A must have guideline to success

perception against them, but it is something borne out of African experience in the way people handle affairs with little of scholarly petulance and more of global relevance.
But reading the “How The Mighty Fall” which was written out of a six-year research on big American corporates during a contemporary period, Africans in general, cannot ignore and Zimbabweans in particular, can draw fountain lessons from, at a canter, made a review of this book almost mandatory.
For many who understand my crazy love for sport and its attendant politics, would find this rather a bizarre seizure, almost like a robber saying to the victim, “we can discuss what happens with your cash and credit cards after you handover your wallet . . .”
Reading a book replete with such compelling detail of companies and what goes on in the dungeons of boardrooms offered a challenge I could not duck.
After reading a wonderful review by Memory Chirere, the other week on the death or is it dearth of poems in our language — such an important component of our living as Africans, this Jim Collins masterpiece, is perhaps one book that could draw the attention of all corporate captains in this country as much as Chirere advocates Shona poems genre survival.
Collins, a different kind of American writer, far too honest to be the brilliant corporate priest he has displayed in his 222 page sermon, so appealing in his scare that even the sinking of the Titanic could have been a brilliant spectacle in its lessons on how a small leak on the legendary ship, should always be viewed as the glue that hold the float — survival or collapse of companies.
The writer is a student of companies — great ones, good ones, weak ones, failed ones from young start ups who in their infancy appear like beautiful if fun jokes, to your venerable sesquicentenarians like Coca Cola, Old Mutual, Zimpapers, De Beers, Meikles and other such corporate dinosaurs. Perhaps his best works in the business is another of his books — Built to Last that made him a good friend of business reporters and editors at all of the leading newspapers in the world.
And he has taken note of media involvement in the collapse or survival of companies and in this six-year research that gave rise to this book, he has taken note of their analysis — from profile of business rock star celebrity CEOs such as Carly Fiorina (HP) and executives of either failed companies or those that survived the five stages to remain profitable.
His language is simple and unambiguous, scavenging the desolate economic landscapes to bring out specimen that could help picture how big companies fall or have fallen. In his research findings, Collins uncovered five very important stages that all companies go through and he classified them in clear symmetry that even corporate behemoths run by executives without degrees from such lofty business schools as Harvard or Witwatersrand can understand.
The author then presented his book in five sections that explains the five stages of development or evolution — Stage One is Hubris Born of Success, Stage two — Undisciplined pursuit of More, Stage three — Denial of risk and Peril, Stage four — Grasping for Salvation and the nadir stage five — Capitulation to irrelevance.
Reading the book with clear examples of companies selected for each stage for effect, the author takes you through the valleys and mountains on business and corporate courtship in a lecture room fashion, you are left in no doubt as to the way forward.
From the 60 companies they sought to research on, they whittled them down to 11, companies that clearly explained how even paragons of corporate excellence such as Motorola, City Circuit, Zenith and Bank of America, that appeared from its humble beginnings under Amadeo Gianini in 1906, as an unquestionable corporate champion could suffer the ignominy of curatorship, bankruptcy and subsequent sale to a rival bank, NationsBank of California in 1998 in just less than a decade — eight years to be exact.
That period is both schematic and significant for Zimbabwe as it also is the same time this country had some of the best business reporters in our newsrooms — Sunsley Chamunorwa, an awarding winning business muckraker who for his “sins” was briefly swallowed by a banking Germany Shepherd dog (CBZ Bank) that wanted to lip so hard and fast.
His pieces also received the attention of the author as did that of Supa Mandiwanzira, one of the best electronic business reporters to emerge in recent years, whose sledge hammer approach could have earned him a job as an ice hockey coach without an interview, saved many companies from collapse for fear of their media introspection.
Both could not have been stringing for such respectable corporate voices like Forbes Magazine, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, New York Times or Washington Post, but they acted as authoritative voices in the business world that their works found space in American business sanctuaries as media voices of reason. In this book, Collins clearly showed his respect for media voices so much that during his research, he scoured newsrooms for articles on specific companies and profiles for their respective CEOs to judge how at the contemporary time, they fared and how much of media space they occupied during their various periods of transition from stage one to five.
