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  • How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In

  • By: Jim Collins
  • Narrated by: Jim Collins
  • Length: 4 hrs and 40 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (81 ratings)

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How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In cover art

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

By: Jim Collins
Narrated by: Jim Collins
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Publisher's Summary

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.

©2009 Jim Collins (P)2009 Penguin Audio
  • Unabridged Audiobook

Critic Reviews

"A new Jim Collins book is an event... he is tackling 'how the mighty fall'. It is a good moment to ask how and why this happens... Perhaps the subject matter has got to him. Perhaps Collins has matured. Whatever the reason, the tone of this book is a little more measured, and the claims slightly more nuanced, than in his previous blockbusters... Although short, this is an extremely useful book. It cannot tell the complete story of why businesses fail but there are enough sharp insights to make for a thought-provoking read." ( The Financial Times)
"An enjoyable (story), and destined to do well. Collins keeps the pace up, and he�s the master of blending interesting personal details about the protagonists with the big-picture changes their companies are going through. There are plenty of thoughtful analogies, and key insights are conveniently summarised..."( Management Today)
"Collins has packed an exceedingly timely punch with his latest, which looks at how titans crash and burn seemingly from nowhere... the take-home message is that decline is often self-inflicted, and therefore it is possible both to prevent it and to reverse it. This book is bang on the money in terms of message and timing."( The City AM)

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If you're in biz, read.

Good for assessing your business to be sure you stay on top and dont find yourself in the pitfalls of business.

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Excellent listen

A fantastic take on the way in which businesses shoot themselves in the foot, and develop a response to changing environments.

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