as spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Each season has its own rhythm, decision logic, risks, and leadership style.

Spring — exploration, experimentation, fast learning

In spring, market knowledge is incomplete, the customer problem is not yet clearly defined, and revenue patterns are unstable. The priority is to run experiments — with low costs and short cycles.
The leader’s role is to bring the idea “closer to the ground”: direct contact with customers, quick feedback, and constant testing of assumptions.

Large hires, heavy processes, and major investments are dangerous at this stage because they reduce agility. The right question here is: “How can we learn faster what really works?”
When the speed of learning surpasses the rate of fuel consumption, spring gradually turns into summer.

Summer — scaling, building systems, stabilizing quality

In summer, demand is already validated, the value proposition is repeatable, and sales channels start to stabilize.
The main danger is chaotic growth — teams burn out, and mistakes become costly.

The leader’s role is to set the rhythm: clear priorities, defined lines of responsibility, and a system of metrics visible to everyone.
It’s also crucial to develop middle managers and establish learning standards so that new people maintain the same level of quality.
This is the right time to introduce support tools and procedures, but beware of “bureaucratic freezing,” which can stifle innovation.

Autumn — optimization, portfolio review, new seeding

In autumn, revenue becomes more predictable, but growth momentum slows down, and competitors copy quickly.
This is the time to clean up the portfolio — abandon initiatives that don’t deliver proportional value and redirect freed-up resources toward new “seeds” to be ready for the next spring.

The leader’s role is to balance efficiency and innovation.
It’s essential to deepen collaboration with customers — to understand which new needs are emerging — and to create an internal “incubator” where teams can experiment without disrupting the core business.

Winter — clarification, restructuring, strengthening the foundation

Winter can arrive due to market shocks, flawed strategy, or an exhausted business model.
Its signs are declining revenues, accumulated costs weighing heavily, rising debt, and team fatigue.

The leader’s role is difficult but clear: quickly define what to keep, what to close, and what to sell.
It’s time to reshape the value proposition, reduce complexity, renegotiate contracts, and rebuild the team — while maintaining trust and open communication.
Winter is also an opportunity to clean the system from excess and lay a solid foundation for the next spring.

The Wrong-Season Syndrome

Many companies get stuck when they live in one season but make decisions according to another.
Hiring heavily in spring (as if it’s summer) leads to uncontrollable expenses.
Experimenting chaotically in summer (as if it’s spring) ruins quality.
Accelerating in autumn (as if it’s still summer) creates unnecessary complexity.
Acting like it’s summer in winter leads to delayed and painful downsizing.

The leader’s first responsibility is to correctly name the situation.

What Darren Was Feeling

Darren felt the market’s “heat,” but he also saw internal signals: recurring mistakes, unfinished processes, overloaded middle managers, and irregular customer feedback.
This combination usually points to late spring or early summer — when stable processes haven’t yet been built.
His inner resistance was a healthy signal: the foundation must be strengthened before increasing speed.

How to Identify Which Season You’re In

Look at a few simple but deep dimensions:

• Market signals: Is demand repeatable, or are you still searching for product–market fit?

• Financial rhythm: Are revenues predictable or sporadic?

• Team energy: Are people creative and learning, or struggling under weight and fatigue?

• Process flexibility: Do you have clear, visible rules that enable quick decisions, or does everything depend on a few key individuals?

When this picture becomes clear, the season reveals itself.

How to Lead Through Transitions

Transitions between seasons are dangerous because both mindset and methods must change at once.

• From spring to summer: Redefine responsibilities, create a visible metrics dashboard for the team, and establish a learning mechanism so newcomers quickly reach required quality.

• From summer to autumn: Regularly review initiatives, cut what doesn’t deliver balanced value, and keep a space for experimentation to fuel the next wave of innovation.

• From autumn to winter: Prioritize protecting cash flow, sensibly revising contracts, and clearly communicating your core value — so customers understand why they continue choosing you.

• From winter to spring: Build a small, agile team that starts exploring new customer pains again.

What Darren Should Do

In the media industry, market “heat” is often deceptive: audience numbers may grow while the revenue model remains unstable.
For Darren, the wiser step is to strengthen the foundation first.

He should define three clear priorities for the upcoming period:

1. Clarify content formats,

2. Establish a repeatable sales channel,

3. Organize production processes.

For each area, appoint a responsible person, set measurable outcomes, and maintain a rhythm of short weekly reviews.
At the same time, create a “small experiment garden” — one or two new formats with clear hypotheses, limited budgets, and short trial cycles.
Once this base is stable, it will make sense to expand in people and spending.

Conclusion — Three Rules for a Leader

1. Name the season aloud so the team sees the same picture.

2. Match the pace and style of decisions to the current season: in spring — learn, in summer — organize, in autumn — optimize, in winter — simplify.

3. Protect the environment of trust: people must understand not only what you’re doing but also why it’s the right thing to do now.

These three principles turn Darren’s inner feeling into a conscious leadership step and reduce the risk of the wrong-season syndrome.

*The article was also prepared using data from AI․

The article is based on the analysis of the Harvard Business Review