Everyday Turnaround: The Art and Science of Daily Business Transformation
By Eric Kish
4/5
()
About this ebook
Author Eric Kish developed and tested the Everyday Turnaround concept while executing 12 turnarounds across seven industries and three continents over a period of 18 years.
Related to Everyday Turnaround
Related ebooks
Managing Yourself and Others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRepeatability (Review and Analysis of Zook and Allen's Book) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBusiness Model Renewal: How to Grow and Prosper by Defying Best Practices and Reinventing Your Strategy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLean Turnaround (PB): How Business Leaders Use Lean Principles to Create Value and Transform Their Company Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Advancing with New Products in Recession & Recovery Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings[BEST PRACTICE] Disruptive Innovation: With many practical examples & an excursus to the Lean StartUp Method Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBuilding, Leading, and Managing Strategic Alliances Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDesign to Grow: How Coca-Cola Learned to Combine Scale and Agility (and How You Can Too) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Escape Velocity: Free Your Company's Future from the Pull of the Past Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Business Outside: Discover Your Path Forward Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCulture.com: How the Best Startups Make it Happen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKanban Boards A Complete Guide - 2020 Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Soft Edge: Where Great Companies Find Lasting Success Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Executive Guide to Artificial Intelligence: How to identify and implement applications for AI in your organization Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe FD Advantage (What your FD should be Doing) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCompanies, Snakes & Ladders: Success in the Arab Corporate Jungle Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Innovation Mandate: The Growth Secrets of the Best Organizations in the World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProgrammatic Media Buying The Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Big Picture of Business: Business Strategies and Legends: Encyclopedic Knowledge Bank Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsScaling Done Right: How to Achieve Business Agility with Scrum@Scale and Make the Competition Irrelevant Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSocial Listening and Analytics Third Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStrategic Partnerships A Complete Guide - 2020 Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAgile at Scale A Complete Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChief product officer Third Edition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRedefining Operational Excellence: New Strategies for Maximixing Perforamnce and Profits Across the Organization Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTiger by the Tail: 99 Secrets to Tame and Master Your Business Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYour Exit Map: Navigating the Boomer Bust Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsResilient Management Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Business For You
Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, Third Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Law of Connection: Lesson 10 from The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Bulletproof: Protect Yourself, Read People, Influence Situations, and Live Fearlessly Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of J.L. Collins's The Simple Path to Wealth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Capitalism and Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Set for Life: An All-Out Approach to Early Financial Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Richest Man in Babylon: The most inspiring book on wealth ever written Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tools Of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat: The BRRRR Rental Property Investment Strategy Made Simple Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, 20th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Intelligent Investor, Rev. Ed: The Definitive Book on Value Investing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grant Writing For Dummies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Emotional Intelligence: Exploring the Most Powerful Intelligence Ever Discovered Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Robert's Rules Of Order Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robert's Rules of Order: The Original Manual for Assembly Rules, Business Etiquette, and Conduct Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Everyday Turnaround
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Everyday Turnaround - Eric Kish
Turnaround (noun) - a positive change, improvement¹
Turnaround (verb) - improve significantly
¹¹ The Cambridge Dictionary
© Eric Kish 2017
Print ISBN: 978-0-99853-101-4
eBook ISBN: 978-0-99853-100-7
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Heading Into the Storm
Observe-Orient-Decide-Act
Decoding Human Behavior
Culture By Design
Action
Everyday Turnaround
Execute
It’s Not Over Until It’s Over
The Tools
PI Reports
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The guy who hired me to do my first turnarounds was a smart guy. He’d give me, on average, 18 months to complete a turnaround and then overnight and without warning, he’d move me to the next one. I was not allowed to take any of the people I had trained and coached in previous turnarounds. I had to start from scratch with every new company.
Typically, I had little time to prepare for the next turnaround. I had to get my bearings fast and fly the airplane while it was being built.
This meant that while discovering and developing assumptions, I needed to act in a way that would persuade the organization to follow. I also knew the day would come when I would suddenly move on to my next challenge, leaving behind a leadership team and an organization that could continue to fly the plane without me. This had been my routine for 10 years, resulting in seven successful turnarounds.
