Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 12, 2017 | Men Of Success - Fall 2017, Session 4 - How The Mighty Fall

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October 12, 2017 | Men Of Success - Fall 2017, Session 4 - How The Mighty Fall · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: All right, man.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to uh Men of Success.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Man, was was that a breakfast spread or what?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh Tom and the guys did a great job on that.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: So as I was uh reading through the notes this week and kind of got to the some of the closing comments and uh and a thought hit me.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I wanted to ask you guys, you know, how many of you feel like you have grown more and drawn closer to the Lord as you've gone through trials in your life or your valleys, things like that.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, most most of us, you know.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, as we get into the uh you know the lesson this week, you know, we find that um you know we really do ourselves a disservice, according to the author, if we only study those that are successful.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh better to study the uh the companies that you know have either failed or headed that way, lest we do the same thing uh out of ignorance.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I really believe that there are some analogies to our personal lives as there are to the business world.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna let Jim and Derek take us through all of the warning signs.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Good morning.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing, Derek?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing good.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: How are you?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing great.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: I had a good vacation last week.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Good to be back.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're uh we're tackled on a book today by uh guy who's a big name in business, Jim Collins.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you guys heard of the book Good to Great, probably, right?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Written early 21st century.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think we'll um I've been thinking about that book.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think we'll do that next semester.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that'd be a good one to do too.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: So after he did Good to Greats, like Paul said, Um, Collins thought, uh, are there are there, hey Wes, thanks for everything you did this morning.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Are there ways that you can tell if you're not headed from good to great, but headed on a trajectory that's uh down and to the right?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so as he studied companies, he came up with these five sort of uh uh stages of decline in companies, and we want to talk about that.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's in the intro, he he gives a picture of his wife, and you know, she's running up this mountain, and she is she's basically smoking them.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, man, catching his breath, trying to get his wind, and she's making her way to the top, and how it looked like from the outside that she was you know healthy, looked like she had everything going on, she was doing well.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then come to find out, I think it was cancer.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: Cancer slowly started to obviously it had started before that point, but cancer was developing inside her body, and so you couldn't see it.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so yeah, so even when she was looking healthy, she would start a decline inside because she had this uh breast cancer or something.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of my great-grandma.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: So my great grandma just passed away over the course of this weekend, and she's 97, or was 97, and so we're heading up to Indiana after this to go to the funeral tomorrow.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: But she was a lady who all her life is, you know, looking healthy, looking healthy, looking healthy, even into her 90s, and she's still driving, and everyone's like, Oh my goodness, why is she still driving?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: But she's still driving her little red neon around.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: And she was she was a cruiser.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Less appreciated that one.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: But she, it's one of those things where looks good on the outside, looks good on the outside, but in the inside and in her mind, she had dementia starting to set in, becoming really forgetful.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't till almost the very end when everyone then could see, oh man, this thing is not good.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: What's going on in her brain is is not helpful.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's kind of that that trajectory, and he's gonna go through these five stages of at first, it doesn't it's not really visible to the outside that you're starting into decline.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: But then towards the end, when you're pretty close to the end of whatever it is, then people can really notice it, which is interesting.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I like the I like the uh metaphor you're using in the transition that while we're talking about he's talking about companies, that you're suggesting a lot of these principles apply to individuals or families or churches.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: So let's uh jump into these five.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: So these are the five stages of a company failure.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh that's what Jim Collins is writing about.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the five stages of decline.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's too small for you to see up here on the screen.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: But stage one is hubris born of success, stage two is the undisciplined pursuit of more, stage three, denial of risk and peril, stage four, grasping for salvation, stage five, capitulation to irrelevance or death.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna walk through those.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to do what Jim Collins doesn't do.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna try to come up with a biblical evidence because we think there's biblical evidence for these.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so why don't you why don't you start us off on this on this first one, stage one, hubris born of success.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: What is hubris anymore?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so what hubris born of success.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: What what is he talking about?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: What is he trying to say?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Basically saying that at the beginning, when, and I'm sure we've all probably experienced this, whenever we've endeavored to do something, it's been really successful at the beginning.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so we've had the success, we've had the success, and it's that point where we feel like, man, we're on top of the world, we're killing it, I am so good at what I'm doing, there's there's nothing that can stop me.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: And instead of humility taking over, then the pride takes over.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it's you start to become blind to some of the negatives, you start to become blind to some of the things that you need to do to continue to grow and to be innovative and all these things because you just think you've got it going on.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think of I love sports analogies, but when playing sports, we can probably all think of somebody at some point on one of our teams who maybe they started to work really hard and they got really good at their position or their skill, and then at some point, something went off in their brains where they said, Hey, I'm really good right now.