“A business is worth saving when the people running it can face the numbers honestly and act on them fast. I have watched companies pull back from the edge because leadership stopped pretending the problem was only cash flow and started fixing the operational misalignment underneath it.”
“I look for whether the leadership team is still willing to change the decision system behind the equipment and the people, because that is where the real turnaround lives. If they only want cost cuts or a new dashboard, I have seen that movie before and the ending is always the same: the numbers swing back stronger than before.”
“I look for one thing first: whether the people at the centre can still make decisions and live with the truth. I have walked into turnarounds where the numbers were savable but the leadership could not face what had to be done, and that is where I have lost money and time. The business is worth saving when the owners are willing to hear what they do not want to hear.”
“I spent a year at Diablo Management Group as a turnaround consultant, and the first thing we did was separate the businesses that had a real customer problem from the ones that only had an owner problem.”
“I look at whether the cash burn is buying something measurable: a path to profitability, a defendable client relationship, or an asset base that someone else would pay for. If none of those exist, the kindest decision is often the fastest one.”
“I’ve run turnarounds where the business was worth saving and a few where the honest answer was no. BCG says only 20% succeed now, down from 30% in 2000, and in my experience the difference is whether the company still owns something customers will pay for once the legacy processes are stripped out.”
“I was recruited into a turnaround at an Australian communications consulting firm where the patient was basically dead on life support. The board was deciding whether to shoot it or sell it for scrap. What I learned there was that a business is only worth saving if there is still a buyer who wants what it could become, not just what it was.”
“I look at three things before I’ll touch a turnaround: is there a real market for what they sell, is the owner willing to hear hard truths, and can we find the cash to fund the pain while we fix the root cause. At Temple-Inland I inherited a plant bleeding money, but the customer need was real and the people wanted to win; we turned it into the third-best turnaround in the company’s 110-year history.”