New book by Jim Collins discusses how the mighty fall

HOW THE MIGHTY FALL AND WHY SOME COMPANIES NEVER GIVE IN, Jim Collins, 2009

First, this book is not directly about the crash of so many mighty companies over the past few months. The author, who is recognized for such books as GOOD TO GREAT and BUILT TO LAST has been doing research with his team for the past three years studying what causes some of the great companies to fall. Second, why discuss this book in a community thinking or community building blog? It is my belief that communities are organization not unlike some of those that are studied by the Collins team and that we can learn a great deal from the thinking there academics and researches develop. My thinking about the success of communities or the decline of communities has taken some forward steps with the Collins book.

As an aside, I knew I was going to enjoy this book when the author began with a quote from one of his mentors, Bill Lazier. Early in his career, Collins was told by Lazier one of the keys to effective teaching. Lazier said, "don't try to come up with the right answers; focus on coming up with good questions." One of my continuing goals in teaching is to figure out the 'good questions.'

This book is probably worth several blogs and for this first one, I am going to take the easy way out and give a synopsis of the overview of the material that is covered on the book jacket. It would be Collins' contention that decline can be avoided, that decline can be detected and that decline can be reversed.

According to this book, the Collins researchers came up with the following "five step-wise stages of decline."
1 -- Hubris Born of Success 2 -- Undisciplined pursuit of More
3 -- Denial of Risk and Peril 4 -- Grasping for Salvation
5 -- Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death (page 24)

A reason I am a fan of this book is a statement that Collins makes on page 25, which is very much a philosophy of leadership or management or the combination of both. It is a statement that we have more control of the destiny of our organizations than we often want to admit. It is a statement that says people within an organization can make a difference. "Great companies can stumble, badly, and recover. While you can't come back from Stage 5, you can tumble into the grim depths of Stage 4 and climb out. Most companies eventually fail and we cannot deny this fact. Yet our research indicates that organization decline is largely self-inflicted and recovery largely within our own control." Page 25

This is a relatively short book of 123 regular pages with seven extensive appendices and extensive notes.