How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In
by Jim Collins

Hardcover, 240pp
Jim Collins, May 2009
ISBN-13: 9780977326419

Online price: $15.59
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SYNOPSIS
Decline can be avoided.

Decline can be detected.

Decline can be reversed.

Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course?

In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. Collins' research project — more than four years in duration — uncovered five step-wise stages of decline:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success

Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More

Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril

Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation

Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

By understanding these stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom.

Great companies can stumble, badly and recover.

Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do. But, as Collins' research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover — in some cases, coming back even stronger — even after having crashed into the depths of Stage 4.

Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely within our own hands. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our history or even our staggering defeats along the way. As long as we never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With his bestselling business books Built to Last and Good to Great, Jim Collins uses his research and smart writing to bust management myths and offer important insights about what makes top companies tick.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
Picking up where Good to Great and Built to Last left off, Collins introduces a framework for diagnosing and correcting a company's decline.

Good to Great and Built to Last identified the distinguishing characteristics shared by companies that not only achieved greatness, but also sustained it. In How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins considers the "dark side," offering a perspective on how a fall from greatness can happen — to even the seemingly invincible.

Adapting the very methodology that established Good to Great as a landmark, How the Mighty Fall shows that every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline, but recovery is possible. In some cases, companies emerge stronger — even after having crashed into the depths of a near-catastrophic fall.

Collins presents a framework that will help business leaders and companies identify the "silent creep of impending doom" and swiftly set a correction course. Rigorous in its analysis, surprising in its findings, How the Mighty Fall is an in-depth look at the decline of some of our nation's greatest companies and a useful tool for companies and individuals seeking to avoid such a fate.

Themes from How the Mighty Fall:

• Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you;
• An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside, dangerously on the cusp of a precipitous fall; and
• The signature of the truly great versus the merely successful is not the absence of difficulty, but the ability to come back from setbacks, even cataclysmic catastrophes, stronger than before. . .As long as you never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains.

FROM BARNES & NOBLE
Consider this book Jim Collins's stand-alone trilogy topper to his resilient Good to Great and Built to Last. In How the Mighty Fall, he states what every successful CEO fears: That even the best-built institutions are vulnerable to decline.

The good news is that company leaders and even middle managers can identify the "silent creep of impending doom" and systematically set a viable correction course. In these troubled times, when every business might strengthen its framework, this book provides tools to get through and thrive. Powerful remedies; convincing presentation.