As Robert Townsend put it in his book, Up the Organisation, ‘If you aren’t in business for fun and profit, what are you doing here?’ So if it is not fun and profitable, the key steps to take are, in summary, as follows.

Recognise The Need For A Turnaround

Spot the warning signs as early as possible. Failure is a wasting disease: the longer it is left before treatment, the weaker you are and the more radical the surgery needed. The best corporate health tip of all is to stay healthy.

Stabilise Your Finances

If you do get into difficulty, have a short-term survival plan:

• Get on top of your cash.
• Get on top of your numbers.
• Work out if you are insolvent.
• Take professional advice (www.turnaroundhelp.co.uk).
• What can you do (that is, what is in your control) to improve your profit/cash position? Don’t rely on changes in what you do not totally control.
• Get credit/bank support by making yourself supportable.

Decide What To Do

Have a vision of what you want your business to be. Turn this into a real long-term recovery plan that matches your personal targets. Balance:

• short-term cash against long-term investment in competitiveness and value;
• staying focused on the key issues against ensuring all the detail is covered; and
• the pace at which all aspects of your business can move forwards.

 

Remember the formula for success (see Chapter 8):

Build your business and selling effort around this and your personal objectives, and continuously refresh the formula.

Make It Happen

You can’t rely on the turnaround fairy to make everything turn out all right. You are going to have to get out there and do it yourself. Therefore make the best use of your scarcest resource – you, your time and your enthusiasm. If you want to change people and how they do things, understand what motivates them, what will motivate them to take the action you want, and understand that what you are trying to do is to break old habits and develop new ones. Realise when you need specialist help, and get it.

Manage, manage, manage. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Never, never, never give up.

Remember to make money and to check the cash, costings and profit regularly. Be forward looking with your numbers.

Conclusions

In conclusion, therefore, I would like to wish you good luck. There is nothing so brave and demanding, or as exciting and fulfilling, as running your own business (I know) and I wish you every success.

Unfortunately I cannot hope to provide you with all the answers for your specific business. I do hope I have been able to help by providing you with the questions you can answer to give you your unique solution proposition.

Please contact me with any feedback or comments on this book, which will be gratefully received, or if you would like to discuss any aspect of the topics covered: mark@theoss.freeserve.co.uk; tel.: 01388 528913.