Dartmouth College "Chalk Talk" video
presented by the Dartmouth College Office of Alumni Relations

"Why Smart Executives Fail and What You Can Learn From Their Mistakes"
Professor Sydney Finkelstein
Steven Roth Professor of Management
Tuck School of Business at Darmouth
(1 hr. 5 min. 52 sec.)

The Scene: a CEO is celebrated on the cover of Fortune. Soon after, the company is in the midst of a financial fiasco. What went wrong?

It seems that top management made some incredibly stupid mistakes, but the people responsible are almost always remarkably intelligent and usually have terrific track records.

Oftentimes, an attribute in small quantities is exactly what a professional needs to succeed but, if practiced in excess, becomes the root cause of failure.

"Why Smart Executives Fail" relates the stories of great business disasters and demonstrates the ways business decision-makers make themselves vulnerable to failure as well as offers suggestions on how to avoid a similar fate.