How the Mighty Fall

It’s been said that “Success is the second-worst thing that can happen to a company.”?It can seduce its leaders into believing they have discovered some eternal market truth that will never change and all that is required for continued success is to make sure that no one tinkers with a great, but never everlasting, business model or strategy.

To wit, Sears.?This CNN story warns that this holiday season could be the last for Sears?and another fading retail icon, K-Mart. The decline of both has been gradual and painful to watch and began before Gen X, Y and Z were born. Sears was the Amazon of its day and through its legendary catalog brought an unprecedented selection of goods, fair prices, and ease of access, especially to what was then a predominantly rural America. You could even?buy a house from Sears?which would be shipped to you as a kit on a rail car and could be knocked together by a competent carpenter in a few weeks. (370 different models were available and 70,000 units were sold).

The CNN article offers additional links for a deeper dive into a story that every businessperson should familiarize themselves with against the day when a competitor (in this case Amazon, Wal-Mart) appears with a different answer to a problem the giant couldn’t or wouldn’t see. See also the Smithsonian article?The Rise and Fall of Sears. By way of saving your company from a similar fate, I highly recommend a lesser-known but nonetheless important book by Jim Collins’?How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In.

You cannot determine what happens to your company after you leave the helm, but you can give your successor the best chance to succeed. It remains to be seen if Wal-Mart and Amazon will avoid the same fate as Sears and K-Mart.