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't need to keep lifting the way that I was lifting to continue to get better.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: I don't need to keep practicing the way I was practicing to continue to get better because I'm I'm good, I made it, I'm here.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then as soon as we hit that point, we start that that downward spiral of not continuing to improve.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good point.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what what the way he puts it is that great enterprises can become insulated by success.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then stage one kicks in when people become arrogant, uh, they lose sight of the true factors that created their success in the first place.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: So uh he gives illustrations in here, right?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Motorola, that was the uh stereo that I used back in college.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: You guys all remember Motorola?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: I remember my grandma, she had a Ford Explorer, and it was when cell phones were first coming out, and this thing was drilled and mounted onto the floorboard with this big brick of a cell phone.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: And it was Motorola, because they they invented the cell phones.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: And we don't see Motorola anymore.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: The company began in 1928, but in 1989 he says that it became one of the most visionary companies in the world.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: But just five years later, uh because of its arrogance and because of it moved into stage two, trying to do too much.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it uh uh he lists all of its its StarTec phone used in analog technology, uh, even when everybody else was going digital.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so it had enjoyed 50% market share in the late 80s, but the market share just plummeted.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Texas instruments went the opposite direction.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: So so that's his first stage is hubris point of success.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Did you want to address uh he he lists these sort of um uh indicators or markers uh for this?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, each of these different things.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, success, entitlement, arrogance, so kind of that that pride thing starts to take over, neglect of a primary flywheel.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: By flywheel, he means This is like your your your core business, your your core thing that you are built around.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: So if that's your business, what's your main product or value or whatever it is that is your main thing instead of all the peripheral things that you can jump out, you know, which he's gonna get into in step two, and then the what replaces the why.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: So we kind of talked about those two questions in a different context last week.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: But basically what he means by that is we lose track of why we're even here.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we just become so conf so focused on the thing that we're doing that we forget the why, and then it you know we lose some of that passion and drive.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so forth.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: I like that last one, discounting the roll of luck.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And um I remember when um to Pika Bible was uh spurting in growth and be able to say, you need to have a you need to have a church conference and invite people from across the country and tell them how you're doing it.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, We're just we're just lucky.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: We get people like Dan he comes in and you know, he changes everything for us.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so I I don't really think that there's now you're not supposed to use the word luck in church, you're supposed to say providence, but uh anyway, so that's the first category.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, uh, you know, when we're thinking of okay, how does this reflect it in the Bible?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Probably the king Isaiah is the most sterling example.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: He's a guy who became king uh when he was 16, and he was so good at it as a teenager that they that they told his dad Amaziah to step down early.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I and Isaiah was a ruler for 52 years.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he sought God, it says during the days of Zachariah, that was the uh high priest, who instructed him, and as long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: He had success on the battlefield, he defeated the Philistines, he defeated the Egyptians, he defeated a lot of people, he became extremely wealthy, he had prosperity, and then he had a lot of fame, his fame spread far and wide.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then they have this incredible verse in 2 Chronicles 26, 16.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: He was unfaithful to the Lord his God.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that showed with him going in the temple and feeling like he was such a stud that he could he could put on a priest's uh uh turban thing and he could offer the incense at the altar.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: So he shoves the priest aside, says, I want to do it, I want to do it, that's cool.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so he offered the incense, and at that very moment God struck him with leprosy.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's why he's uh he's not he's not putting on Suntan lotion up there on his head.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's the sudden the sudden uh onset according to this old painting of leprosy, and that led to his downfall.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: So he was a great illustration of of this first category.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so then we jump into the second, this undisciplined pursuit of more.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So now I personally like a word he uses in this chapter called overreaching, um which is when a company or a church or a mission, you know, I'm dealing, uh I'm on the board of a mission that, and my view is doing this right now, a small mission that just has this ambition to save all seven billion people in the world instead of focusing on one small category.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he talks about how uh businesses are guilty of this.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I love this paragraph in chapter two.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: We anticipated in his survey, study, that most companies fall from greatness because they become complacent.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: They fail to stimulate innovation, they fail to initiate bold action, they just become lazy.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's a plausible theory with a problem.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't square with our data.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: The companies in our analysis showed little evidence of complacency when they fell.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Overreaching much better explains how the ones invisible, invincible, that should be invincible.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh yeah, uh spell check, uh self-destruct.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then he gives these illustrations of four companies that he feels are guilty of this.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Motorola increased even as it was declining, it almost doubled its number of patents.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Merck uh uh uh pharmaceuticals, in while in decline, became number one in the country by a long ways of all pharmaceutical companies in patenting 1933 new compounds while it was in decline.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: In 1999, Hewlett Patrick launched this new campaign and doubled its patent applications while it was in stage four decline.