The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies: ...And How to Break Them

Preface

I trace this book’s origins to one of the most insightful questions I have ever been asked by a corporate executive: Why do good companies fail? The CEO who posed this riddle had been a great fan of the 1980s business best seller In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. However, as time went by, he was struck by how many of the companies cited as exemplars of world-class corporations were either struggling or no longer in existence. This included such icons of U.S. business as Sears, Dana Corporation, AT&T, Xerox, IBM, and Kodak.

The more I pondered the CEO’s question, the more curious I became as to why companies that seem to be doing so well and that are at the top of their industry, can almost overnight spiral downward ...