How the Mighty Fall

[_Dr Moore]

In 2009, Jim Collins published How the Mighty Fall, the fourth book in his wildly successful Good to Great series. It was a timely discussion for business leaders, dropping within just a few months of the lowest point in the so-called great recession.

Unlike his previous books, which endeavored to draw lessons from the characteristics, leadership practices and critical decisions of long-term winning businesses, this work looks at the opposite side of the scale: "the desolate landscape of fallen great companies."

He summarizes common stages of the fateful journey in the following chart:



I took the opportunity on a recent transcontinental flight to read How the Mighty Fall, and was stricken throughout by parallels to the modern LDS church. Yes, there are differences between churches and businesses. But to the extent that both businesses and churches succeed by selling more of a product/service, are led by fallible leaders, and struggle in the face of constant change, I believe the analogy has material relevance. And it will come as no surprise that LDS general authorities regularly seek input on organizational, strategic and administrative matters from leading business minds, from academia and industry. I count as friends a number of such individuals.

This won't be a book review -- it's a fast read for those who are interested.

https://www.jimcollins.com/books/how-th ... -fall.html

For your consideration and discussion, here are the unaltered bulleted markers characterizing stages 2, 3, and 4. Collins explains that not every marker appears in every case, but the presence of one or markers indicates greater odds of being in a state of decline.

I would be very curious to hear if the same parallels that resonated with me also resonate with others. My sense is that the church exhibits a large number of stage 3 markers, and some stage 4 markers. In particular, marker 3.2 echoes of expensive expansion of the temple footprint, in the face of contrary evidence regarding attendance and utilization.

1. Unsustainable Quest for Growth, Confusing Big with Great: Success creates pressure for more growth, setting up a vicious cycle of expectations; this strains people, the culture, and systems to the breaking point; unable to deliver consistent tactical excellence, the institution frays at the edges.
2. Undisciplined Discontinuous Leaps: The enterprise makes dramatic moves that fail at least one of the following three tests: A. Do they ignite passion and fit with the company's core values? B. Can the organization be the best in the world at these activities or in these arenas? C. Will these activities help drive the organization's economic or resource engine?
3. Declining Proportion of Right People in Key Seats: There is a declining proportion of right people in key seats because of losing the right people and/or growing beyond the organization's ability to get enough people to execute on that growth with excellence.
4. Easy Cash Erodes Cost Discipline: The organization responds to increasing costs by increasing prices and revenues rather than increasing discipline.
5. Bureaucracy Subverts Discipline: A system of of bureaucratic rules subverts the ethic of freedom and responsibility that marks a culture of discipline; people increasingly think in terms of jobs rather than responsibilities.
6. Problematic Succession of Power: The organization experiences leadership-transition difficulties, be they in the form of poor succession planning, failure to groom excellent leaders from within, political turmoil, bad luck, or an unwise selection of successors.
7. Personal Interests Placed Above Organizational Interests: People in power allocate more for themselves or their constituents -- more money, more privileges, more fame, more of the spoils of success -- seeking to capitalize as much as possible in the short term, rather than investing primarily in building for greatness decades into the future.

1. Amplify the Positive, Discount the Negative: There is a tendency to discount or explain away negative data rather than presume that something is wrong with the company; leaders highlight and amplify external praise and publicity.
2. Big Bets and Bold Goals Without Empirical Validation: Leaders set audacious goals and/or make big bets that aren't based on accumulated experience, or worse, that fly in the face of the facts.
3. Incurring Huge Downside Risk Based on Ambiguous Data: When faced with ambiguous data and decisions that have a potentially severe or catastrophic downside, leaders take a positive view of the data and run the risk of blowing a hole "below the waterline."
4. Erosion of Healthy Team Dynamics: There is a marked decline in the quality and amount of dialogue and debate; there is a shift toward either consensus or dictatorial management rather than a process of argument and disagreement followed by unified commitment to execute decisions.
5. Externalizing Blame: Rather than accept full responsibility for setbacks and failures, leaders point to external factors or other people to affix blame.
6. Obsessive Reorganizations: Rather than confront the brutal realities, the enterprise chronically reorganizes; people are increasingly preoccupied with internal politics rather than external conditions.
7. Imperious Detachment: Those in power become more imperious and detached; symbols and perks of executive-class status amplify detachment; plus new office buildings may disconnect executives from daily life.

