Collins' book offers good food for thought in this time of massive upheaval when the financial and climate crises have challenged all the traditional management models.
Collins argues that powerful organisations fall apart through such forces as hubris, denial of risk and peril and an undisciplined pursuit of bigger profits and payouts. Companies that stick to rigid strategies which guaranteed success in the past are likely to fail. Not because they adhere to specific practices and strategies but more because they failed to comprehend why those practices and strategies were in place. In other words, the "what" replaces the "why". Once they understood that, they would understood when to keep or change them. Smart companies continually evolve, modifying their approach with creative improvements and intelligent adaptation.
The other big mistakes include confusing big with great, resulting in the blind pursuit of unsustainable growth, making dramatic moves that don't fit in with the company's purpose and don't necessarily leave the organization as one of the best models, having fewer talented people in key seats to execute growth, too much easy cash eroding discipline, allowing bureaucracy to subvert discipline, undermining the culture of freedom and responsibility that is part of discipline and leaving people thinking in terms of "jobs" rather than core purpose, and lack of succession planning.
Successful companies also need a culture where ideas can be challenged, no matter how unpleasant or ugly that might be.
As examples of great leadership, Collins cites Xerox, Nucor, IBM, Texas Instruments, Pitney Bowes, Nordstrom and Disney. These are all companies that that took a massive fall at some point in their history and recovered. These are the companies that saw a crisis as a terrible thing to waste. Instead of looking for salvation, they returned to sound management practices and rigorous strategic thinking.
Collins writes: "Be willing to embrace the inevitability of creative destruction, but never give up on the discipline to create your own future. Be willing to embrace loss, to endure pain, to temporarily lose freedoms, but enver give up faith in the ability to prevail … Failure is not so much a physical state as a state of mind; success is falling down, and getting up one more time without end."
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