An interesting example in the Zimbabwean situation could be that of the piecemeal marriage between Kingdom and Meikles whose fractious relationship served the public some sumptuous meals and free lectures on risks of binary malfunctionalities of entering into deals with corporate animals clothed in authority of the system. You cannot do a merger that does not fit your core values — how will you shore up your shares?
No where in the book does the author explain the wisdom, which ultimately proved to be an art, of hiring the right CEO — how it is done and how to arrive at the right candidate for the task. But examples of all companies that collapsed and those that survived showed how important it was to have the right guy in the seat.
Interestingly, all companies’ directors met in the boardroom of the headquarters when selecting the right CEO, but uniquely decamped to hotels and airport lobbies when firing the incumbent. Isn’t that proverbial? I thought it is. But, get the book, you may find more than you have bargained for.
But the book has one seemingly endless weakness of most books written by non-Africans. No pun intended. It, at worst, reads like business manual for the average CEO and at best a utopian forensic critique for data analysts preparing an insurance claim after a disaster of Second World War proportions. It is stereotypical if predictable, but uniquely, has the power to keep the readers on the typo till the end. I did. Not once, but twice.
For a book written to cover a period of 11 years, studying American companies and in the process an insight into those that did business with them and that includes companies here in Zimbabwe, it is exhaustive in creating danger warnings to companies and it is a narrative of some specifics in business genre.
Like most books on corporate behaviours, Collins showed his grasp of leadership better than did, Stephen R Covey, considered the leadership guru, thanks to his two brilliant books — The 7 habits of Highly Effective People and Principle Centred Leadership. He proved that leadership is a performance and that styles of management should commensurate with the nature of business — an IT savvy guy should not run a candy shop, it is like a neuron surgeon leading Fidelity Printers in Msasa.
The interpretation of data in business is very crucial as it impacts on decision making and Collins could not have given a better example than the 1986 space shuttle, Challenger’s fatal crash just 73 seconds after taking off from NASA’s Florida base killing the seven crew members. The cause of the disaster was unique — data or information, but crucially, as investigations later proved, lack of it. Information does not need to be vague or ambiguous.
“ . . . The deliberations lasted for three hours. If the data had been clear, would they have needed a three hour discussion? Data analysts extraordinaire Edward Tufte shows in his book Visual Explanations that if the engineers had plotted the data points in a compelling graphic, they might have seen a clear trend line: every launch below 66 degrees showed evidence of O-rings damage.
“But no one laid out data in a clear and convincing visual manner, and the trend towards increased danger in colder temperatures remained obscure throughout the late night teleconference debate. Summing up, the O-ring Task Force chair noted, “We just didn’t have enough conclusive data to convince anyone”
This is a brilliant offering, as it offers a fully packaged example, replete with priceless lessons. He continued, “Unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was unsafe to launch, Morton Thiokol reversed its stance and voted to launch, faxing its confirmation to NASA shortly before midnight. “At 11:38 the next morning (28 January,  1986), in 36 degrees temperatures, an O-ring failed upon ignition, and 73 seconds later, Challenger exploded into a fireball. All seven crew members perished as remnants of Challenger fell nine miles into the ocean”.
I could not resist this. Jim Collins’ intentions were clear as should always be when in position of authority. When facing crucial and irreversible decisions that have negative consequences, always make recourse to empirical evidence to make the right decision.
Business successes and failure are dependent on making accurate decisions all the time and a lot of companies have fallen at the altar of poor decisions by their leaders.
For good or for bad, How the Mighty Fall — and why some companies never give in, is a masterpiece that all corporate behemoths executives should have on the shelf. All those heavy counters on our bourse could be at several stages of decline even when they look like in rude health on the outside — this book could help your firm begin the fight that might ultimately reverse the nosedive even when acquisition of more companies or stocks show a growth, the cancer might be slowing eating away the heart of the conglomerate.