Turning Around a Failing Business - Part 1

Three years ago, I had the unique and special opportunity to turn around a failing business. It was my company's second office. The manager at the time was a brilliant clinical practitioner, but the management decisions that were made absolutely destroyed the company. At one point, the company was losing tens of thousands of dollars every month, and the next part of the story is my favorite. Read on.

My office is internationally accredited for excellence in rehabilitation. This is a very prestigious honor that we have maintained for 7 years. Three years ago, we were set to undergo our next accreditation survey, but the weather was a horrible icy mess. I was worried that I would be iced in the morning of the survey, so I decided to spend the night in my office floor so that even if nobody else was there to oversee the survey, I would be. Yes, I slept overnight in my office floor. When I woke up the next morning, I got dressed and ready for the survey team to show up (fortunately, they stayed in town overnight so they were able to be at the office that morning). My boss (the CEO) stopped me in the hallway and told me something that I will never forget. He told me that the manager of the other (failing) office said it was my fault his office was failing, due to some really ridiculous reasons that later proved to be false.

Recap: I just woke up from sleeping in my office floor. We subsequently received the maximum accreditation by the survey team. My office was making money. His office was losing money. I WASN'T EVEN LISTED ON HIS OFFICE'S ORG CHART. But, the problems were all my fault. Really? Jim Collins writes about this sort of thing in his book, "Good to Great". Only he writes about the opposite kind of manager who looks out the window for success and in the mirror for failures.

Anyways, to skip to the really good part - a few months later, the truth came out. I took over that failing office, turned it into a profit machine with the help of other managers, and it has just finished breaking records in net income for the last two years. I use the management principles in my blogs daily. These principles are the base line for how to get this sort of turnaround done.

For more on the details of how we turned office #2 around watch for Part 2 of Turning Around a Failing Business.