Why is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company’s Chris Zook and James Allen, authors of the bestselling Profit from the Core, researched this question, they found that 90 percent of the challenges to growth are internal: increasing distance from the front lines, loss of accountability and proliferating processes and bureaucracy, to name only a few. More crucial is their finding that companies experience a set of predictable internal crises, at predictable stages, as they grow; and that for even the healthiest companies, these crises, if not managed properly, can stifle the company’s ability to grow further and actively lead it into decline.