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then his favorite illustration is RubberMade, which in the 80s bragged that it would put out a new product every day and did so for three years, had a thousand new products, and became and drowned in its own new products.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was getting write-ups at the same time in Forbes and Atlantic Monthly as the number one innovative program in America, as I mean company, ahead of Apple, ahead of you know everybody else, but it drowned in its overreaching, in its undisciplined pursuit of more.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: I find this the most fascinating, surprising chapter of any of the chapters in the book.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: This this whole idea that you can decline while sort of doubling your effort.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, one of the quotes that I thought was really good is on 56, and he says, any exceptional enterprise depends first and foremost upon having self-managed and self-motivated people.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: The number one ingredient for a culture of discipline.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what this whole stage is about is the lack of discipline and just constantly going out and oh, we're gonna go do this and do this.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: And we see that, you know, through all these companies who try to get all these different patents, and we see that they're just grasping for stuff, hoping that they're gonna find the next best thing.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: And by doing that, you're taking your energy into all of these things that are really unsure, really untested, really shaky, and you're moving away from that primary flywheel, you're moving away from your core business and and those core values that you are built around, and then you spread yourself way too thin.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: If you guys have ever played the game Risk, you spread yourself way too thin because you're trying to take over the world, and then the next turn you're wiped off the map by the little country of Congo who only had 30 people.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's like that illustration.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: You get wiped out because you lose your core of where you're at.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: One of the questions I want you to deal with at your table later is uh uh how can overreaching uh uh kill a family or kill an individual?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: How have you seen overreaching endanger an individual or or a family?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: So um, etc.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: etc.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: etc.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And don't need to read all this.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and the illustration, of course, perfect illustration.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Solomon is a guy who had lots of wives, lots of concubines, and and he failed because remember back in Deuteronomy, the warning was don't multiply wives for yourself.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: King shouldn't do that, nor should he multiply silver and gold.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: So Solomon did both of those things, and that's why he fell.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now the the wives' problem was not just that you know he's having too much sex, it's the fact that they were all political marriages, and so they're coming in and they're bringing their idols, and so they're setting up their idols, and verse 3 says, His wives turned away his heart, for it was so when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, his heart wasn't loyal.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the it's that's what happens.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not so much uh as C.S.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis often will say, the issue is not the sex, or the issue is not the money itself, it's it's it's that it turns your heart away from things that are more important.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: So uh final final here's a final slide I've put up here.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: A company is much more likely to die of indigestion from too much opportunity than to die of starvation from too little.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that a fascinating statement?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: May also be true of families.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Take us uh uh uh talk us about number three for a second.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: Denial of risk or and peril.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: This is a huge one.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: So after we've had that hubris born of success, we we've got the prideful, we think we're on top of the world, we start reaching for doing all these new things, spreading ourselves too thin.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then we get to the point where, as Collins is gonna say, we we know that some of these negative things are there, we know some of the red flags are there, some of these things that we should probably stop and not pursue, but we minimize them and say, they're not really that bad, or I don't really need to stop that, or I don't really need to focus on my primary business, on my primary thing.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm okay.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it can be dangerous and and can even lead to death, not just in the figurative form of your business or your company or or wherever, but physical death.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that we see in the book, Collins gives the example of the Challenger.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so you guys, you guys remember the Challenger.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: Spaceship went up, exploded, you know, about a minute or so after takeoff.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that we see that's really interesting is that with the Challenger, they the O-rings that were on it were tested beforehand.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: And typically when you're going to do something like that, the question that you ask any lists in the book is Is it safe to launch?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Is it proven that it's going to be safe to launch?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: And over the course of their testing, they realized that the O-rings were were busting, were malfunctioning at anywhere lower than 66 degrees.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so the engineers knew this going into it.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: But the the question changed from is this going to be safe to launch, to is it proven that it's unsafe to launch?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so because they didn't necessarily have evidence that it was 100% going to be un sir safe to launch, they went ahead and launched it anyway, knowing that these O-rings were malfunctioning if it gets below 66 degrees.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so on the day the Challenger launched, the temperature was below 66 degrees.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: The O-rings busted, which caused the Challenger to explode.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's an example that he gives of hey, we know these red flags are there.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: We know that there's some things we need to maybe stop or check or do some more research on or test more, but we're going to ignore those because we really want to see this thing happen.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: We really want this business thing to happen, we really want this exciting new venture that we're on to happen.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it literally costs them their lives.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, these are just temporary difficulties, these are cyclic, it's not that bad.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: In this stage, leaders discount negative data and amplify positive data.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: They prefer to blame setbacks rather than accept responsibility.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, they put their heads in the sand.