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.

This book marries the several elements: a given text (1 Samuel), a focal character (King Saul), a spacious and creative theorist (Mikhail Bakhtin), a historical context (the collapse of monarchic Israel and the moment for return. The dilemma for the exile community is to return with royal leadership or without it); a reading challenge is: can a character be a cipher for a corporate experience (Saul represent the whole monarchic experience)? The author argues that the narrative of 1 Samuel may be read as a riddle propounding the complex story of Israel/Judah's experience with kings as an instruction for those pondering leadership choices in the sixth century. The work is an extended reflection on what went wrong with kings and why new leadership must be attempted. The extended riddle of Saul works to show how the life of the king is fundamentally destructive, not because any is malicious but because of many factors of weakness and inadequacy that will be familiar to readers.

King Jackson, a high school phenom turned NBA basketball superstar is on a downward spiral. The only son of Donald and Naomi Jackson, who perfectly planned every step of his life from his junior year in high school, now, finds himself in situations he can't buy himself out of. With the help of his conniving mother, together they have alienated everyone in their path, even each other at some point, but now he is forced to decide if he should trust her and let her back into his life during his darkest hour. His two sisters, Dana and Lena, have lived in the shadow of his success throughout his career and now decide that they have had enough of him and go their own way even if it is in his time of need.King's family is turned completely upside down when he falls in love with a young Spanish girl named Neila Cruz, and marries her way to quickly for their taste. All the while never telling his high school sweetheart Danielle that their relationship was over. They voice their outrage every chance they get until King reaches his breaking point and disowns his family to protect his new wife, while Danielle tries every way she knows how to contact King and get closure. King's mother, who never thought her husband Donald could ever take care of her the way her wealthy son could, sets her plan in motion to win back King and his money that she had become so accustomed to, not knowing that at the same time someone close to her is plotting her destruction to finally rid their self of Naomi and her greedy and conniving ways. One night of cheating, King's ego and a family secret will set in motion a chain of events that will change his life forever. He will quickly learn that all the people he disowned on the way up he will have to face on his path to destruction and realize that they are not to quick to give him a second chance...

"The manager's job is to make human strength effective and human weakness irrelevant." —Peter F. Drucker "I am often asked by management students and middle managers, 'How can we make the changes you talk about if we are not at the top?' I reply, 'You can begin where you are, whatever your job. You can bring new insight, new leadership, to your team, your group." —Frances Hesselbein "As they say, 'None of us is as smart as all of us.' That is good because the problems we face are too complex to be solved by any one person or any one discipline." —Warren Bennis These are just a few of the insights collected in Leader to Leader, an inspiring examination of mission, leadership, values, innovation, building collaborations, shaping effective institutions, and creating community. Management pioneer Peter F. Drucker, Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher, best-selling authors Warren Bennis, Stephen R. Covey, and Charles Handy, Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin, Harvard professors Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Regina Herzlinger, and learning organization expert Peter Senge are among those who share their knowledge and experience in this essential resource. Their essays will spark ideas, open doors, and inspire all those who face the challenge of leading in an ever-changing environment. For a reader's guide, see www.leaderbooks.org

This twelve-volume John MacArthur Old Testament Study Guide series provides intriguing examinations of the Old Testament. Each guide looks at a portion of Scripture from three perspectives---historical studies, character studies, and thematic studies---incorporating extensive commentary, detailed observations on themes, and probing questions.

What happens when your life is spiraling out of control? When did it start? How did it get to that point? And why did you not seek help? Why Hast the Mighty Fallen? An Intrinsic and Extrinsic Examination of the Lack of Counsel among Fallen Leaders is inspired by the deeply rooted passion of its author to end premature deaths, suicides, physical, mental, and emotional compromises that many leaders face, particularly pastors and senior leaders of corporate organizations and politicians. This book references many of the fallen leaders in corporate America. But it also highlights the successes of those leaders who stand tall today. Some chapters are testimonial and transparent because of the author's own plight as she knows firsthand how the lack of counsel can alter your life and the lives of your loved ones forever due to an unwillingness to seek help. The book is intentional about laying out the pitfalls and step-by-step ways to avoid those pitfalls in a very practical, nonconvoluted manner. There are points where you may laugh or even cry. But the purpose is to motivate you to do something about your current situation. It will not go away unless you do something. The author understands that sometimes personal rebellion and deep wounds resulting from the rebellion and sin of others cause us much pain. Noteworthy is a quote from a revered author: "We often think of brokenness and neediness as bad, but the gift of pain draws us into community with God and one another" (McMinn 2011).

Students of the Old Testament have long recognized that in the two histories of the Hebrew monarchies, Samuel/Kings and Chronicles, a literary relationship exists which is akin to that of the Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament. That is, more than one extended narrative have come down to us from antiquity, each of which exhibits distinctive characteristics, while at the same time demonstrating a more than casual relationship with the other(s). Unlike their colleagues in Synoptic Gospel studies, however, students of Samuel/Kings and Chronicles have not had easy access to English-language harmonies in which the principal texts are laid side-by-side in such a manner that comparison is facilitated not just of large blocks of text, but of individual words and phrases as well. . . . The text is that of the Revised Standard Version, Samuel/Kings in the left column, Chronicles in the right (except where noted). At all times, however, the standard of reference has remained the Masoretic Text, and occasionally I have ventured to introduce minor adjustments to the RSV text in order more accurately to demonstrate the relationship betwween the received Hebrew text of our sources. --from the Foreword