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Free minibook · PDF, 25 pages
Five Documented Rescues and How to Choose Your First Move
You've just been handed a business in decline: a division your company wants fixed, a company you bought, or a family business left in worse shape than anyone admitted. This free minibook helps you choose the first move, through five leaders who took over companies in serious trouble, each facing a different kind of decline.
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By Todd Hagopian, who has led business transformations at Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works and Whirlpool.
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Who it's for
Leaders who have just taken over a declining business. Every fact about the five leaders comes from a cited public source, and each chapter says what the record does not show. A hypothetical operator, Elena, runs alongside them so you can watch the decisions get made in sequence.
Not for you if your business is healthy and you want growth ideas, or you want a full 90-day plan rather than the first move and its sequence.
What you'll learn
- Read the Wound Before You Operate
- Cash First, Seed Corn Protected: Anne Mulcahy at Xerox
- Cut the Complexity, Find the Core: Jørgen Vig Knudstorp at LEGO
- Make Profit Visible Where the Work Happens: Kazuo Inamori at Japan Airlines
- Let Outsiders Break the Cost Base: Wendelin Wiedeking at Porsche
- Redefine the Business by What It Can Do: Shigetaka Komori at Fujifilm
- Sequence the Rest
Plus a final action plan and a worksheet you can use the same week.
Key takeaways
- Turnarounds are lost on order more often than on ideas. Treat whatever will kill the business soonest.
- Five conditions, five first moves: cash crisis (Anne Mulcahy at Xerox), complexity overload (Jørgen Vig Knudstorp at LEGO), invisible profit (Kazuo Inamori at Japan Airlines), a cost base out of line (Wendelin Wiedeking at Porsche) and a shrinking core market (Shigetaka Komori at Fujifilm).
- Decide what you'll protect before you decide what you'll cut. Then cut everything else hard, and tell people the truth about why.
- When several conditions are present, the shortest clock goes first.
From the book
My judgment, stated plainly so you can argue with it: turnarounds are lost on order more often than on ideas.
A failing company rarely has one problem. It has several, each with a sponsor, a slide deck and a plausible fix. Fund them all and none gets enough cash, attention or time to work. Rank them by size and you start on the biggest problem while the fastest one kills you.
The five leaders in this book did not share a strategy. Mulcahy chased cash. Knudstorp cut variety. Inamori made profit visible. Wiedeking brought in outsiders. Komori changed what Fujifilm was. What the record shows them sharing is a first move aimed at a specific threat, and something they refused to cut while they made it.
Todd Hagopian, Turnaround Leaders, from the prologue "Hard Over"
Frequently asked questions
What should I do first in a turnaround?
Treat whatever will kill the business soonest. The first move depends on which kind of decline you have. This book sorts declines into five conditions, each with its own first move: cash crisis, complexity overload, invisible profit, a cost base out of line and a shrinking core market.
How do I cut fast without killing the business?
Decide what you'll protect before you decide what you'll cut. Then cut everything else hard, and tell people the truth about why.
I have several of these conditions. Which first?
The shortest clock goes first. The rest follow in an order set by their clocks and by what each move needs from the one before.
Related free minibooks
The First 90 Days of a Turnaround
Pick your path on Day 1, then run the 90 days week by week.
Read more
The Four People Every Turnaround Needs
Audit the team you inherited, fill four positions and settle misalignment in thirty days, fairly.
Read more
Plug the Profit Leaks
Find the customers and products quietly draining your margin, then fix, reprice or exit.
Read moreRelated reading on the blog
- The LEGO Turnaround: How Cutting Complexity Saved LEGO
- How to Tell If a Turnaround Is Working
- Turnaround Case Studies: What Actually Worked
Go further
Stagnation Assassin: The Anti-Consultant Manifesto is about the bigger fight: the conditions that make companies decay from the inside, the team you need to fight them and the tools to keep a recovered business moving. It's available now. Todd's next book, 10-Minute Transformation, is out February 23, 2027.
The full library
Two ways to get it. Preorder now and it ships on release. Or buy on launch day, February 23, 2027, and get three free audiobooks (10-Minute Transformation, Stagnation Assassin and The Unfair Advantage) plus the full minibook library, on the honor system. Preorders don't include the launch-day bonuses.
About the author
Todd Hagopian, The Stagnation Assassin, is VP of Product Strategy and Marketing. He has led business transformations at Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works, and Whirlpool Corporation, with $3B+ shareholder value across five turnarounds. He speaks to leadership teams on business transformation, turnarounds, and breaking stagnation.