The order of the Phoenix

Given the speed at which CEOs and presidents joined and then left in the past 18 months or so, American companies must have seriously considered installing revolving doors at their corner offices. The leadership at The Home Depot, Gap, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Ford Motors""to name just five companies""changed over the past 12 months, even as other business leaders were mired in controversy and scandal: remember Martha Stewart and Jeffrey Katzenberg? But for every Carly Fiorina, John Sculley and Jacques Nasser, whose careers seem to have been ground into the dust even as they were dethroned, there's a Donald Trump, a Martha Stewart, a Michael Milken or even a Michael Bloomberg and Jimmy Carter, who returned from ignominy to greater triumph.

So does that mean it is possible to overcome catastrophic professional setbacks and repair tattered reputations? Yes, say Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Andrew Ward in Firing Back. The two management professors (Yale and Georgia, respectively) spend the first half of their book trying to understand the effect of a leader's failure on himself and those surrounding him. While the loss of self-esteem and the awareness of what the career derailment actually means will naturally hinder any recovery process, the authors point out that the collateral damage will also act as a huge barrier to any attempt to bounce back.

But that's only to be expected. After all, the masses""and the stockmarket""can be notoriously unforgiving. So when someone in a position of power and influence messes up, they need to work extra hard to redeem themselves. "Failure and setback, although commonly experienced, is still a taboo topic in our modern society, where visible success is lauded," notes the book. Still, the authors have managed to speak in depth with several "humbled but restored" leaders and the result is a timely and surprisingly intimate account of failures and their aftermath. More to the point, it also offers a five-point recovery program that is probably applicable not just to the "leaders" the book mentions, but virtually anyone who is staring at professional ruin in the face (admit it, most of us have been there at some point).

Still, this is not an easy book to read. And I'm referring not just to the page after unrelenting page of close type""no photographs or other visual aids for relief""although that's tough enough. No, it's the not-precisely-cheerful subject and some downright depressing chapters that make Firing Back tough going at times. If you're tempted to write yourself off after the first 100-odd pages, it's understandable. These were some of the biggest brains in industry, people who had probably been tagged as most likely to succeed right from kindergarten: if they messed up, what chance do you have of ever succeeding? You may as well give up right now.

But that's precisely the kind of attitude Sonnenfeld and Ward want to discourage. These people bounced back, they remind us. They were resilient, heroic (the authors' word, not mine) almost, in their quest for new challenges and new goals. Get up and get on with your life, they exhort. Don't get so caught up in recovering from the failure and loss of reputation that you forget to set yourself new targets.

Oh, and while you're at it, brush the dust off your address book and start calling friends and contacts: you need all the help you can get. And it's not just moral support but also about good leads for the next job. The authors make an interesting observation here: more than close friends, it is acquaintances that are likely to play a pivotal role in finding the next career step. "... more [job contacts] came from people seen less than once a year than close friends seen twice or more per week," they write, quoting independent research. "Even distant relationships that don't appear to be of any long-term consequence may be key to recovery when careers derail. Consequently, the lesson here is to never burn bridges and to treat people well even in inconsequential business transactions." In other words, be good to people on your way up; you'll meet them again on your way down.

Sonnenfeld and Ward are a little less convincing with the last three steps in their recovery program: rebuilding heroic stature, proving your mettle and rediscovering heroic mission. At a time when corporate scandals are more the rule than the exception, and when multi-million-dollar severance paycheques sweeten the most acrimonious departure, it's a little difficult to credit "heroism" to today's corporate leaders. As the examples in the book prove repeatedly, they're all too human.

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Firing Back
How Great Leaders Rebound After Career Disasters

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld & Andrew Ward
Harvard Business School Press
Price: $29.95; Pages: 306