You will often hear from people who will announce that it's all over, that this is the crisis that ends it, once and for all. The Cassandra sees the end of the road for the project or the brand or the culture. It's the end, now.

Cassandra is countered by the Pollyanna, who thinks everything is fine, will be fine and always is fine.

[Update: I got the details of the mythological Cassandra wrong, sorry. In legend, she not only says the world is going to end, but she's right, because she has the ability to see the future. And her curse is that no one listens to her! My point below, though, still stands enough that I'll leave it here:]

The thing is: failure almost always arrives in a whimper. It is almost always the result of missed opportunities, a series of bad choices and the rust that comes from things gradually getting worse.

Things don't usually explode. They melt.