How Companies Fail
Jim Collins, after his two very successful investigations into how one sets up companies to survive long term and how companies achieve greatness in their respective industries, has now turned his attention to the not-so-good, ones that fail, and ones that are poised to fail. His intervention could not be more timely. As I write this post, General Motors will file for bankruptcy in the United States, an almost unthinkably big company to go down. The book isn't out yet and will only be released in Britain later this week, but the essential ideas are available through video and excerpts at this time. I thought it to be appropriate and useful to review the core argument in the context of my own experience. So, here is the backstory , which I am sure you will find as interesting as I did. I found it particularly interesting as I have seen companies going through these stages. Indeed, some companies are set up to fail - they were never going to make it from the very start - but the...