The First 30 Days of a Turnaround: What I Look for Before I Change Anything!
I was chewing the fat with a business colleague of mine, and he asked, “MC, walk me through your first 30 days when you get parachuted into business in sh*t”…
Here’s what I shared, minus the expletives...
When I walk into a struggling business, I don’t start with strategy. I start by shutting up.
That may sound strange coming from someone who has spent much of his career being brought into businesses specifically to change things. But one of the biggest mistakes a turnaround leader can make is arriving with the answer before properly understanding the problem.
I’ve written previously about the fact that your transformation doesn’t need another strategy deck — it needs the truth. I’ve also argued that AI won’t fix a broken business; it will simply help you break it faster if the fundamentals are already wrong. The same principle applies to a turnaround. Before transformation comes diagnosis, and diagnosis requires listening.
First, I want the unvarnished truth. Not the board version. Not the investor version. And certainly not the beautifully formatted PowerPoint version where everything is amber, the arrows point reassuringly upwards and every problem has somehow become an “opportunity.”
I want to know what is really happening. Where are we making money and where are we losing it? Where is the cash going? Which customers love us, which merely tolerate us, and which are quietly heading for the exit? Where are decisions getting stuck? What are we doing because it genuinely creates value, and what are we doing simply because we’ve always done it that way?
Then I want to talk to the people — and not just the executives. Some of the most valuable conversations I’ve had during turnarounds have been with people several layers down the organisation. They often know exactly what is broken. In many cases, they’ve known for years. Nobody asked them. Or worse, somebody did ask them and then ignored the answer.
Clearly, if a business is in distress, cash matters. Cash is oxygen. You can have the greatest strategy in Christendom, but if you run out of cash before you execute it, the strategy is worth precisely bugger all. So yes, I want to understand cash, margin, working capital, debt, pipeline, customer concentration and the underlying economics of the business.
But numbers tell me what is happening. People often tell me why. That distinction matters.
I have long believed in looking at a business through three deceptively simple lenses: People. Process. Product. What are we selling? How are we delivering it? And do we have the right people, in the right seats, doing the right things? When those three are misaligned, no amount of corporate wallpaper will fix the problem.
I also want to understand the informal organisation, because every company has two organisational charts: the one hanging on the wall and the one that actually runs the business. I want to find the second one. Who do people go to when they need something done? Who has credibility? Who are the blockers? Who creates energy and who sucks it out of the room? Who has a grand title but very little influence, and who has no grand title whatsoever but somehow holds half the organisation together?
Those people matter enormously during transformation. It is also why I continue to believe so strongly in People Sigma. Organisations don’t transform; people do. Process, systems, technology and increasingly AI can enable transformation, but somewhere in that equation there must always remain a human in the loop.
There is also a temptation, particularly for an incoming turnaround leader, to start swinging the axe. Sometimes immediate action is unavoidable. If the business is haemorrhaging cash, losing critical customers or facing an existential threat, you act. But activity and progress are not the same thing.
I’ve seen leaders announce restructures, replace people, redraw reporting lines and launch grand transformation programmes within days of arriving. It looks decisive. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is simply expensive theatre.
My preference has always been: diagnose before you prescribe. Ask the Five Whys. Then ask them again. Get underneath the symptom until you understand the disease, because if you treat the symptom rather than the cause, the problem invariably comes back wearing a different hat.
By day 30, I don’t expect to understand every nuance of a business. Anyone who claims they can probably hasn’t listened hard enough. But I do expect clarity. I want to know where the fires are, which ones are genuinely dangerous and which ones are merely producing smoke. I want a clear view of the cash, customers, people, processes, product, culture, leadership capability and, critically, the organisation’s capacity and appetite for change.
Only then do I begin moving from diagnosis to prescription and from Strategy to Action.
For me, this ultimately comes back to a formula I have used for years:
SPI = OD² + SE
Sustainable Performance Improvement = Organisational Design & Organisational Development + Strategy Execution.
The OD² is deliberate. Sustainable improvement requires both sides of OD: designing an organisation capable of delivering the strategy and developing the people and capability within it. Neither is particularly useful sitting on its own. Then comes Strategy Execution — because even the cleverest strategy on the planet is worth very little if nobody can actually execute the bloody thing. After all, it’s people who drive the execution.
That, for me, is what transformation is really about. Find the truth. Understand the business. Listen to the people. Diagnose before you prescribe. Get the organisational design right, develop the capability, and then execute with discipline and purposeful intent. It’s all about positive agitation!
Keep the human in the loop.
And turn strategy into action.
“Onwards & Upwards!”
Comments welcomed, as always!
MC
