How to successfully plan your business turnaround strategy

It will be wrong for me to assume that all businesses are the same and allow me to share with you a practical way to implement a business turnaround strategy. The concept of business turnarounds are not new and the latest provision of the Companies Act give confidence to companies to adopt an approach that supports business rescue and turnaround efforts. In this blog, I want you to take a non-conventional approach to planning your turnaround strategy.

Step 1: Make a list

A good place to make a list of what are the things that keep you awake at night about your business. Issues could include:

–          Lack/loss of sales

–          Lack/loss of margin

–          Lack/loss of profits

–          Lack/loss of cash

–          Inability to collect outstanding sales

–          Increased competition

–          Increase in the cost structure of your business

–          Inadequate return on assets

–          Low return on earnings

Next, I want you to make an honest tick next each of the issues that you listed as to whether you properly managed and measured these issues from a performance management perspective. So what are you going to find? – simply that the things that you should have been managing and measuring you have not measured and managed. I want you to do this so that you are able to realise that without a yardstick, without a measure of performance, without a goalpost, it’s incredibly challenging to convince yourself to go forward.

The simple reason why I want you to write down all the challenges that you face in the business is that on a personal level, it becomes therapeutic and you have now emotionally release the issues and have them on paper.

Next up, I want you to write down on a new set of paper all the lessons you learnt when you noted all the challenge areas and reflected on the things you should have done.

Now I want you to go to a safe place and burn the paper that contained all the challenges and while the paper is burning say the following out aloud:

The problems are not the problems. The problem is my attitude towards the problems.

Step 2: The Magic Wand Process

Next, I want you imagine that you were given all the most cost-efficient resources in the world and you could, at your choosing, now create the most cost efficient way to serve your customers using a brand new business. Construct this new value proposition –

–          Who is my ideal customer?

–          What do they really want and are genuinely willing to pay for?

–          How do they want to be reached?

–          How do they want to pay?

–          What is the best business model that I can bring to bear into the market?

–          What ‘secret sauce’ can I add to the mix that will truly wow your customer?

–          What ‘quick-wins’ can I put on the table to accelerate my success and enhance my motivation?

–          What technologies can I deploy that will give me an edge?

–          Where am I and what am I doing?

–          How am I managing this business?

–          What is the ideal way of managing this business?

–          Why am I in this business?

–          For whom are we genuinely creating value for in this business?

–          How will I know that I’m done in this business? What must I have accomplished?

–          Add in: the lessons learnt sheet and reflect on this in terms of the above

Step 3

–          Step 1 is your non-ideal: “AS-IS” scenario

–          Step 2 is your ideal: “TO-BE” scenario

What are you waiting for?! Go make it happen!

Photo credit: transcapital.co.uk