1. Panic and Haste: Instead of being calm, deliberate, and disciplined, people exhibit hasty, reactive behavior, bordering on panic.
2. Radical Change and "Revolution" with Fanfare: The language of "revolution" and "radical" change characterizes the new era: New programs! New cultures! New strategies! Leaders engage in hoopla, spending a lot of energy trying to align and "motivate" people, engaging in buzzwords and taglines.
3. Hype Precedes Results: Instead of setting expectations low -- underscoring the duration and difficulty of the turnaround -- leaders hype their visions; they "sell the future" to compensate for the lack of current results, initiating a pattern of overpromising and underdelivering.
4. Initial Upswing Followed by Disappointments: There is an initial burst of positive results, but they do not last; dashed hope follows dashed hope; the organization achieves no buildup, no cumulative momentum.
5. Confusion and Cynicism: People cannot easily articulate what the organization stands for; core values have eroded to the point of irrelevance; the organization has become "just another place to work," a place to get a paycheck; people lose faith in their ability to triumph and prevail. Instead of passionately believing in the organization's core values and purpose, people become distrustful, regarding visions and values as little more than PR and rhetoric.
6. Chronic Restructuring and Erosion of Financial Strength: Each failed initiative drains resources; cash flow and financial liquidity begin to decline; the organization undergoes multiple restructurings; options narrow and strategic decisions are increasingly dictated by circumstance.

[_Philo Sofee]

A very interesting post Dr. Moore! I liked it very much and see lots of parallels.

And it will come as no surprise that LDS general authorities regularly seek input on organizational, strategic and administrative matters from leading business minds, from academia and industry.

Yes this is happening now. The first thing that came to my mind is why not ask Jesus? But I suspect he won't be as full of good business sense as men actually engaged in business would.

[_Gadianton]

Stage three does strike me as relevant, but I have a hard time placing it evolving from stage two -- I can't really place stage two, but then again, I don't have a lot of knowledge of the Church's corporate history.

The leaders seem prone to living long lives, avoiding personal corruption and excesses, and pursuing their aims with discipline. That hasn't changed in 50 years, has it? I must assume that switching back and forth between being a church and being a business is explained by marginal returns on investment in either. Historically, it appears to me that the modern church leaders are extraordinarily careful, to the point of relying upon the best that outside consulting has to offer, and with real estate and tech boons, it appears the Church really lost touch with the religion, as the next dollar spent on religion did nothing compared to that dollar in real estate.

They weren't foolish in their plans for building the mall and creating a wealthy district downtown. Sure, it hasn't been done enough to have good data on doing that sort of thing, and the Church isn't very innovative, and so it was much more costly than they thought it would be. But they got "black swaned". The best indication of desperation, is after that, switching back to investing in religion, they may have assumed better ROI than they really got. Lowering missionary age and so on, whatever the plan was supposed to be, whether through converts or more dedicated members paying better tithing, it doesn't seemed to have worked.

Two and three from stage 4 seem pretty relevant now, but this could also be explained by the Church discovering social media and making fools of themselves as they attempt to master it.

What I can't explain is that real estate and markets have recovered and doing great, and so what is the point of focusing on the religion side of things again? Is that a personal quirk of Nelson, that aligns with a "personal interest" in stage 3? their foray into policing world morality perhaps is a collective "personal interest" of that generation, having issues seeing the point of all their wealth and property if their tenants aren't cardboard cut family values people from 1956?

[_Dr Moore]

Stage three does strike me as relevant, but I have a hard time placing it evolving from stage two...

I don’t wish to over extend the enterprise analogy, and will be first to admit that the church may be too different an animal than other large businesses to properly draw the lines across. Firstly because, unlike normal businesses, new customers become employees and equity holders on day one, linking the growth algorithm to dynamics of network marketing, a.k.a. pyramid schemes. Which adds the complexity of at least two issues: 1) network exhaustion and 2) the double barreled sales problem stemming from personal credibility loss by association when supposedly factual product claims fall apart in the face of evidence. But the product itself hardens around social networks and this makes for a long tail of demand. Might we therefore expect any manifestation of an LDS Inc downfall cycle to be far slower (and harder to perceive)?

You’re right about the conservatism of LDS leaders. It is a slow moving beast. No doubt. Cash hoarding as a policy against revisiting earlier liquidity crises affords some cushion against the future as well. I am reminded that had Apple not hoarded cash for many years, it would have gone broke before releasing the iPhone. So maybe the church’s best years are ahead, if it can transform successfully to recreate the magic for potential customers and existing customers/employees.

That being said, I thought of the following while reading about stage 2.