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: So if you find uh if you find that you're part of a company or a family or church that's amplifying the positive and discounting the negatives, trying to explain away, saying it's somebody else's fault, or uh making big bets and setting bold goals, you know, uh taking risks and encouraging these risks based on ambiguous data, then you may be in stage three.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Three important questions he suggests that you ask when you're making a big decision what's the upside if events turn out well?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: What's the downside if events go very badly?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And can you live with the downside?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, really quickly, the biblical illustration I think is Rhoboam.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you remember, his dad was Solomon.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Solomon left, uh left the kingdom uh with people really mad about taxes, and people were upset, and they came to Rhoboam and said, We're gonna secede, we're we're not gonna hang around if you're gonna be a if you're gonna continue the high taxes of your dad.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: So Rhoboam uh uh he checked with Solomon's counselors, the senior advisors, and they said, you need to lower taxes and start being a nicer guy.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then he went to his young buddies and they said, forget that, you gotta be tough.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so he scoffed at that threat to secede.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: He tried to bully them, and Israel fell apart and has never been together since that date of 931 BC.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's an illustration of number three.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Number uh number we'll go uh through number four and number five, where you have this uh uh downturn.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Notice the up and down part of this stage four, because you you know you bring in a charismatic leader or you try this wild new program, and for a few months or a year it may seem better as you're grasping for salvation, but you're still on on the downside.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is a stage when you're grasping.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Gasping for, you know, you're looking for silver bullets.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the one thing that can save you or save your company.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or you hire a leader to be your savior, and you're in panic, and you're trying uh radical changes, and you know, so making lots of noise.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: So um he says uh watch out uh in this.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, the illustration I think that's perfect.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna hustle through this.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is I don't know if you remember in the last, and I love this painting by William Blake, but um King Saul at the end of his life, remember things are going downhill, he's in severe and rapid decline, and and he thinks, okay, I've got a silver bullet.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm gonna pay this uh soothsayer, this witch, to summon my old friend, the prophet Samuel from the dead, and he's gonna give me the silver bullet that'll help me defeat the Philistines and solve all my problems.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, um it becomes a horror story, and and Samuel says, you're going down all the way, and he does.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh finish this up.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you capitulation to irrelevance.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I noticed that he gives an option that he says, unless you're totally belly up, he says you can recover even at the end, even at stage four.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: So, but but oftentimes companies will continue on to irrelevance and death.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's very rare, but oftentimes if you get to the end of stage four, you're grasping for these silver bullets, trying to find the the leader savior, you know, maybe like HP tried to do with Carly Fiorina.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because have this woman leader, we're gonna have all this following, and you know, it still doesn't help because you're not capitalizing, you're not clicking on your core business.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: Then you go into stage five, and basically you're dead.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: Your business is gonna be toast, your organization is gonna be done for.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's you know, one of these things like Zenith.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: You guys probably remember Zenith, especially they were huge in the TV business, and then they tried to, after grasping for salvation, you know, trying to find the silver bullets of moving into the uh the computer world, and they didn't do so hot at that, and then crash, and they're they're done.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think one of the interesting things is, and maybe an example of this is is Judas from the Bible.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: But he tried to do all these different things, he you know was betraying Jesus, he wanted to become rich, he's doing what would be a crazy thing, going and getting the money and then turning Jesus in, and then eventually it became too much, and he he ended up you know hanging himself.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: And so with this last stage, it's I think a cool thing to point out is this last stage doesn't just happen overnight.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's not all of a sudden, oops, I'm I'm done for my business is done for, my relationship with this specific person is done for.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: But we see through these first four stages that it takes some time to get there.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not overnight, and it typically goes through each of these different stages.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: So let's make a transition, Derek, to group time, okay?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, here are the five stages again hubris born of success, undisciplined pursuit of more or overreaching, denial of risk and peril, grasping for salvation or silver bullets, and then capitulation.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh by the way, next week uh we're gonna take Annie Stanley.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Many of you have heard of him, uh Mega Church Pastor Atlanta.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's written a book about a real simple idea about success, about getting on the right path, and that's uh what we'll take next week.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um but here are some questions that we've come up with.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you may want to come up with your own questions at your table.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: But question one have you ever seen the mighty fall, a mighty company, church, leader, or friend?
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_01: Which of these steps, hubris, pursuit of more, denial of danger, licking probe for a silver bullet, were visible to you?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Second, think back on your own life, back to a time when you fell from success.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Were you guilty of any of these five?
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Third, talk about how overreaching is a problem in today's families.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Give an example.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Four, once again, once again, for like the fourth straight week, pride or hubris surfaces as a critical issue in the business world.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, would you uh take us to group time by leading us in prayer?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Heavenly Father, thanks for this amazing breakfast we get to have, this fellowship we get to have this morning, and then talking about these leadership principles that we see in scripture and you've instituted and you've created, and we get to use those in our lives.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: Help us in our group discussion, build these relationships, help us in our businesses, help us in our families and all of our relationships.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' name, amen.