Ditch the Emotion, Save the Business.
If your business is in trouble, are you certain, you are the right person to get it back on track?
Particularly if you've grown your business from nothing, it may feel as if you, alongside your team, are best equipped to deal with any problems which crop up. After all, who knows the business better than you?
Who's steered it through the perils and pitfalls of the early days? Who has lived, breathed, ate and slept your business for years?
Unfortunately, an emotional attachment to your business could be the very reason why you're not going to be the most appropriate individual to dig it out of its current crisis.
Discover how objectivity and external rigour is likely to be the best option for achieving an effective, sustainable turnaround.
Emotion Blunts The Ability To Make Tough Decisions
In much the same way as doctors hesitate to treat their nearest and dearest, business owners and decision-makers may be too emotionally attached to their company to execute the tough decisions necessary to bring about recovery.
Inevitably, over the years, an established management team develops enormous loyalty and feelings of business ownership. These may make it almost impossible to implement a change in direction that may involve redundancies, the closure of "pet" projects or a ruthless restructuring.
Seeing The Wood For The Trees
Not only are you and your employees close to the business emotionally, your perceptions and experience have shaped the business to be what it is today. This can impact negatively on turnaround attempts in two ways: firstly, if you have been involved in steering the business for a while, it's almost impossible to view it objectively; secondly, it is probable that strategic direction and decision-making at a senior level is, at least in part, responsible for whatever difficulties the business is currently experiencing.
Whilst internal errors of judgement are unlikely to be the sole reason why a company is in trouble, it's almost always the case that different decisions would have created different (and possibly more favourable) outcomes.
Frequently, it's only an external consultant who has the necessary skill set to put together a plan that incorporates the radical changes needed to bring about an effective turnaround.
Why use an Outsider to Develop and Execute your Strategy?
Once it becomes clear that internal management structures and expertise just isn't going to be enough to assure better business outcomes, hiring an external professional to get the job done appears to be the logical alternative.
Using Someone External has a Number of Key Advantages:
Actual Real World Experience
Business turnaround is what some consultants do for a living. As such, they have an enormous amount of experience in the area, often across a range of sectors and operations. This means they have a unique skill set to put at your disposal.
They use Cold Heart
Their aim is to give you the solutions needed to achieve your objectives. They have no emotional stake in your business. This allows them to put forward the solutions that stand the best chance of working, based on hard facts and sound financial modelling.
External Validation
When it comes to decisions involving job losses, shelving popular projects or implementing more productive (but potentially less popular) methods of working, decision makers need sound reasons for the changes. An external consultant can provide the data needed to provide the validation for tough decisions.
Turning a company around is rarely an easy task, but with the right expertise, it's often an achievable aim. Accessing the right external support can make a real difference to your corporate outcomes.
If your company needs to rethink its strategic and operational directions, a suitable external consultant is probably the right person to assist. Able to provide objective recommendations, external consultants are able to offer the bold, big-picture solutions your business needs for sustainable, successful change.