[jfischer]

It is interesting to see this from a (former) CEO's perspective. I've seen many big company executives who get stuck in stage 3. I knew that my last big company was destined for failure when the CEO bought everyone a management book about dealing with change. He seemed to be saying, "its not me, its you". If he had a bit more humility, he could have made the changes to get the company moving again. Of course, it can be hard to accept responsibility when egos are big and failures are politicized.

In a startup, you have this process not just for the company itself, but for each setback (e.g. in fundraising, customer acquisition, customer issues, etc.). Establishing a culture of accepting responsibility and learning from failures is absolutely critical. I think the biggest thing I've learned about my time in the startup space is how to deal effectively (or at least better) with failure.