What can we learn from failure? According to Dr.Tim Irwin, plenty. Irwin presents the findings of his research on leadership failures in Derailed: Five Lessons Learned from Catastrophic Failures of Leadership. In Derailed, Irwin explores case studies of six well-known CEOs who, despite all the normal predictors of success, eventually succumbed to derailment and resigned or were fire by their boards. These leaders include:
- Bob Nardelli, former CEO of Home Depot
- Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard
- Durk Jager, former CEO of Proctor & Gamble
- Steven Heyer, former CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide
- Frank Raines, former CEO of Fannie Mae
- Dick Fuld, former CEO of Lehman Brothers
Irwin opens the book with brief case studies of each leader’s epic fall and then investigates the patterns in each story. He concludes that each leader’s derailment followed the same five stages:
- Stage One: A Failure of Self/Other-Awareness
- Stage Two: Hubris: Pride Before the Fall
- Stage Three: Missed Early Warning Signals
- Stage Four: Rationalizing
- Stage Five: Derailment
These stages are eerily similar to those outlined by Jim Collins in How the Mighty Fall. Dr. Irwin believes that in each case, the derailment stages were trigger by serious character flaws in the areas of authenticity, self-management, humility and courage. Irwin ends the book by offering a Derailed Online Assessment, where individuals can examine their own leadership to see how vulnerable to derailment they may be.
Overall the book presents some interesting findings on the stages of leadership failure. Unfortunately, other than the case studies, the book is light on research and heavy on anecdotal, often-irrelevant stories from Irwin’s life. It would be interesting to see the results of compiled data from the Derailed Online Assessment. Nonetheless, Derailed provides an intriguing read on how to fail, or better still, how to avoid failure.
[Full Disclosure: I received this book as a review copy from Thomas Nelson.]
