My article on the six irrefutable laws of turnaround management was first published in 2004. I’ve been referencing the article in recent discussions. It serves as a good reminder that, while we’re certainly improving our turnaround performance, we still face the inevitable challenges that come with unpredictability. We still have work to prepare for and to execute, and we must respond to those challenges. As in football, no player knows if they’ll be tackled or make a touchdown, but they always work from a well-engineered playbook built from experience.
So, here again is my list of the most recognizable, irrefutable laws of turnaround management. I’ve updated it with some of my favorite quotes or sayings.
Law No. 1: Preparation counts! Benjamin Franklin wrote, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” When done properly, a project plan is a model of what is going to be done, who is going to do it and what it’s going to cost. The more we invest in upfront preparation, the greater the opportunity for success. Plans alone don’t guarantee success, but as former U.S. Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson said, “No plan can prevent a stupid person from doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time … but a good plan should keep a concentration from forming.”
Law No. 2: The deadline for finalizing the scope will not be met or “what can’t be cured must be endured.” Every turnaround manager lists scope growth as one of the most difficult aspects of the job. A start date that isn’t immediate is not urgent to anyone outside of the project management team. Or as Ben Franklin put it, “It’s what you do when you don’t have to do anything at all that gets you where you want to be when it’s too late to do anything about it.”
Law No. 3: The units that are being decommissioned will not be ready for maintenance in the sequence in which they were scheduled. The old saying “As the job starts, so goes the job” fits this well. However, this doesn’t make scheduling any less vital — even if we hit a rough patch, we have to have a pathway out.
Law No. 4: Work expands to the time allotted to it. Another way of saying this is the dollars spent on a project will never be less than the dollars allocated to it. Once the turn-around starts, the spending is like a runaway train. The only way to stop runaway costs is to finish. In other words, “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
Law No. 5: The benefits of contract negotiations are lost in the contract administration. