If you were appointed CEO of a big corporation that has been struggling, what would you do first to try and save the sinking ship that you command?

This is one of the best questions i have come across. the answers could be quite simple or really complicated when trying to stabilize. There are several reasons for a ship to sink, there could be leaks on the hull or the vessel is overloaded. in short..

I would start with cleaning - kick out who do not maintain punctuality and take accountability.

then kick out the people with out whom the organization could still do its daily operations. some of them will be overloaded but this is not for a long. 

And finally look at the successful organizations in the same industry and hire the best, he will reorganize and implement his own ideas and processes by which will pave way in becoming the competitor of the same organization where he was hired from. simple

ü  Gather information to find out the reason of the issues

ü  Search for solutions

ü  Develop a short-term plan and start implementing it

ü  Meeting with employees to raise morale and performance level

1- Review the organization history to know when it started falling down and that will help to identify the reasons of failure

2- Important to know whether the reasons related to market changes that was not adopted by the company or due to management failure.

3- Review financial situation precisely and apply any cost reductions immediately

4- restructure the team, improve the performance of all departments and replace all unqualified employees.

5- Draw a new vision and targets for the whole company and inspire the team to acheive it

Chronic problems cannot be solved unless the whole picture of your business is exposed and evaluated.

My approach would be to initially look at my organization, check each department's KPIs.

Review each Core Value:    1. Quality Assurance/external                                                                       company perception

                                       2. Business Development/Marketing/

                                       3. Company Innovation vs Market Trends

                                       4. Competition analysis

                                       5. Hiring trends

                                       6. Organization harmony

                                       7. Financial Analysis

Any negative KPI's within any of the above must be dissected, improved or eliminated.

The length of this process is critical to saving the organization, the standard of leadership determines the success.

REMOVE BLOCKERS! These characters are normally hard core senior employees in any level or sector of the company and they will be naturally exposed during the above analysis.

1. Review the Financial performace of the company including the Cash Flow Statement and the P&L statement for the last 20 years. This is to gauge whether the company is experiencing financial turbulant due to the external or internal factors.

2. Cash Flow is the most important element in gauging the health of any company. It can be due to poor collection of sales, poor credit controls, poor sales etc.

3. Use Pareto 80:20 rule. Look at Cost of Good Sales ("COGS") and find the most contributor to the  COGS:

i. If the main contributor is the cost of raw materials purchased, then zoom into the procurement processes. Change the processes and the team if necessary.

ii. If the main contributor is salary, then zoom into the organizational chart. Restructure the team to maximiz their capabilities and performace. 

iii. If the main contributor is sales, then look at the Marketing stategies and business model. 

iv. Finally develop or enhance the Mision and Vision and the company Road Map.

Thanks 

In my opinion, the most important thing will be as following 

- Review and change teams members.

- Review and change some teams leaders.

- Restructure some organization's joints. 

- Review the general plan.

- Review the product - service (properties).

- Re study the market and competitors.   

I would start with questioning the basic taken for granted concepts on how I view the firm and the “environment” it operates in. I will ask if the environment I operate in (customers, suppliers, competitors, the government) is something that is out there where I need to find the perfect fit between the organizational capabilities and match it with environment characteristics? Or the firm is a part of a network in which it consists of a web of interrelated relationships between different actors (stakeholders) where each relationship is rich with resources and part of a context? How the network is formed and how can I access and develop these relationships? such conceptualization would help you to be more specific in your SWOT analysis on whether to search for opportunities in the environment and exploit them, or searching for prominent relationships and relationships within these relationships (customers’, clients or suppliers and the relationships they have with other actors in their network). The idea is “Arm extension through investments in relationships” or simply put Network approach.

On the other hand, how you define a strategy is very important. One definition I believe that goes hand in hand with your case; a strategy;“patterns in streams of decisions or actions”. Such view would help you to realize the patterns that caused the tiny hole in your ship. On the other hand, strategies can grow initially like weeds in a garden; they are not cultivated like tomatoes in a hothouse. In other words, the process of strategy formation can be overmanaged; sometimes it is more important to let patterns emerge than to force an artificial consistency upon an organization prematurely. The hothouse, if needed, can come later (deliberate vs emergent strategies).

Last but not least I would defuse I would knowledge management programs within the organization and focus on knowledge sharing initiatives to promote learning across the organization since strategies can take root in all kinds of strange places, virtually wherever people have the capacity to learn and the resources to support that capacity. Such strategies become organizational when they become collective, that is, when the patterns proliferate, to pervade the behaviour of the organization at large. Weeds can proliferate and encompass a whole garden; then the conventional plants may look out of place. The same holds true for emergent strategies. But, of course, what's a weed but a plant that wasn't expected. 

Prior to taking any large scale actions that could pottentially effect the overall structure of the organisation steps should be taken to establish a "bread & butter" revenue stream. This base level revenue stream will ensure that any changes taking place higher up in the organisational structure will not leave the corporation in an insolvent state.

This implementation should provide a new CEO with the time needed to effectively analyse the status and history of the corporation. Questions such as what made the company successful in the first place, growth patterns, past trends that affected corporate performance can be addressed from an informed point of view allowing for counter measures to be implemented.

While a corporation’s history and heritage is important it should not be a shackle that dooms a company to irrelevance in the modern market place. It would be crucial to establish a comfortable balance between old and new identities to ensure that market and mindshare are maintained going forward.

1. Look into the profile and financial status of the organization for the past 5 years of executing.

2. examining the capital, yearly profit & expenses.

3. determining the period of recession and drawing a plan to point out the bad curves that has been taken ever since.

4. setting new budget, excluding the least needed resources in term to reduce the overall cost.

5. encouraging and developing the executers and employees with incentives to reach the setted targetted goal of improving the status of the corporation.

To save a company from totally from getting out of operation, the following steps should be carried out ASAP;

1. Conduct situation analysis.
2. Classify all situation into
   • Cause of problem unknown
   • Situations that needs decision
3. On problems with unknown cause, conduct a Problem Solving Analysis to determine the cause. Then address the issue.
4. on concerns that needs that needs decision, conduct a Decision Analysis to determine the best decision among various options.

As a professional, use Kepner-Tregoe Problem solving and decision analysis tools to address the situation.

Also, closely monitor cost/expenditures making sure that there is minimanl waste on your operation.

Last but not least, develop some sort of a dashboard (Key Performance Indicator Matrix) to monitor performance of each section/department/division as the case may be.Having a dashboard or a performance matrix would help you determine non performing assets. This would allow you to make the necessary adjustment in a short period.

Knowing the problem is half the solution so first I will do an extensive investigation for understanding the problem. Then the next stage will be identifying the resources which can help in interpreting the information gained and comming up with strategies to solve the problem identified in earlier investigation which will lead towards implementing the strategy. After implementing the most suitable strategy it is equally necessary to measure the outcomes of the strategy implemented and if the problem is still there then we have to start the drill again.