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There are two great American business start-up storylines. In one boy or girl meets idea, acquires funding and achieves rapid, huge and unbroken success. In the other the start-up times are hard, but after persevering, the business takes off on a long unbroken growth curve.

But it usually doesn't happen that way. As Matthew Olson and Derek van Bever pointed out in Stall Points, published last year, 87 percent of companies hit stall points, only 13 percent experience unbroken growth in revenue. The scary part of their findings was that almost 90 percent of the companies that stall never restart.

Stall Points is a great book, with a lot of depth and richness. But it's for the executive management of Fortune 100 companies. In other words, it's for the hired managers of very, very, very big companies.

That's probably not you. You can probably relate more to Steve McKee when he shows up in the first part of When Growth Stalls.

McKee tells us about going to "take a bow on behalf" of his company which had been named to the Inc. 500 list. He also tells us that he had this odd feeling that something was amiss, and things were starting to go bad, even when he was being lauded as CEO of a high growth company.

It turns out that his gut was right. His company was stalling, even though everything still looked good from the outside.

He describes the feeling. He describes what happened next. He describes how he and others at the company reacted to the stall and how they worked to turn the problem into good through research.

Been there. I've felt the early shivers of my own company stalling. I've watched clients who "knew" that something was wrong, even when the stats said, "No."

Steve McKee, the author, brings three things to this project that make it worth reading. First, he's been there. This is not a researcher scanning part of the universe of companies and rendering a dispassionate judgment. This is a businessman who has felt the problem as well as analyzed it.

Luckily for us, McKee himself and his company are comfortable with conducting and analyzing research. You get the results of their research and analysis of their surveys.

And, third, the man can write. He describes his own angst, puzzlement and analysis. He tells us the stories of other companies that he uses as examples of various points. The book is easy to read.

Alas, it doesn't always make sense. I'll hit a few of the instances as we move through the outline of the book. I've divided the book into sections.

The Introduction and the chapters titled "It's not Just Business, It's Personal" and "Growth Stalls" make up the first section. We learn about Steve McKee and his company's stall. We get a sense of his "street cred."

The next five chapters lay out McKee's reasons why growth stalls. For me, this was the strongest part of the book. McKee illustrates his points with vignettes that are well chosen and well told.

McKee sees business through the lens of marketing. Occasionally that causes a problem as distinctions between company strategy and marketing strategy get lost in a good story. By the end of the book it winds up being the only lens used.

The lynchpin between the first part of the book and the second is the chapter titled, "Vicious Cycle." For me, that term means a reinforcing feedback loop of causes. The diagram McKee chooses to illustrate his point about different causes interacting is a circle that illustrates something quite different.

The second part of the book begins with an excellent chapter, "Take a Deep Breath." Then the book moves to the chapters "Set Your Sights," "Find Your Target," "Sharpen Your Arrow" and let it fly. There's value here, but it's the weakest part of the book, more like a bunch of points in search of a metaphor than a coherent argument.

Which brings us to the last chapter, "It Works." McKee is explicit. "The marketing equation rules the day." Sorry. The marketing equation is important, but it's not the whole business. It doesn't address critical issues in sourcing, offshore competition, and human resource management that have a say in whether you profit or don't.

There are a lot of problems with this book, but they're all in the second half. If all you read is the first half, you'll get more than your money's worth. And even with the problems in the second half, there are still good ideas and observations there.

Bottom line: if the stuff that bothers me would bother you, buy When Growth Stalls for the first half and mine the second half for valuable insights. If the stuff that bothered me isn't important you, you'll get an even better deal.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.