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.

The Challenge Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

"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

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...

A companion guidebook to the number-one bestselling Good to Great, focused on implementation of the flywheel concept, one of Jim Collins’ most memorable ideas that has been used across industries and the social sectors, and with startups. The key to business success is not a single innovation or one plan. It is the act of turning the flywheel, slowly gaining momentum and eventually reaching a breakthrough. Building upon the flywheel concept introduced in his groundbreaking classic Good to Great, Jim Collins teaches readers how to create their own flywheel, how to accelerate the flywheel’s momentum, and how to stay on the flywheel in shifting markets and during times of turbulence. Combining research from his Good to Great labs and case studies from organizations like Amazon, Vanguard, and the Cleveland Clinic which have turned their flywheels with outstanding results, Collins demonstrates that successful organizations can disrupt the world around them—and reach unprecedented success—by employing the flywheel concept.

Quicklets: Your Reading Sidekick! ABOUT THE BOOK When an individual or group entity reaches the pinnacle of success, the inevitable concern is where do we go from here? This zenith of success could be in the financial realm, or in the realm of public perception. Yet, when answering the concern where do we go from here the answer is almost always down, down, down. Jim Collins How the Mighty Fall is a valiant attempt to codify an intellectual grasp on recognizing, then mitigating the warning signs. In more advanced cases, this means addressing the later stages of decline toward salvaging social standing and profitability. Though the books subtitle, And Why Some Companies Never Give In, indicates an emphasis or relevance for companies in the private sector. The authors concepts are geared toward business entities, and governments at all levels. These institutions can draw useful, relevant insights toward maximizing their own effectiveness and efficiency. The first chapter clearly sheds important light on thisafter all, a symposium at West Point provided the inspiration for what would become the How the Mighty Fall project. This resulted in a published work that would eventually be distributed by the well-recognized publisher HarperCollins. MEET THE AUTHOR Joe Taglieri is a professional journalist and musician (drum set and Latin percussion instruments) in Los Angeles. He has written on a range of subjects for a variety of publications since the 1990s. Taglieri's forte is writing about governmental and economic issues, and he has a keen interest in sports and the arts, most notably music, television and film. He holds a degree in print journalism from the University of Southern California and has studied, taught and performed via the drum set for nearly 25 years and has done the same with Latin percussion instruments such as conga and bongo drums, cajon and timbales for more than 15 years. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK This litany of symptoms of a sick mega-firm is a vehicle for Collins adage: Clearly, the solution to decline lies not in the simple bromide Change or Die; Bank of America changed a lot, and nearly killed itself in the process. We need a nuanced understanding of how decline happens... (How the Mighty Fall) Through the rest of the book, Collins specifically identifies and analyzes five stages of decline that organizations go through before total collapse such as bankruptcy. As has been the case in recent years, many seemingly indestructible corporationsAIG, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, General Motors, Circuit City, just to name a fewhave collapsed and caused major havoc in the markets and among an assortment of societal segments. The five stages of decline, according to How the Mighty Fall, are... Buy a copy to keep reading! CHAPTER OUTLINE Quicklet on Jim Collins’ How the Mighty Fall + Introduction + About the Author + Overall Summary + Important People + ...and much more

The must-read summary of Jim Collins' book: "How the Mighty Fall: and Why Some Companies Never Give In" This complete summary of the ideas from "How The Mighty Fall" shows that no successful business is immune from failure, regardless of previous performance. Providing you with a clear overview of the five stages of failure, as well as with a checklist for each stage, this useful summary gives you the tools needed to identify the warning signs of failure in your own company and enables you to act in time to save it. Added-value of this summary: • Save time • Understand key concepts • Increase your business knowledge To learn more, read "How the Mighty Fall" and prevent failure in your business.

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The Motorola example shows how a company can fall from greatness due to Stage 1, Hubris Born of Success. Motorola had grown from $5 billion to $27 billion in annual revenues in just a decade, but its executives felt great pride in their soon-to-be-released StarTAC cell phone. However, the StarTAC used analog technology just as wireless carriers began to demand digital. #2 The concept of hubris is defined as excessive pride that brings down a hero, or alternatively, outrageous arrogance that inflicts suffering upon the innocent. We will encounter multiple forms of hubris in our journey through the stages of decline. #3 The climb from good to great is a process that requires sustained, cumulative effort. To remain successful in any given area of activity, you must keep pushing with as much intensity as when you first began building that flywheel. #4 If you’re struggling with the tension between continuing your commitment to what made you successful and living in fear about what comes next, ask yourself two questions: Does your primary flywheel face inevitable demise within the next five to ten years due to forces outside your control. Have you lost passion for it.

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.

* Our summary is short, simple and pragmatic. It allows you to have the essential ideas of a big book in less than 30 minutes. *As you read this summary, you will discover how many companies in the midst of the economic downturn have suddenly fallen into a financial crisis, due to cumulative bad choices. *You will also discover that : A company at the height of its success is never safe from danger; There are many warning signs that mark a company's critical situation; Repeated innovation can sometimes kill your business; There are solutions to help a declining business turn the corner. *Since 2008, the economic crisis has been fatal in the United States, affecting industry giants, some of which have been in business for over a century. Large companies have actually been in a delicate situation since the beginning of the 20th century. Jim Collins seeks to show the five major stages that mark the decline of a firm. This book is intended to give even the largest companies advice to avoid their collapse. *Buy now the summary of this book for the modest price of a cup of coffee!