How do you perform a turnaround management assignment at a time when business is in serious financial distress and facing financial and operating difficulties?
Vladan Nikolic
The following are the creative, novel ideas generated by AhaApple using AI + brainstorming techniques + innovative techniques simultaneously:
- Substitute: We can substitute traditional financing options for more innovative alternatives, such as crowdfunding or involving stakeholders in a shared liability and benefit finance plan. This not only helps with financial distress but also turns stakeholders into allies, reducing operational resistance.
- Combine: Combine tasks to reduce costs and increase efficiency. For example, instead of having separate teams for marketing, sales, customer service, we can create a 'Customer Experience' team handling all three tasks synchronously, potentiating cross-functional information flow.
- Adapt: Adapt insensitive cost areas into revenue streams. If the company owns real estate, it could be partly rented or converted into coworking spaces. Unused assets could be liquidated or repurposed to generate finances.
- Modify: Redesign business model to turn around financial performance. Instead of focusing solely on product sales, the business model could be shifted to offer services, subscriptions or licensing products, thus providing more consistent revenue streams.
- Put to other uses: Utilize surplus resources or areas of the business that are not performing well in more useful ways. This might mean transitioning resources from one department to another or finding new markets for underperforming products.
- Eliminate: Eliminate red tape and unnecessary processes. Processes that don't directly contribute to value generation should be minimized to make the organization leaner, more flexible and responsive in this distress situation.
- Reverse: Reverse engineers successful competitors or companies in similar positions on how they handled such situations. Learning from their experiences provides valuable insights, speeds up response time, and reduces chances of repeating their failures.
- Substitute: Substitute traditional marketing methods with digital marketing techniques, as digital marketing is more cost-effective and can reach a larger audience.
- Combine: Combine the sales and production departments. By doing this, the sales team can give first-hand feedback from customers to the production department and product improvement can be more targeted and responsive.
- Modify: Modify the management structure to a more flat one. In times of crisis, decision-making processes need to be faster and more dynamic. A flat structure allows for quicker information flow, faster decisions, and increased flexibility.