企业衰退的5阶段模型（《How+Mighty+Fall》，Collins）.pdfVIP

Reviewed by Paul Harmon I bought this book after I read an article in the Economist that said that Akio Toyoda, the current president of Toyota motors, was rumored to have read this book and had urged his fellow executives to do so as well. The article went on to suggest that Mr. Toyoda felt that his company was already in the advanced stages of a downward spiral and that he planned to guide its recovery. Note that this article appeared after the stories of how the financial meltdown of 2008 had led to large parking lots filled with unsold Toyota cars, but well before any recalls for brake problems were announced. In other words, if the Economist’s rumors were true, Mr. Toyoda was concerned about what his company was doing well before it got into the very troublesome situation it finds itself in today. Jim Collins is a business consultant who has previously written books on how companies go from being good to being great. In 2004, he started looking at data about companies that got into trouble. In essence, some of the companies he had studied that had gone from good to great, found themselves in serious trouble a few short years later, and some failed altogether. Collins began to ask himself how great companies got into trouble and why some recovered and others did not. I was attracted, immediately, because of my own concerns with the role of process in organizations that succeed or fail. I wanted to know if failure typically resulted from a failure to execute processes, or if it was more likely a result of causes related to management and strategy, failures to adopt new technologies, or changes in the legal environment, competition, or public taste. BPTrend readers may recall that I wrote an Advisor in 2008 titled How Did Toyota Do It? In that Advisor I reflected on t