Some Past History of Organizational Turnarounds

Taking the rudder and steering an organization in different directions is becoming more common as the meantime between business disruptions has gone from years to months.  You may have a need for a turnaround executive and perhaps you don’t really realize it.

Over the past 30 years I have had the opportunity to engage in a wide variety of organizational turnarounds. 

Some were small, Venture Capital organizations that needed to figure out whether to live or die; some were embedded in Fortune 1000 corporations; some were not for profit; some were domestic; some were international.  Most, but not all, were somewhere close to the technology world.

While there is no silver bullet, magic elixir or artificial intelligence that cures all problems, some important tenets of what to do emerge. 

Of course financial and strategic decision-making are required.  But so are the soft skills surrounding the people that make the organization work. Many times I see defeat in the eyes of employees when I walk in the door to “fix things”.  The first task is to stabilize the organization in terms of the people because without them, nothing good will happen.

This is not to say that some folks may need to go, and go they must if for a wide variety of reasons, the situation dictates, On the other hand, it could be that a lack of the right expertise or just plain bandwidth is needed.  But you can’t do that without having the team on the road to good self-esteem.

The fundamentals of the business model, secret sauce, competition, costs, demand, customer satisfaction, regulation, financial position, and more have to be understood to be able to put together a cogent plan of what to do, when and how.

Many times folks that do turnarounds are called “artists”.  Frankly, I think that “composer” is a better descriptive term, but “turnaround composer” falls flat (pun intended).  All of the facets of the organization, just like in a symphony, have to be in tune in order to produce a product that resonates with customers and investors.