How To Turn Around A Troubled Business

Simple tips for righting your ship when things go the wrong way!

It isn’t uncommon for businesses of all sizes to find themselves in trouble even when times are good. These days, almost every business in virtually every industry has had to navigate some troubled waters. And although misery may love company, if you are at the helm and your company has found itself leaning the wrong way, you may feel like you are making the crossing solo. Fear not. It might be time to chart a new course, but hard times don’t mean that the voyage is over or that you are necessarily sunk.

Here are some simple tips to help you make it through the storm:

1. You have to really want to. Sounds simple but it may well be the most important part of the process. You probably already know more than one thing that may have caused your enterprise to get to this place. Maybe you addressed them and maybe you didn’t. Now is the time for you to get honest with yourself. It is time to commit to do everything it may take to keep from sinking completely. Otherwise you’ll keep thinking about the lifeboats. It is often that simple, but rarely easy. Your conviction and resolve will help to eliminate and lessen panic. Those are powerful tools.

2. Signal for help. That may mean your crew. That may mean help from outsiders. It may mean both. Regardless, don’t believe that you can do it on your own – even if you are a sole proprietor or freelancer. The sooner you recognize this and encircle yourself with people truly dedicated to the critical tasks at hand, the better. Consider creating a “Board,” whose sole purpose is to help you through the crisis as well as to shape the direction of the company once the danger has passed. If you already have a board, reassess their individual strengths and lean heavily on them. That is what they are there for. Many times your accountant and your lawyer may be some of your strongest advisors. Engage them early. An experienced business turn-around advisor can also be invaluable in helping you manage the process short-term.

3. Create a plan. Assess and indentify the most urgent problems and craft a short-term plan to gain negative buoyancy, so-to-speak. In other words, if you are taking on water and sinking fast, you’ll want to patch the hole and start pumping out water. Nothing else matters until that is done. Once you are certain that you won’t have to abandon ship, then you can get on with the various tasks and programs that may be more comprehensive and longer term. Keep it simple. You can (and should) also be prepared to take your business on an entirely different route in the process. In other words, you may find yourself almost completely rewriting your business plan and maybe even changing your model. Don’t fight it. Embrace it. Then keep improving and evolving it until you like where you are headed again.

4. Execute deliberately, quickly and with efficiency. This is the time to make decisive moves. And that will very likely mean making some very, very hard decisions quickly and without hesitation. Leadership is never more critical than when a crisis is at hand. Leaders make decisions. Sometimes leaders make mistakes. Mistakes are normally a lot easier to survive than indecisiveness. If your plan calls for you to cut programs or people, make them in the most professional and least painful way, but make them. Your job is to get the ship upright. You can rearrange deck chairs later. Don’t forget to conserve your cash. It is the lifeboat of your business.

5. Steady as she goes. Stay at the helm and keep a watch out for hidden dangers. You aren’t out of harm’s way until you are safely back at the harbor. Then make your repairs, replenish your stores and renew your crew. After that start planning for the next voyage. Yes, start planning all over again. This time you’ll be more seasoned and more attentive to the things that may have taken your company off course. And you’ll have a proven set of people and resources to face any potential catastrophe going forward.

6. Keep signaling!!! Last, but certainly not least, you’ve got to keep communicating – loud and strong! Sometimes it is easy to want to shrink back into your stateroom and hide. You can even justify it by saying you are focused upon saving the ship. That’s not a good idea. Now is not the time to be silent or invisible. Make a good communications plan part of your overall survival strategy. Then communicate clearly and often what is going on and where you are going as a company. It will dispel speculation and help keep all parties focused upon what you want and need them to be focused upon: the seaworthiness of your vessel. A good, experienced public relations/marketing communications professional is often the most valuable partner during a crisis. Enlist them and put them to work.

Your best tools for getting back on course and sailing smooth are a good plan coupled with an able crew. And don’t forget that the best time to think (and plan for), things going wrong are when things are going right. Have a plan for emergencies and rough seas. Then have a back-up plan for that. Sea Captains often keep several alternative routes planned in their chart room. You would be well advised to do the same with your business. After all, the best way to spend time at sea is in your swimsuit.

