Turnarounds fail when people try to fix everything at once.
A practical sequence:
- Stabilize: cash, payroll, production, customer communication
- Simplify: processes, roles, offerings, priorities
- Scale: build systems, hire deliberately, grow controlled
If you skip Stabilize, you’re building on panic. If you skip Simplify, you scale chaos. If you skip Scale, you stay stuck in owner-dependency.
What to do this week
- Stabilize: create a 13-week cash plan.
- Simplify: pick three priorities and pause everything else.
- Scale: document and standardize your top five workflows.