At the height of the global bull market a few years ago, business giant Kmart stumbled, going from one of the most admired companies to one of the largest bankruptcies in history. The same fate befell several seemingly impenetrable corporation, such as Enron, WorldCom, Polaroid, and others. Were these fantastic failures caused by a fickle stock market and a turbulent economy? Did they fall victim to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s?
Not according to business journalist Mark Ingebretsen in Why Companies Fail. As you'll discover in this groundbreaking book, all of these companies exhibited one or more of the ten characteristics of a doomed company—characteristics that have been shared by failed companies for decades. Kmart, Enron, WorldCom, and other corporations might have been saved if their executives had recognized sooner that their companies were exhibiting one or more of these characteristics. Ingebretsen, with the help of some of the world's most noted business management experts from the Turnaround Management Association, describes in startling detail each of the ten big reasons companies fail, including:
? Letting stock price dictate strategy
? Ignoring customers
? Fighting wars of attrition
? Innovating too much or too little
? And more
Inside these pages, you'll discover practical methods for identifying these fatal characteristics in your own organization and preventing them from leading to failure. No matter what the size of your company, the lessons in Why Companies Fail could be the difference between long-lasting success and sudden flameout. And before any company can go from good to great, it's got to be on the right track in the first place. This valuable guide will show you how.
WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, HealthSouth-why do companies fail? Ingebretsen offers 10 chapters with 10 reasons, from "growing too fast" to "greed and arrogance," in a volume that reads like the business page headlines of the past two years. Recent corporate troubles exemplify the perils of ignoring Ingebretsen's maxims (e.g., AOL's sin of failing to understand that DSL, not cable, was the medium of the future, and Kmart's error in not addressing the rise of Target and WalMart). Ingebretsen's post-mortems are well-written and often incisive, but everyone has 20/20 hindsight-the trick is to spot failures before they occur. TheStreet.com columnist could have taken a different, and more useful, tack by picking companies that had tood the test of time and identifying the 10 factors that led to such longevity. Showing how firms could have avoided-or, more realistically, weathered-a crisis