Aviation investigators have a euphemism: "controlled flight into terrain." What they mean is that a pilot took a perfectly functioning plane, in good conditions, and flew it into the ground, usually the side of a hill or a mountain.

Executives sometimes do this, too. They, like the pilots, have warning signs that they're about to crash, but they do it anyway.

Obviously, no one intends to crash, whether you're talking about a plane or a business. But executives can kid themselves into thinking that a problem isn't as severe as it really is or delay any reaction for so long that, before they know it, they're face-to-face with that mountain...executives told themselves that they were making needed improvements to their core businesses, that they were staying the course. In fact, they were just tinkering as a way of staying in denial about a threat that put that very business in doubt. Executives were rearranging the proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic.