Choosing Slow Death: Manager 3

Manager 3 in our slow death series said the following.
“As a member of a top-management team, I experienced the slow death of a major corporation ten years ago.  We…resisted change until we were forced to engage an entire series of wild and uncoordinated changes.  Finally, we went through a slow, painful death.  It was a merger that few of our people survived.  Now I’m experiencing it all over again.  It is a haunting case of, ‘Hey, I’ve been here before.'”
Here we see another conservative culture that was impervious to change.  The manager notes a pattern that is often a part of the slow death process, the shift to “wild and uncoordinated changes.”  With this shift, slow death tends to turn into fast death, at which point it is usually too late to turn things around; the organization is so weakened that it dies.  Note that this observer, a top manager, has seen the process before, and is watching it unfold once again.
Reflection:
Are any of these patterns familiar?
Have you experienced them in your own organization?
What could you or other leaders have done to halt the process of slow death and turn it around?
(The Deep Change Field Guide, p. 31-34)