Monday, November 4, 2013

What To Consider When Hiring A Business Turnaround Specialist


By Allyson Burke


A business turnaround specialist plays a very critical role in helping poor performing companies to recover and regain financial stability. Tough economic times often require quality managers to steer companies through recession and other bad economic periods. In such times, these specialists are brought in as either interim managers or consultants to help struggling companies. Choosing a specialist is a critical role that can lead to either success or further downfall of a particular organization.

In most cases these specialists are experienced managers who have developed skills in problem analysis and company recovery over the years. They offer consultation services to both big and small organizations that are in need of solutions. For one to be a turnaround specialist they not only need to be academically qualified but they also need to have operated in different business environments that have diverse challenges.

When searching for these specialists, one should be careful as many CEOs and CFOs seeking for jobs claim to be turnaround specialists. It is important to note that failure and poor performance of an organization can be attributed to various reasons. The downfall of most companies usually begins from the top where policies are made and monitored.

Poor management often leads to poor performance and losses which eventually bring a company to its knees. Another reason that can lead to poor performance is lack of communication in and organization structure. Also, poor formation of goals and objectives by a management team can lead to poor performance in the competitive markets of today.

The first task that a turnaround specialist performs is to do a thorough evaluation of the management. This process enables specialists to get a clear picture of what went wrong and why. Also, other kinds of evaluations such as swot analysis and root cause of failure analysis can be carried out to clearly isolate the causes of failure.

It is at this point that their past work and performance at different companies is evaluated so as to be certain that their skills are relevant to the current situations of the struggling organization. In the event that the recovery process is to be overseen by a company and not an individual, the recovery team should be interviewed so to see if they will be able to work with the existing management team.

It is important that the panel carry out the interviews to research further and determine the credibility of a particular candidate or company. Another quality to evaluate is their relations with financial institutions and their capabilities in handling legal issues. This is very critical as the recovery process may require outsourcing of funds from financial institutions.

Some of the steps that can be taken to prevent further losses include retrench of non essential staff so as to cut on heft wage budgets. In the event that there has been mismanagement, poor performing managers can be forced to give way for investigations of abuse of office or negligence. The next step is to re evaluate the company strategies so as to come up with relevant plans that can bring the company back on track. It is important to note that this process may take time thus it is advised that the company owners should be patient and have confidence in the ability of the experienced business turnaround specialist.




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