How the Mighty Fall

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, is back with another book. Whereas Good to Great focused on what makes companies stand out, How the Mighty Fall inverts the equation by looking at the prime reasons for companies not making it.

The author tries to apply the same sound formula; i) gather a lot of scientific data, ii) discern the patterns, iii) write a good book about it.

Oh, how Jim Collins must have bewailed his fate when he found out there are many, many more ways to fail than to make it.

Good to Great comes back with solid and applicable advice. This made the book an instant hit among the target audience. And rightly so.

How the Mighty Fall's main contribution to understanding failure is the 5-phased lifecycle of a company:

• Hubris born of success; the company grows and starts to adopt an arrogance stance ("We won, because we are better")
  
• Undisciplined pursuit of more; growth becomes the mainstay and strategy (in business mainly the art of not doing something) is thrown out of the window
  
• Denial of risk and peril; warning indicators of imminent doom are ignored
  
• Grasping for salvation; doom is upon the company and anything which might reverse the situation is tried
  
• Capitulation to irrelevance or death; the company is sold or goes bankrupt
  

In other words, a very generic way of describing failure, which has mainly to do with character and culture. Given that there are so many ways to fail, the author falls back on safe ground by invoking Good to Great lessons. The one addition he makes is what you can read from any biography of a great person, like Lincoln or Churchill -- never give up, never give in.

If you are new to Jim Collins' works, skip this one and honor him by starting with Good to Great instead.