THE GLOBAL LEADERSHIP SUMMIT

I have read both Good to Great and How the Mighty Have Fallen, by Jim Collins (on the web at jimcollins.com), who was yet another great speaker at the Summit who addressed specifically The Five Stages of Decline in any organization. This can happen to any organization, including individual churches. All of these stages are self-inflicted. As Collins states on his website, “Whether you prevail or fail depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.” He sounds like a preacher!

Stage 1 is “Hubris born of success”

Hubris has been defined as, “excessive pride that brings the hero down.” Outrageous arrogance develops, and neglects all that is important.

The antithesis of this Stage 1 of decline is: it is not about them as leaders, and they never ever give up. They are Level Five leaders, cut from a different cloth. The signature quality that separated Level Five leaders from Level Four was humility.

That humility, a very special type -- burning, passionate ambition to do whatever it takes, no matter what, starts to evaporate in Stage 1 of decline, according to Collins.

Have you or your church become too proud from success in ministry?

Stage 2 “Undisciplined Pursuit of More”

The organization starts to think, “We are really good, therefore we can do more.” Not humble, overreaching, going too far, breaking David Packard’s law (Find Packard at www8.hp.com/us/en/company-information/executive-team/packard.html.) which states, “No company can consistently grow revenues faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth and still become a great company.” That's a founder of Hewlett/Packard speaking.

The antithesis of this Stage 2 of decline is: do we have all the seats filled with fantastic people? If not, we cannot move forward. We need the right people on the bus, then we can figure out where to drive the bus.

Have you or your church ever gotten greedy over a good thing?

Stage 3 “Denial of Risk and Peril”

A company starts to deny the signs of things that are not right. They keep moving in the wrong direction. On the outside you really look great, which makes it easy to deny. Are we a team on the way up or a team on the way down?

In the book Love and War, it addresses how POWs survived the torture in prison camps and were eventually freed. How did a prisoner survive, not knowing the end of the story? Admiral Stockdale (Find him on the web at admiralstockdale.com/.) is a POW in this story, and his secret of survival -- now called the “Stockdale Principle” -- was: never ever waver in the belief that you will get out. The prisoners who did not make it out were the "optimists," who thought, "We will be out by Christmas," but Christmas came and went, and they died of broken hearts. Never confuse faith and fact.

Have you or your church never confronted the elephant in the room?

Stage 4 “Grasping for Salvation”

The game is up. The risk you denied throws you over the edge and you are falling. The company went looking for a silver bullet that never was fired -- the revolutionary breakthrough that will save them. They even go outside the company looking for a savior.

Greatness is never a single event. It is a process. An organization needs to get back to the “flywheel principle” to overcome this stage. Turn upon turn, push upon push, disciplined and intentional -- that is how you climb out of this Stage 4 of decline. It does not happen any other way.

Have you or your church looked for a quick fix, or new hire to get you out of trouble?

Stage 5 “Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death”

This is the stage in which we give up. We have squandered everything away and the game is over.

Why are companies still standing? Why are they still strong all through the struggles? Because they had a reason to endure, so they thought. But if we measure success by money we will always lose. The question we should ask ourselves is, “What would be lost if we disappeared?”

You have to have core values that will not be compromised. Do not forget: the signature of mediocrity is inconsistency. To survive and be revived one must preserve the core values, and set big, hairy, audacious goals (BHAGs). This will in turn stimulate progress.

Have you or your church ever faced the inevitable situation of "Change or die"?

These are some principles to consider as we look at our own lives and the lives of our churches.

I encourage you to purchase Jim Collins' books (starting with Built to Last, which he co-authored with a fellow Stanford faculty member), and read further if this sparked interest in you. These stages of decline are all about apathy. Collins' books will help give you some answers as to how you might turn you or your church around before you fall. They are great principles, and, ironically, just like all great principles, I believe you can find a Biblical basis for each one of them.