How The Mighty FallAudiobook

On the plane ride back from Seattle the other day, I read Jim Collins latest book How the Mighty Fall. I've always been a huge fan of his work and this one is no different. While all his stuff is written for businesses, there are a ton of applications for churches.

In this book, Collins seeks to answer what leaders, companies and churches can learn from the failure of others. Is there a time that you can see a company is about to fail? Is there a path they all take? How do you know when a company/church full of energy, innovation and momentum, is there a time you know they are on the road to falling? Are there clearly distinguishable stages of decline? If so, can you spot the decline early? Are there telltale markers? Can you reverse decline, and if so, how? Is there a point of no return?

The reality is that according to Collins, "There are more ways to fall than to become great."

History shows that churches go through phases of this like companies do. The largest churches 50 years ago, many of them don't exist anymore or are no longer the largest, most effective churches. What happened? For many of those churches, the same as the companies that Collins talks about. They had no succession plan for leadership, they didn't develop leaders from within, and the big one, they became complex and got away from the thing they did best.

The best example in the book of this was the difference between Best Buy and Circuit City. Circuit City was once the standard in that industry, but they diversified and got away from their primary flywheel, the thing they did best. Churches have the tendency to do this as they grow. They add ministries, all good things, but it often takes away from the thing that is their primary flywheel, the thing God is blessing the most, the thing they have been called to do. Staying focused and simple is incredibly difficult. According to Collins, one of the telltale signs of a company that fell was not complacency, but stemmed more from overreaching.

What churches do is they are effective in something, so they add to it. They think success comes from doing things instead of asking the important question of "Do we know why we are successful, effective or healthy?" Churches are guilty of holding up practices and methods instead of the principles or theology behind what makes them effective. We have to do discipleship a certain way. The music has to be _________. We have to have this ministry or that program, even though it hasn't been effective in decades. What if instead of holding on to practices that aren't effective, we look at the principles to those practices, the Biblical practices churches are commanded to embody and live those out?

As Collins points out, "The best leaders know the why behind practices and effectiveness." They are always searching for the why, followed by the how. Yet, most pastors seek the how, followed by the why.

The last thing pastors can learn is have a sense of urgency. Companies that fell often lost their sense of urgency. I meet so many pastors, and church planters that do not have a sense of urgency. We, more than CEO's should have a sense of urgency. We are talking about the gospel, heaven and hell, eternity. This should keep us awake at night. Churches should be the most urgent organizations on the planet.

Overall, as with Collins other books, high marks. Every leader should read everything he writes.

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In the early pages of this cautionary, wake-up call, Jim Collins mentions what a mentor told him about effective teaching: "don't try to come up with the right answers; focus on asking good questions." I started to count the elbow-in-the-ribs questions, but I ran out of ribs.

Some best-selling authors are one-book wonders. Not Collins. The author of Built to Last and Good to Great has delivered another barn-burner. While it builds on all of his previous work--like a good business book should--it aptly kick-starts you in the gut with not just good questions, but extraordinary insights. These are the "I-better-listen-carefully-and-not-mess-up" kind of soul-stirring questions timed perfectly for today's economic environment.

He writes, "I've come to see institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages, easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages. An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside, dangerously on the cusp of a precipitous fall."

It's not a happy book--it's a must-read book. Leaders that are in it for the long haul will learn principles and best practices for preventing, detecting and reversing decline. Collins identifies five 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

"Overreaching" is one of the symptoms of Stage 2. "When an organization grows beyond its ability to fill its key seats with the right people, it has set itself up for a fall," he warns.

So why study failures? "We do ourselves a disservice by studying only success." Collins adds that "most companies eventually fall, and we cannot deny this fact." If you're leading a company, nonprofit or church today, it's possible that your own arrogance is blocking your view of reality, but there is hope. "Organizational decline is largely self-inflicted, and recovery largely within our control."

Brilliant.

It's the only way to describe a book that reasserts the obvious, the basics, the human fundamentals that have not changed in at least 5,000 years. Hubris. Arrogance. Greed. Bureaucracy. The Greeks examined these topics 2,500 years ago. William Shakespeare asserted human faults lies in ourselves and not in our stars. But who listens to such common sense?

Collins is criticized by those who cite "external" factors affecting the economy instead of their own failings. Well, one fact must be accepted: Every economy is people based. People create the economy, people run it and people are its glories and faults. If it doesn't satisfy the needs of people, even the cleverest "economy" is nothing. Economists who claim to have a formula to explain the economic future are the alchemists of the modern world; the future is what people do, and that is never predictable.

"Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you," Collins writes. This infuriates conservatives because it implies they or America aren't destined by God to be No. 1. Liberals hate it because it tells them they cannot devise a formula to make everyone healthy, wealthy, wise and happy Democratic voters.

"We are doing God's work," said Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs. God was not pleased, so Goldman Sachs got its $10 billion bailout from taxpayers. Even the Son of God didn't think money changers are that good or well connected; He tossed them out of the temple.

The fact Collins stresses most is customer service. He cites various cases of companies ignoring this rule and subsequently failing. Motorola is an example; my trying to trying to deal helpfully with Motorola was an exercise in futility. Motorola thought customers existed to make Motorola rich. Collins deftly points out how this led to Motorla's collapse.

Business people who fail to heed this book will fail; those who do understand it may have a lot more to learn, but at least they understand the basics. Buy a copy for your favourite chief executive, and give it with the reminder: There Will Be a Test With One Answer.

The only answer that matters is the success or failure of the business.