On the contrary, why do many strategies that sound good fail in the end? Because they don't have credibility, they don't build the confidence of participants, and they are not practical. This is the opposite of the flywheel effect-the "death cycle". Enterprises caught in the death cycle also want to achieve strategic changes, but they lack enough persistence to produce the flywheel effect. They push for change with a manic enthusiasm and want to eat into a big fat man. Their strategy has only one direction. Once they encounter unexpected setbacks, they immediately turn to the other direction-they don't reflect well after failure, but change their CEO, change their strategy and start a new reform movement-continue to fail-so this enterprise has entered a "death cycle".
Look at Gillette's competitor Warner Lambotte in the early 1980s. In 1979, Warner Lambotte told Businessweek that they would become the leading manufacturer of consumer products. Only a year later, it turned its attention to the health care industry. By 198 1, diversification began. Soon, its main business turned back to consumer goods. 1987 began to claim to compete with Merck. In the early 1990s, due to the delay in passing the government's medical reform plan, it began to diversify. During the period from 1979 to 1998, Warner Lambotte Company changed three CEOs, and each CEO implemented a new strategy instead of inheriting the previous strategy. Finally, in 2000, the company was merged.