-- Mark M. Stacey

Mark M. Stacey is multi-decade veteran business advisor and consultant. He is president of The Milagro Advisory Group LLC (www.milagrogroup.com ) and helps companies launch, turn-around, grow, or get unstuck. He is also Co-founder of Alcance Media Group (www.alcancemg.com ). He can be reached a 1-877-MILAGRO (512-219-8689) or at marks@milagrogroup.com.

This blog first appeared on The PR Channel Blog (http://www.theprchannel.com/) on May 25, 2011.

The Quarter-by-Quarter Hustle .... Its the Second Quarter!?

Where did it all start? Was it the Gregorian calendar? Or something that snuck up on us more recently? If you are a businessperson, sales person or business owner you probably find yourself thinking in those terms. What is our goal (usually financial), for this Quarter? How much of the Quarter is left? What is our goal for next Quarter? Oh Lord, don’t tell me that it is Second Quarter already!!! It is a crazy measure of our productivity but one that seems to pervade everything. For many of us, it is a stress accelerator. And it shouldn’t be.

It could be argued, one might suppose, that if you planned well enough well before the quarter and you did all of the things you had planned, and then there wouldn’t be anything to worry about. That is a good theory. But what if catastrophe strikes? What if the unforeseen manifests itself? How do you stay on track and make certain that you “have a good Quarter?” It happens in nature all of the time and the world keeps spinning along.

Maybe we should review our way of thinking here and take a more “Seasonal” approach like Mother Nature does. We already "Spring forward" and "Fall back.” Maybe if we can figure out how to “Winter our storms" and take full advantage of the Lazy Days of Summer, we’d be less focused upon the fact that four quarters still equal a dollar, no matter what life throws at us.

-- Mark Stacey

Has Creativity Become A Commodity?

It has been said that advertising is the second oldest profession. If that is so, then creative services must be older than dirt. Which begs the question in today's turned on, linked-in, digital age (we aren't talking fingers and toes here), does creative still have the value that it did in days past? I mean, are impressions and clicks more important than the message? Does pounding the message home in plain old black and white Times New Roman or Arial do the same heavy lifting as a thoughtful, creative, crafty and well-executed ad, video, sound bite, etc.? Or is beauty merely in the eye of the beholder? With more and more people gaining access to more and more technology and more and more tools that were once the domain of the creative genii, that distinction becomes fuzzier and fuzzier. Suddenly it seems that almost everyone is a "designer," "photographer," film-maker," or "internet guru." Does that trump the odd "SEO Master" or "Conversion Specialist?" Hell no. They all have their roles and they all have their importance. And as media and marketing continue to that finely honed point of conversion to gain the eyes and ears and dollars, Euros, yen and pesos of consumers (and we are ALL consumers of one sort or another), creative approaches to messaging will still be vital, needed and valued. Smart marketers know this. Smart consumers respond to it. No matter what the language and no matter what the conventional "wisdom" of the frijole counters. It still helps to know beans about creative messaging. -- Mark Stacey

BusinessWeek

Is Working Out of the House The Same As Creating a Business?

BusinessWeek: "Ralph Blanchard

Nov 5, 2009 1:01 PM GMT
There is a big difference between working out of the house and creating a business. Most home workers are a one-man/woman band. If they get hit by a truck there is nothing left. They don't really have a business until they have something that can function smoothly when they are not around. When that happens, the value (as in future value when sold) of their business skyrockets and they begin the create some real wealth. There is nothing wrong with earning a living working from home but let's not confuse that with creating a true business."

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Very well stated. It's certainly not that these businesses are not important, they clearly are very important. It is merely that distinction of what value gets created in a company. As solo operators, home-based businesses generally don't build value above what the owner/operator may generate in income. There are exceptions of course. Still, it doesn't mean that some home-based entrepreneurs don't make fabulous income and enjoy an incredible quality of life.

