I am just finishing Jim Collins’ incredible book “How The Mighty Fall” which details the warning signs of why great organizations crumble. The following is the first part of the leadership quotes from the book:
- “Effective teaching:Â don’t try to come up with the right answers; focus on coming up with the good questions.”
- “Your very power and success might cover up the fact that you’re already on the path to decline.”
- “Organizational decline, unlike cancer, is largely self-inflicted.”
- “Every institution is vulnerable, no matter how great…There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do.”
- “The solution to decline lies not in the simple bromide “Change or Die”; Bank of America changed a lot, and nearly killed itself.”
- “It turns out that a company can indeed look like the picture of health on the outside yet already be in decline…that’s what makes the process of decline so terrifying: it can sneak up on you.”
- “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Tolstoy
- “We’re successful because we understand why we do these specific things and under what conditions they would no longer work.” – George Box
- “Those who fail to acknowledge the role luck may have played in their success – and thereby overestimate their own merit and capabilities – have succumbed to hubris.”
- “When an organization grows beyond its ability to fill its key seats with the right people, it has set itself up for a fall.”
- In declining organizations “leaders discount negative data, amplify positive data, and put a positive spin on ambiguous data. Those in power start to blame external factors for setbacks.”
- “Organizational decline is largely self-inflicted and recovery largely within our own control.”
- “It’s far better to create your own future, than to wait for external forces to dictate your choices.”
- “As with most climbs to greatness, it involved sustained, cumulative effort.”
- “A core business that meets a fundamental human need – and one at which you’ve become best in the world – rarely becomes obsolete.”
- “Great companies foster a productive tension between continuity and change.”
- “(Great companies) continually evolve, modifying their approach with creative improvements and intelligent adaptation.”
- “When institutions fail to distinguish between current practices and the enduring principles of their success, and mistakenly fossilize around their practices, they’ve set themselves up for decline.”
- “(A&P) retained its Depression-generation customers but became utterly irrelevant to a new generation.”
- “The best leaders we’ve studied never presume that they’ve reached ultimate understanding of all the factors that brought them success…they’ve retained a somewhat irrational  fear that perhaps their success stems in large part from luck or fortuitous circumstances.”
- “The best corporate leaders we’ve researched remain students of their work, relentlessly asking questions – why, why, why? – and have an incurable compulsion to vacuum the brains of people they meet.”
Leaders, are you a continual learner?
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