How the Mighty Fall presents the hope that leaders can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves in "bad" or "falling" situations, they know how to reverse their course—in part by understanding the five step-wise stages of decline uncovered in the four-year research project behind this book.
The shape of this book : FIVE STAGES OF DECLINE
Each chapter goes into a diffrent stage , talking and analyzing Jim Collin's discoveries and research on how a company starts and then the path it takes when "falling"
image from getabstract.com
We beging in chapter 1 , "STAGE 1: HUBRIS BORN OF SUCCESS" , this goes into talking about how great enterprisers can become insulted by success and how they carry enterprise forward.
" Stage 1 kicks in when people become arrogant, they losse sight on the factors that created it's success in the first place " , Jim Collins goes into talking about leaders that he has studied and how the best always understand the factors that made them successful they don't go around presuming but they get the job done and in a better and almost , if not perfect way.
Chapter 2 , "STAGE 2: UNDISCIPLINED PURSUIT OF MORE" , from thinking that they are great and that they can do anything stage 2 walks in. Now stage 2 consists on and talk about how an organization grows beyond its ability to fill its key seats with the right people, it has set itself up for a fall. When a company does this , it signs itself for discontinuous leaps into areas in which you have no burning passion ; Investing heavily in new arenas where you cannot attain distinctive capability,launching headlong into activities that do not fit with your economic or resource engine and neglecting your core business while you leap after exciting new adventures , all of these examples are
undisciplined and take your company down into a hole , falling and making the mighty fall.
Chapter 3 , "STAGE 3: DENIAL OF RISK AND PERIL" , As companies move into Stage 3, internal warning signs begin to mount, yet external results remain strong enough to "explain away" disturbing data or to suggest that the difficulties are "temporary" or "cyclic" or "not that bad," and "nothing is fundamentally wrong. The ones in power starts to blame external factors and don't take responsability
Chapter 4 , "STAGE 4: GRASPING FOR SALVATION" , this stage comes after stage 3 , and to get out of it you will need a character and a group, character is the "savior". This savior has to be a visionary leader, with a bold but untested strategy, has to provide a radical transformation, and has to "change the game". Now some leaders can not be capacitaded and might not fullfill the job and might say things like "Me and my team provided and did all we could, fired every shot we had, and we still unfortunatly have fallen". This chapter concludes that the leader has fail to see that leaders atop companies in the late stages of decline need to get back to a calm, clear-headed, and focused approach.
Chapter 5 , "STAGE 5: CAPITULATION TO IRRELEVANCE OR DEATH" , this sounds complicated but the idea is simple and very interesting. Leaders abandon all hope of building a great future. In some cases the company's leader just sells out; in other cases the institution atrophies into utter insignificance; and in the most extreme cases the enterprise simply dies outright.
