It’s always dangerous to take on an icon, but here we go.  Jim Collins has written a new book, How the Mighty Fall, and he’s on camera talking about it: http://tinyurl.com/rymn9m

Collins is the Marcus Welby of the business world.  He looks and sounds the part of the sage business adviser.  And the first thing that has to be said about him is that he is a consummate, technically near-perfect speaker – at least on camera and on the small screen.  That doesn’t always translate to the large stage, of course – and vice-versa. 

On screen, then, he’s got wonderful pacing – talking quickly, but every now and then slowing down markedly on a key point to emphasize it.  His voice is authoritative, his gestures passionate.  This is one smart, articulate guy. 

It’s the message that’s the problem.  Good to Great  purported to identify the characteristics that made a company great, and the recommendations in it at least were actionable.  The issue was that the companies identified as such soon fell off the lofty perch Collins had put them on. 

That made How the Mighty Fall inevitable, I suppose.  But the problem is that the five stages here are not actionable points in the life of an organization.  Instead, they’re moral judgments.  From ‘hubris born of success’ to the ‘undisciplined pursuit of more’ to the ‘denial of risk and peril’ to ‘grasping for salvation’ and finally ‘capitulation to irrelevance or death’, these so-called stages are actually moral states lifted from the religious classic Pilgrim’s Progress.  The title gives away the plot, in this case. 

I won’t get any thanks for saying so, but Collins is a preacher talking sin, not a business thinker showing us how to revivify ailing companies or an ailing economy.