Turnaround … what a crazy idea?
To say a person, or business, turns around sounds like “going back towards where you started”. If you turnaround on a road you return in the direction you came from.
The Oxford dictionary defines a turnaround as “an abrupt or unexpected change, especially one that results in a more favorable situation”.
A business turnaround is a good thing.
A business turnaround is not a return to the beginning. Not a “return to go” situation at all.
A business turnaround is a process, and period of time, when a company that has been struggling works to improve. Perhaps return to a financial and performance position it was in before. Usually move to a better position than before.
Why undertake a turnaround?
When a company is seeing a trend that it does not like…
- Perhaps revenue has been increasing but profit and cash are staying very flat, or even getting worse.
- Perhaps the employee team appears to be very busy, or working long hours, but the deliveries to customer does not seem to justify it.
- Perhaps the team is less than happy or you are experiencing a higher employee turnover.
- Perhaps the error rate is increasing.
- Perhaps there are too many “unusual” problems that the management has to handle.
- Perhaps too many people seem to be handling “paperwork” or certain people have become a bottleneck in the processes (and appointing extra people is not justified).
- Perhaps you still are not making a profit, and now the bank will not grant more funding.
It is time to turn it around, or turn and tune it up to a level of improved performance?
✔️ Keep the things that are working well but improve those that are not.
✔️ Investigate what is wrong and causing problems in each part of the business; make those parts better. There probably are some interrelated problems.
When to consider a turnaround?
- When your business financial performance has not been what it should be,
- When significant growth is straining your operations,
- When existing workflows cannot handle productivity needs.
Pause to locate the reasons and work on those. You cannot always do more of the same and expect a good result for this new level and stage of business success. Do something different and expect a better result!
