6. Business Turnaround

Challenge

Your company is at break-even or losing money.  You need to get the business turned around and have it become solidly profitable.

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Three Fundamentals to Consider

To get your company turned around and solidly profitable, consider:

1. Face reality and determine the root cause or causes of your company’s challenges.
2. Focus relentlessly on the 2 – 3 critical issues that will address these root causes.
3. Get the right people in place doing the right job (for the success of the company).

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Relevant Blog Posts to Read

• Business Turnaround 101 – Let’s Be Honest
• Business Turnaround 201 – Focus
• Business Turnaround 301 – Right People Doing the Right Job

• Change – A Broad Overview
• Three Hidden Truths about Change
• Achieving Real Cultural Change – A CEO’s Perspective (PowerPoint Presentation)
• Three Ways Companies Bungle Change Initiatives

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Pertinent Book Summaries to Review

• How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In (Jim Collins)
• Lessons from Private Equity Any Company Can Use (Orit Gadiesh and Hugh MacArthur)
• Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise Through Dramatic Change (Louis V. Gerstner Jr.)

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Appropriate Book Chapter from 110% Success

• Chapter 5 – A Successful Company Improves and Evolves

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Related Quotes to Think About

• “The fall from greatness, though, was from lost discipline driven by a failure of leadership to listen, to continuously renew, to act sooner, and to keep the strategy fresh and great along the way. Like the popular buy and hold investment strategy, some of the companies seemed happy with average performance and overly reluctant to fix what wasn’t (clearly) broken.” Arthur Laffer (Economist and business consultant)

• “The industrial landscape is already littered with the remains of once successful companies that could not adapt their strategic vision to altered conditions of competition.” Ralph Abernathy (American civil rights leader)

• “Focusing on the right critical issues – no more than three to five, in most cases – is crucial to achieving success.” Orit Gadiesh and Hugh MacArthur (Authors of Lessons from Private Equity any Company Can Use)

• “The hardest part of a business transformation is changing the culture – the mindset and instincts of the people in the company.” Lou Gerstner (Former CEO of IBM)