2.1) There was a time, not so long ago, when the church’s rate of growth evinced its greatness, indeed its right to succeed.
2.2) Perhaps the tendency to excommunicate outspoken members whose voices, while correct, undermine the credibility of management. This is a discontinuous act of violence that fails test A, B and C all at once.
2.3) May not apply, but I wondered about the sustainability of exporting leadership across city, stake and even state & country lines through various missionary and regional callings.
2.4) The building expansion program, as wonderfully recounted in Prince’s McKay biography.
2.5) Layers of authority and the “file leader” model?
2.6) Less relevant in a traditional CEO succession sense, but acutely unique to the church in that current Presidents disavow or repudiate the teachings and policies of past Presidents, essentially changing core values each time a new leader comes along. This can and does set up transition difficulties, which become magnified over time.
2.7) Your point applies here, regarding conservatism and relatively modest lifestyles. I won’t take the approach accusing church leaders of illegitimate monetary emoluments (some might), but I will point out the pharisaical tendency over time to hero worship leaders in the church. The celebrity style vanity circus that occurs when they visit or speak is simply ridiculous. And some of them make a very big deal about proper order and unwritten expectations, silencing dissent, which for a religious leader is about as self aggrandizing as it gets.

Anyway that’s how phase 2 landed on me.

[_Gadianton]

Those are some interesting suggestions. I thought 2.6 was one of the least applicable, but your creative interpretation makes it really important, and I can see it being very significant now. Of course, where I might drag my feet is difficulty seeing a clear succession of phases. 2.6 seems very important right now, at the same time that 4.2 and 4.3 are important. 2.6 might be a top challenge of the Church today, with RtTM going nuts like he has been.

[_Mormonicious]

And keep falling - Church for Millennial, not so much.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lif ... li=BBnb7Kz

STUPID damned Mormons

All Hail Google GOD and her son eBay and the holy toaster youtube

[_Red Ryder]

You should consider whether this applies to the church (religious) side or the corporate business side.

The religious side will continue to decline as secularism continues to increase. The corporate side seems to be doing well with continued growth in real estate holdings and has enough cash invested to last a long time.

Of course the religious side brings in the working capital so as it declines we should continue to see paid headcount reductions continue to be replaced by missionary service.

What we don’t see is the extent to which the Mormon royal families are enriching themselves while in power? Is Nelson unloading assets off to extended family knowing his time is limited through various real estate transactions or contractor work?

Edited to add, you might also like the book by Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist, — “Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies” (Penguin).

[_Dr Moore]

Those are some interesting suggestions. I thought 2.6 was one of the least applicable, but your creative interpretation makes it really important, and I can see it being very significant now. Of course, where I might drag my feet is difficulty seeing a clear succession of phases. 2.6 seems very important right now, at the same time that 4.2 and 4.3 are important. 2.6 might be a top challenge of the Church today, with RtTM going nuts like he has been.

Right, I think the pattern is evident to many observers.

While there may not be a perfect analogy between business and the church, nor perfect sequencing of pins falling down, the parallels do echo and history rhymes.

The spiral as outlined by Collins highlights case studies that illustrate the compounding effect of human nature on critical decisions. Of course, circumstance and luck also plays a role. But part of what he seeks to do for the executive reader -- as most business books do -- is parse out those situational contours in order to reveal where actions that seem logical at the time are more likely to produce negative unintended consequences.

I see a lot of stage 2 behavior evident in the LDS church's "past", and most of the stage 3 markers in the "present". As a macro observation, that is very compelling to me because often the forest manifests itself through patterns, even as examining the individual trees might throw the investigation off course. It is very interesting to me to consider what might happen next in context of Collins' framework. Are church officials falling into common stage 4 traps? Or are they beginning to take prescriptive turnaround actions? What unique circumstances might, say, attenuate the negative impact, or accelerate the spiral as time goes on, for instance?

Regarding stage 3 markers, a few examples of concerning behavior:

* 3.1: Blaming and shaming the Internet and members who discover negative history; PR stunts on various small donations to equality and love groups

* 3.2: "Hastening his work" missionary age with absurd 100k+ goal (Holland) for total missionaries in the field; building more temples even as attendance and utilization continue declining every year

* 3.3: The risky "essays" bet and subsequent equivocation as church leaders address the obvious (their own unreliability as spokesmen for God); the hole blown below the waterline might be the applied "inoculation" theory

* 3.4: Did the church ever have healthy team dynamics? Likely not relevant as a before-after, because the starting point, even as "councils" became a thing, never drew on proven management decision models.

* 3.5: Was a problem from the beginning (the church never accepts the blame), but to me there is an acceleration and amplification of blame externalization as the information age takes shape -- it used to be those "anti Mormons" every now and then, whereas today hardly a week goes by in the church without some forceful admonition to avoid Google, avoid disaffected members, avoid the CES Letter, distrust non approved sources, distrust yourself, doubt your doubts, in a complete 180 on the old mantra that doubt leads to faith and faith = doubt. An encouraging signal is seeing acceptance of books like Bridges, and greater encouragement to just love and accept those who doubt or leave the faith.

