How the Mighty Fall summary

You may or may not be familiar with Greek tragedy.

In Greek tragedies, we often find the heroes in trouble after succumbing to hubris, i.e., they’re so overly confident that they strive for too much and end up failing.

Why do successful companies fail? Is it out of laziness?

Actually, most of them fail for the complete opposite reason: they try to be too innovative and grow too quickly.

What do we do when someone criticizes our heroes? Do we take their comments into consideration? Or do we ignore their criticisms and continue to believe our heroes are perfect? Usually, when someone tells us something we don’t want to hear, we shut out their views and put our rose-colored glasses on.

Companies can also fall into this trap. And in their case, ignoring valid criticisms can lead them to gigantic mistakes.

If you’ve ever been on a sinking boat, you know that the natural response to crisis is panic. It’s also the response most business leaders have when decline sets in. Which, in turn, can lead them to make rushed decisions that only deepen the crisis.

One such response is to search for the silver bullet, or one sweeping solution that will solve all problems.

So far we’ve seen what leaders do wrong to put their businesses in danger. Now we’ll look at what leaders should do to ensure that this never happens.

We’ll start with the most important factor for making the best decisions: having the right attitude.

Taking risks is something all business leaders will have to contemplate in their careers, especially when their business is struggling. There’s nothing wrong with adopting a risky strategy as long as you remember that it might fail.

When thinking about taking a risky strategy, you need to ask yourself, “What will happen if things go wrong? Will the consequences severely hurt the company or will we be able to recover?”

When you’re in deep trouble and it seems like there’s no way out, the natural temptation is to give up and walk away. Companies in dire straits often feel this way, too, seeing surrender as the only option to their plight.

But there’s no reason to react this way: a firm can turn things around until that fat lady starts singing. That is: if they act the right way.