Publisher, Harper Audio (June 2009)

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"Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you." —Jim Collins

Decline can be avoided. Decline can be detected. Decline can be reversed.

Amid 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.

By understanding the stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom. As Collins' research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover—in some cases, coming back even stronger. As long as you never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

About the Author: Jim Collins is the coauthor of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. Formerly a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, he jettisoned a traditional academic career in order to chart his own path. Today, he operates a management research laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. Previously, Collins held positions at McKinsey & Company and Hewlett-Packard.