* 3.6: Possibly Nelson's personality and possibly because so little happened under Monson. But anyway, yes the pace of organizational change in the church today is breathtaking. I see the changes as problematic especially because they're being attributed to revelation -- an unfortunate but all too common pattern of dishonesty between management and employees -- dishonesty wrecks organizations faster than any external challenge because it undermines the fabric of confidence, without which there really is nothing left.

Ironically, taking 3.5 and 3.6 together, by wrongly externalizing blame and claiming internal revelation for change, doubly opposite to the healthy (and honest) practice of internalizing blame and openly acknowledging external forces driving change, church leaders are committing a dual atrocity on members. Lie 1 is blaming the wrong party. Lie 2 is ascribing the next move to the wrong source. You have to willfully look away not to see this for what it is. Heck, they are doing it to their own past prophets! It's not ME, it was that bozo 50 or 100 years ago who spoke a "well considered opinion" that was wrong. Yes, this has been going on for a long time. It is not "new" in any sense. But each time it happens, the hole gets deeper.

Think about how many times the church leaders have been caught red handed doing this. Go way back -- polygamy, the Nauvoo Expositor and Joseph's murder. Blame was externalized when it should have been internalized -- Joseph lied about polygamy and he ordered the Expositor destroyed to defend the lie. Blame was externalized by leaders on those lying liars and those murderous mobsters. Then, post reorganization, the big change (moving west) was internalized as revelation from God, not rightly attributed to a decision foisted on willing saints due to a refusal by leaders to correct past & present actions and committing to the laws of the land. Doubly wrong, doubly harmful, and now no longer defensible as a truth-filled narrative.

Joseph followed this modus operandi in his youth too: caught in one lie, he would claim a vision or revelation that simultaneously blamed the accusers and refocused authority on him. He honed the pattern as a treasure dig leader, if the stories are even half true. From memory, I can see the same one-two punch working in the incident of the 116 pages, retroactive priesthood visions, the Kirtland Bank, United Order. Later on... polygamy again (circa 1900). Blacks and priesthood. Missionary ages. Women's roles in the church. Child protection. 2-hour church. Small temples. Just to name a few.

I see the reorganization changes pushing into stage 4.2 and 4.4, under banners like "hastening the work", "home centered, church supported", "covenant path", "true name of the church" serving as misleading marketing at best. Take "hastening the work" for example. It was a radical change. It was heavily marketed. The number of missionaries surged. Convert baptisms took a bump upward with the surge. And then it all fizzled. We could have predicted that effect by mathematically examining the population. But even so, hoped-for positive results of sustained higher rates of missionary service and stronger conversion numbers simply did not happen. And now, silence on the matter. That is not how good turnarounds look. That is not what honest leadership looks like.

On 4.5, I hear more cynical comments among active members today than ever in my lifetime. That is purely anecdotal, but it is absolutely there, percolating through even the best and most committed members. It comes out here and there, in meetings, social gatherings, between family members. The thing about people is they are exceptionally good at recognizing duplicity and deceit.

Lastly, the corporation of the church has so much cash hoarded, it will absolutely outlive the present downward spiral of its religious narrative. If the church were to completely face the music, pivot away from prophetic mantles and hot potato revelation, and focus instead on just doing good in the world, it has the resources and organization in place to make an enormous impact. I dare say, if the full weight of Ensign Peak were deployed, then I believe (with somewhat of an inside baseball view on the numbers) it would be the largest charitable organization in the world.

[_candygal]

Very interesting. All of them spoke to me in one way or another in affinity to Mormonism.

I like the graph...kind of a slow death. This I would love to see happen in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

[_Physics Guy]

My brother has been an executive in a couple of large companies and he liked Good to Great, but I'm suspicious of anyone's fourth book. You can make a great first book by spending years on it and then if you're lucky it may sell, but once you're contractually obliged to produce so many books in so many years it's a rare author who doesn't stoop to padding.

I'm not likely to read this book but what I see looks suspiciously like description of symptoms masquerading as analysis of causes. And half a dozen "markers" for each "stage" toward decline, with the disclaimer that not all markers are always present, looks like the kind of stretchy sock that can fit any foot.

Some of these markers even look tautological. "Not enough right people in key seats" is something you're bound to be able to say in hindsight about any company that fails for any reason, because "company doesn't fail" is part of the definition of "key seats" and "right people".

Is it really better than that?