by Bruce | February 22, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Profiles of Individuals, Strategy
We now come to Stage 4, Grasping for Salvation. Illustrative is the contrast between how HP and IBM responded in terms of choosing new CEOs when each company’s growth slowed dramatically in the 1990’s. HP first: It faced a choice as it sought to replace...
by Bruce | February 12, 2016 | Articles, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Strategy
Collins’s (and our) third stage, “Denial of Risk and Peril,” is, yes, about denial, but it’s really about how to decide whether to go forward in a world of ambiguity, incomplete and contradictory information, and inconsistent advice. In other...
by Bruce | February 9, 2016 | Articles, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
At the most straightforward (superficial?) level, the “undisciplined pursuit of more”—Collins’s stage 2 in his framework of decline—would seem to follow logically and almost inevitably from stage 1, “hubris born of success.” The logic is...
by Bruce | February 5, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
Jim Collins has authored or co-authored six books that have sold over 10-million copies altogether. Good to Great may be the most famous (published in 2001, still the #1 best seller on Amazon in “Strategic Business Planning”), but Built to Last is also...
by Bruce | January 11, 2016 | Articles, Client Relationships, Compensation, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Strategy
With the release last week of the Annual Report from Georgetown Law’s Center for the Study of the Legal Profession, the “Big Three” annual reports—Altman-Weil’s Law Firms in Transition, Citi/Hildebrandt’s Client Advisory, and...
by Bruce | December 30, 2015 | Articles, Leadership, Strategy
Year-end is often seen, understandably if somewhat arbitrarily, as a time for reflection. Actually, in my book there’s never a bad time for reflection, so I’ll take an arbitrary peg over no peg. I hope you share my core belief in the power of standing back...