is of more benefit to managers than a laundry list of cautionary tales. Ingebretsen does give a few sections that address successful crisis management, such as Johnson & Johnson's treatment of the Tylenol-cyanide debacle, and NASDAQ's handling of improper profit charges. His audience, however, is the CEO of a large corporation, not the small business owner (who has quite real, but different difficulties staying afloat) or the line worker in a small company, who may recognize a problem, but whose opinion is less likely to count.
length: (cm)23.7 width:(cm)16.3
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从结构上看,这本书的广度令人印象深刻,它跨越了制造业的沉重转型到新兴服务业的泡沫破裂,几乎涵盖了所有可能让企业走向终结的维度。但最让我眼前一亮的是作者对于“文化错配”这一宏大命题的微观展示。他没有泛泛而谈文化的重要性,而是通过对比两家在同一行业内,但文化基因截然不同的公司在面对外部冲击时的不同反应,来凸显企业价值观的决定性作用。一家公司因为其过分强调内部效率而扼杀了创新,而另一家虽然效率稍逊,却因为对外部变化保持了高度的“文化谦逊”,最终得以在逆境中找到新的生存空间。这种对比的张力极强,让人深刻理解到,硬性的战略可以模仿,但根植于日常行为中的文化基因却是最难被复制,也最难被改变的。读罢,我开始重新审视我身边团队的日常沟通模式和决策习惯,那些看似不经意的习惯背后,可能正酝酿着决定成败的种子。这本书的价值在于,它将抽象的管理学理论具象化为可以触摸、可以感知的现实案例。
评分这本书,坦白说,我期待得很高,毕竟名字就带着一种振聋发聩的警示意味。翻开第一页,我就被那种直击核心的商业哲学深深吸引了。作者似乎有一种魔力,能把那些看似复杂难懂的企业衰亡案例,抽丝剥茧,还原成最原始的、最容易被忽视的人性弱点和战略失误。我特别欣赏其中对“路径依赖”这种陷阱的深刻剖析。很多企业不是不努力,而是被过去的成功路径锁死了,以至于当市场风向转变时,他们像被困在琥珀里的生物,徒留姿态却失去了生命力。书中对几家知名科技巨头在不同阶段的决策失误进行了详尽的案例研究,每一个转折点都让人拍案叫绝,原来成功往往是暂时的,而自满才是最致命的毒药。那种深入骨髓的洞察力,让你在阅读时不断反思自己周遭环境中的那些“未爆弹”。它不是一本教你如何成功的书,它更像是一面冷酷的镜子,照出你企业文化中那些正在腐烂的角落,迫使你正视那些潜伏的危机。这种冷静的、近乎残酷的分析,比任何空洞的励志口号都要来得实在和有力量,读完后感觉对风险的敏感度都提高了不止一个档次。
评分这本书的语言风格非常凝练,没有丝毫的拖泥带水,每一个句子都像经过了精确计算的子弹,直奔主题。我尤其欣赏作者对“增长的悖论”的探讨。在当前这个追求指数级增长的时代背景下,这本书提出了一个反直觉的观点:过度追求不健康的、非可持续性的增长,反而会加速衰亡的进程。作者详细描述了企业如何在高速扩张中,稀释了自己的核心竞争力,过度分散了资源,并最终在规模带来的复杂性面前不堪重负。书中对一家曾经风光无限的零售巨头在盲目扩张中遭遇的供应链断裂和品牌价值稀释的分析,简直是教科书级别的警示案例。他不是简单地指责管理层的贪婪,而是更深入地挖掘了市场对“增长神话”的狂热如何反过来裹挟了企业自身的理性判断。这种对时代情绪的精准把握,使得这本书不仅仅是关于“失败的公司”,更是关于“我们这个时代的企业家精神病”。阅读的过程,更像是一场对集体商业幻想的清醒剂注射。
评分这本书最让我感到震撼的,是它对“认知局限”这个主题的处理。作者用了大量的篇幅,不是去批判那些显而易见的错误决策,而是去探讨那些看似非常合理的决策是如何一步步将企业引入歧途的。他引入了心理学上的“锚定效应”和“确认偏误”的概念,用以解释为什么即便拥有顶尖人才和海量数据,企业依然无法跳出既有的思维框架。我记得其中一个案例,一个行业领导者因为过分沉浸于自己定义的游戏规则中,完全错过了颠覆性的技术变革,原因仅仅是他们的大脑自动过滤掉了任何不符合他们现有世界观的信息。这让我深思,我们自诩为理性的决策者,但实际上,我们往往只是自己构建的认知牢笼中的囚徒。这本书的伟大之处在于,它提供了一套方法论,指导读者如何有意识地去打破这种认知惰性,去主动寻求那些“不舒服”的、挑战现有信念的外部声音。它需要的不是快速的阅读,而是反复的沉思,因为它提出的每一个观点都要求你对自身的判断力进行彻底的审视。
评分这本书的叙事风格简直是一股清流,它完全摒弃了那种干巴巴的教科书式分析,转而采用了一种近乎侦探小说般的叙事手法来解构商业失败。每一章都像是在对一个悬案进行细致的现场勘查,从财务报表上的蛛丝马迹,到高管层会议室里微妙的权力斗争,作者的笔触细腻得令人咋舌。我尤其喜欢它对“组织惰性”的刻画。书中提到一个观点,说企业规模越大,其对内部信息的过滤机制就越复杂,最终导致最高决策者听到的往往是经过层层美化的、失真的“回音室”版本。这种对组织内部动态的敏锐捕捉,让我回想起一些曾经在大型机构里体会到的那种无力感——明明问题摆在眼前,却像被一层无形的屏障阻挡住,无法有效传达。作者没有止步于描述现象,更进一步探讨了为什么一些领导者会选择性地接受信息,这其中掺杂了多少自我保护和维护既得利益的动机。这本书的阅读体验是沉浸式的,它不是让你坐在那里被动接受知识,而是让你主动参与到对这些商业悲剧的“审判”之中,逻辑推演严密,引人入胜。
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