M. Stacey

Keeping Things Simple When They Aren't Easy

In helping companies get unstuck and grow to their next logical level, I try to be persistently consistent with people.

Success is when what we communicate is simple, direct and crystal clear.

We will complicate it. It is our nature.

It should never start that way.

I often think of it in the way Michelangelo described his sculpture of David: the art was already in the stone.

It isn't what you add but what you take away.

It is important to stay in that thought as you begin the dialog that goes with improving any enterprise.

It is ESPECIALLY important when you start engaging prospects.

It is IMPERATIVE when they become clients.

They will fill in the blanks if we are quiet long enough to let them.

It is that simple.

It is rarely that easy.

It is always important.

The Paradigm Shift

When I was a young man working for the Federal Government, I worked shift work. Every six months or so, it was time for me to do my part and work from midnight to 7 a.m., the "graveyard shift," (you only had to work 7 hrs. because the work was supposedly more cruel and unusual overnight). I worked cleaning up and playing night watchman at the three buildings that comprised the Border Patrol Academy's administrative offices and classrooms. It was very different from the job I had when I worked the day shift. I had basically no supervision and was honor-bound to do my work and not sleep all the way through the night. I took it seriously. Oddly enough, it proved a powerful impetus for my thought processes about life, work, education and so forth. It gave me time and quiet to think about a lot of things that I might not have taken the time and energy to consider. It forced somewhat of a paradigm shift on my malleable psyche. And it was good for me. In that time, I decided to get a college education, commit to military service in the Marine Corps Reserve and basically devote my life to ideas of higher thought and service. That was a bit of an odd thing for those times and for someone my age in South Texas. It was, in retrospect, a paradigm shift. And that shift was basically forced upon me by the circumstances of my employment. It was a necessary and ultimately good thing.

It seems to me that incidences and circumstances of the past couple of years and 2008-2009 in particular, have hastened paradigm shifts in many areas: money, government, business, social responsibility, education, faith, war, disaster relief and so forth. The vast majority of these changes are good, and some even wonderful and wondrous. They may never have happened or would not have been expedited had it not been for the financial, political, climatic, economic, military and spiritual challenges and debacles we have experienced and continue to respond to. From the dark of night in the formative years of my youth to these uncertain and unsettling times from the perch of my mid-years, the changes at play are essential. Going forward, things will be different sure; likely to be better, more focused, more efficient, more appropriate, more caring and more to the point. It is likely to mean better government, better business and improved focus on the things that matter most to us as humans. Comparisons notwithstanding, I refuse to think of it as having been time spent on the "graveyard shift."

In The Beginning ...

It may be simple coincidence that I begin this dialogue in the middle of The Dog Days of Summer 2009 and in the midst of the worst economic environment this country and the world has experienced since The Great Depression. Or maybe not. Perhaps it is just as it should be. As in the beginning there was the Word. And words are much of what we have to declare that there is in the world and therefore what we as humans must manage. Or not manage. Or at least not manage well. Of course that may raise the question of opinion. What does "managing well" mean? Is that open to debate? Of course. We have free will and therefore opinions. On that we can all agree. As for the rest, alas it may well be that this is our most important contribution: the exchange of opinion, the hashing out of ideas and harnessing the energy of debate. That is what I tend to believe. It is not perfect. But little is.

What we must do in order to strive for some semblance of perfection is to align ourselves with the values of Truth, Honor, Integrity, Compassion, Unselfishness and thereafter temper our Words and indeed our works with Service, Courage and Self-Control. When we do, we ALL succeed. And when we say it, we become it. It is certain that we can all manage what we say. In that spirit we open this discussion. I say "we" because all of us have a stake in this. And the ideas and inspiration that will expand hereon are from the many great minds of the world: past, present and perhaps future. To that end, I encourage you to share. Share often and share loud. Good wine is not made without first smashing the grape.

As stated, this dialogue is intended to be a dynamic platform for bold thinking and active debate on the evolving nature of enterprise and modern business around the world. It is your World and your Business. Let's make them both better.