Too Good To Fail?
How Management Gets It Wrong & How You Can Get It Right

Book Title

By: Jane Filochowski
December 2013
Pearson Education
Distributed by Trans-Atlantic Publications Inc.
ISBN: 9780273785231
230 Pages, Illustrated
$45.00 Paper Original


Description:

Business leaders the world over are hardwired to focus on success. But what if understanding failure is the real secret behind enduring performance?

In Too Good To Fail?, Jan Filochowski turns his twenty years’ experience as a CEO and turnaround specialist into practical advice for business managers.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

About the author

Introduction

PART ONE: UNDERSTANDING FAILURE

Chapter 1 – Mentioning the Unmentionable

What failure looks like

The omnipresence of failure

Measuring success and failure

Misrepresenting success and failure

The infectiousness of failure

Chapter 2 – The Pattern of Failure: The Yosemite Curve

Phase 1: Struggle

Phase 2: Denial

Phase 3: Freefall

Phase 4: Rock Bottom

Phase 5: Recovery

Phase 6: Consolidation

Chapter 3 – Other Types of Failure

Total failure – the Niagara drop

Shallow failure: the frying pan

Broadening failure: the Grand Canyon

PART TWO: AVOIDING FAILURE

Chapter 4 – Passive Warning Signs

Ignorance

Certainty

Complacency

Chapter 5 – Active Alarm bells

Obsession

Manipulation

Evasion

Chapter 6 – The cultural litmus test

A reckless culture?

A culture of false reassurance?

A culture of gaming?

A culture of control?

PART THREE: CURING FAILURE

Chapter 7 – Regaining confidence

Talking to staff

Reaching outside

Responding

Retaining Momentum

Trumpeting success

Chapter 8 – Getting back in control

Digging till you find the cause

Tackling immediate problems

Rebuilding the mechanisms for managing

Unlocking the organisation

PART FOUR: SUCCEEDING

Chapter 9 – The opposite of failure

Adapting

Giving and getting feedback

Managing relentlessly

Chapter 10 – The importance of being honest

The unbreakable triangle

Passivity and fatalism

Risk management and failure

Understanding process

Redesigning to solve

Chapter 11 – Mining the data

The devil is in the detail

Finding the kernel of truth

Approximating

Using information for performance management

Turning the world upside down

Chapter 12 – Fault tolerance, randomness and pattern

Living with imperfection

Managing the unknown

Randomness and pattern

Spikiness

Talent or luck?

Chapter 13 – Gauging the environment

Horizon scanning

Rule changes

Togetherness and partnership

Chapter 14 – The attentive manager

Dividing to grasp

Being attentive

Elucidation

Restricting your priorities

Understanding what is important

Final thoughts

Is success down to the individual or the approach?

Management or leadership?

Managing to lead

Good at being imperfect

Appendix: A Personal Account

Index