Virtually all corporations stagnate at some point in their lifetime, and only one in ten ever recaptures a sustainably high growth rate. Why?
Very few large companies manage to avoid stalls in revenue growth. These stalls are not attributable to the natural business cycle. Rather, careful analysis reveals that the vast majority of such stalls are the direct result of strategic choices made by corporate leaders. In short, stoppages in growth are almost always avoidable. This extensively researched book analyzes the growth experiences of more than six hundred Fortune 100 companies over the past fifty years to identify why growth stalls and to discover how to rectify a stall in progress or, even better, avoid one.
Board members and executives in companies of all sizes will find this book a practical and essential resource. Matthew S. Olson and Derek van Bever investigate the incidence and consequences of growth stalls in major corporations, then probe the root causes. Examining hundreds of stall points, the authors conclude that the greatest threat to a company’s growth is posed by obsolete strategic assumptions that undermine market position, and by breakdowns in innovation and talent management. The study includes a selection of practices for articulating and monitoring strategic assumptions and concludes with a self-test built around fifty “Red Flag” warning signs of an impending growth stall.
Top Four Reasons a Firm May Stall:
• Premium position captivity
• Innovation management breakdown
• Premature core abandonment
• Talent shortfall
About the Author :
Matthew S. Olson is an executive director and Derek van Bever is the chief research officer of the Corporate Executive Board (NASDAQ:EXBD), the premier advisory and performance improvement network for leaders of the world’s largest public and private organizations. The authors live in the Washington, DC area.
Review :
"In Stall Points, [the authors] have studied the growth performance of more than 600 U.S. corporations in the postwar years. Their conclusion? About 87% of businesses will hit what they call a stall point. . . . This book offers a useful checklist in how not to do it, a cost-effective way to learn from other people's mistakes. It is a bit like having access to a wily old non-executive director."—Stefan Stern, Los Angeles Times
"About 87% of businesses will hit what [the authors] call a stall point. . . . This book offers a useful checklist in how not to do it, a cost-effective way to learn from other people's mistakes."—Stefan Stern, Los Angeles Times
Selected as one of the Top 10 Business Books of 2008 by Harvey Schachter of the Toronto Globe & Mail
"Stall Points is grounded in competent and compelling research. There is no fluff here. It is a cogent, practical guide to the most pressing problem today’s managers face: How to sustain growth."—Clayton M. Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School, and author of The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution
"Every company that sets itself a growth trajectory worries about the very real danger of stalling. What makes this critical is that most companies do not realize it even as they encounter stall points. Stall Points captures this dilemma perfectly. Based on the experience of several organizations across the world, the authors have produced a compelling piece of research. The key takeaway for me personally is the need to build an organization that will identify stall points either before or as they occur, so that corrective action can be taken to put the company back onto its original growth trajectory."—Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries
"Stall Points provides a unique combination of fact-based analysis and insight from a broad range of large corporate experience. While no book can hold the answer to growth, this one provides valuable tools to help management take the critical first steps of self-assessment and root cause analysis on the road to driving change in the firm."—Mike Giersch, Vice President, Strategic Planning, IBM Corporation
"This book was a real call to action for us at Caterpillar as we needed to break through the $20 billion stall point in our top line. I recommend this book to every business leader who wants to maintain high growth or recover from a growth stall."—David B. Burritt, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Caterpillar Inc.
"Growth is the oxygen of any corporate enterprise, but it’s very hard work—full of uncertainty, difficult questions and difficult choices. Those on the front lines can read an unlimited number of books and articles on growth, but few are as thoroughly grounded in original research, combine the best insights from both academic and consultant thought leaders, and are as littered with pragmatic examples (good and bad) from world class companies. Stall Points is both depressing and exciting. The authors unearth the root causes of the almost-inevitable growth stalls that companies experience, then show that 87% of them are self-inflicted—either strategy failures or organizational failures. Most importantly, they offer actionable ways to both anticipate and react to those circumstances."—Daniel G. Simpson, Vice President, Office of the Chairman and CEO, The Clorox Company