Doing these turnarounds, I experimented with various tools and methods. I was strongly inspired by the Kaizen practice of continuous improvement and later by Scrum.² A team-based approach to project completion, it was embraced by software development organizations after the Agile Manifesto was published in 2001. In fact, this book was written and published using a Scrum ritual.
The other pillar of my approach was discovering behavioral science and the tools that allow a leader to understand inherent employee drives and needs as well as how to align them with organizational roles.
Everyday Turnaround is about turnaround tactics. It provides a pragmatic view of the challenges a leader faces and the daily rituals that can be embedded in the muscle memory of the organization. It’s also about helping an organization’s people figure out how to row in the same direction, having each one fit naturally to the role while delivering continuous, fact-based improvement—all synced by an organizational heartbeat.
Everyday Turnaround is the result of testing the concepts in 12 turnarounds across seven industries on three continents over 18 years. It describes a fictional organization inspired by my own experiences; any resemblance to real people or actual names is purely by chance. The story emphasizes how agility is the key to the success of a turnaround while applying the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act concept developed by the military for its combat operations processes. Its approach helps you understand how to apply the principles and tools in a non-theoretical, real-world environment.
² Scrum is an Agile framework for completing complex projects.
Mark had just wrapped up a successful turnaround when Will, his agent, called to say that Energon was looking for a turnaround CEO.
The lender had told Will that Energon was burning cash quickly and the board had recently fired the CEO. The company had no time for the typical national executive search and, frankly, it would be hard to find someone interested in joining a company in free fall. This dire situation had to be addressed—and fast—to save the company.
Energon’s lender was worried the company had no business leader in place to navigate the company out of the storm battering its operations. Mark wasn’t interested in a new job at the time, but Will insisted he should explore this opportunity.
Although he was a seasoned turnaround expert with an impressive track record, Mark had never worked in the energy storage devices industry. He knew boards typically prefer industry veterans.
Energon had been around for eight years. Started as an engineering shop, the company evolved into a technology innovator in energy storage devices.
Sales had grown fast, hitting $100 million in sales in only five years. Energon took advantage of the initial wave of adoptions of its devices by a first generation of applications, driven primarily by subsidies for renewable energy. In the beginning, the company enjoyed substantial margins. This prompted competitors to enter the market, which drove prices down.
Around the same time, subsidies for the sector started to be phased out sooner than expected. As a result, Energon’ s revenues dropped by 50% over the three years that followed.
This drop caught the company off guard, resulting in significant excess capacity and high fixed costs, which led to an extremely high cash burn rate. The former CEO convinced the board the drop was temporary and that the market would soon correct. But a reversal never occurred. By the third year, Energon had burned through much of its cash reserves.
The company’s lenders were nervous. Energon had only three months of cash left and the board, under pressure from these lenders, was forced to fire the CEO. He seemed incapable of grasping the urgency of the situation and taking action—fast.
Finding and hiring a new CEO wasn’t an easy task. Under normal circumstances, it would have taken six months to conduct a comprehensive executive search. But Energon didn’t have six months; it had three at most.
Internally, employee morale was dropping fast. Energon’s survival was at stake. That was when the lender suggested bringing in an interim CEO.
Mark Whitman was not new to turnarounds. If he got the job, Energon would be his seventh turnaround in 12 years. He’d been frequently retained as an interim CEO, tasked with taking a company in distress from the brink of bankruptcy to a successful recovery. His engagements lasted, on average, 12 to 24 months. Once the companies were on solid ground with a competent management team and improving finances, he’d move on to the next turnaround.
Mark started his adult life in the military. After completing two tours of duty in the armored corps as an officer, he went to college and graduated with a master’s degree in electrical engineering. This gave him the opportunity to start his professional career as a research and development (R&D) engineer and work on defense and aerospace projects.
Mark liked being an engineer for a while, but he moved into sales as soon as an opportunity presented itself. He was convinced that being on the revenue-generating side of the business would give him a new perspective.
He got his first taste of a turnaround when