The PAEI Management Model, developed by Dr. Ichak Adizes, is a model for categorising managers into one of four roles, Producer, Administrator, Entrepreneur, and Integrator. Adizes asserts that no individual manager can meet all the needs of their organisation or department. He argues that effective management requires a team of leaders who – when working together in harmony – can handle the most complex challenges and issues.
What is the PAEI Model?
Adizes argues four management roles need to be fulfilled to have effective management. He categorises them as follows:
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The Producer: Organisations exist to produce results. Of course, the output will vary from one organisation to the next, but what they produce exists to satisfy customer needs. The Producer is typically very delivery focused. They work long hours to ‘do it now’ and tend to believe that hard work solves everything.
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The Administrator: While the Producer focuses on what to do, The administrator focuses on how things get done. The administrator undertakes activities aimed at getting things organised, planned, scheduled, systematised, and generally under control. They achieve this by capturing the learning curve about how to do things right in processes, procedures, and systems.
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The Entrepreneur: Entrepreneurs embrace change and inspire those around them. They focus on creating new opportunities or responding to threats. Entrepreneurs are more willing to believe in visions and take significant risks while using story-telling and other techniques to bring others along with them.
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The Integrator: Integrators are reliable, trustworthy, warm, and caring. The Integrator role focuses on the development of teams who can make the organisation efficient over the long term. Integrator Managers often develop persistent cultures of mutual trust and mutual respect.
In reality, people do not fall neatly into one of the four roles – they have a mixture of the four roles.
Adizes’ model does not stop with categorising managers into generic roles! He proposes different combinations of the roles are more valuable at different stages in an organisation’s corporate life cycle. By adjusting the weight of each role, the management team can be better ‘geared’ to deal with situations.
Adapted from Adizes Institute: organisational lifecycle model
When can I use the PAEI model?
There are several applications for the PAEI model in the PMO. PMOs tend to follow a lifecycle, much like organisations do. The model can be used to assess the best management roles/styles to adopt, depending on your position in the lifecycle.
The model can also be used to support resource management and resource allocation to projects. Based on the model, we can see that assigning a very Entrepreneurial project manager to a project that is closing down makes little sense – influential administrators are better suited to manage this stage of the lifecycle.
How can I assess how I compare to the PAEI roles?
You can assess how you compare to the PAEI roles by completing a short questionnaire here http://www.labr.net/apps/paei/inventory.php.
How HotPMO uses this in practice
We reach for PAEI most when a PMO’s leadership team is lopsided: too many Producers chasing delivery with no one holding the process together, or an Administrator-heavy team that plans beautifully but never quite ships. Mapping the team against the four roles is a quick, honest way to see where the gaps sit before you hire or restructure. It also helps at handover points, since a PMO standing up a new function needs more Entrepreneur energy than one running a mature, steady-state service. If your PMO’s leadership mix feels unbalanced, that is exactly the kind of gap our PMO consultancy work is built to close.
Where can I find out more about PAEI roles?
You can find out more about Dr. Ichak Adizes and his model at http://adizes.com/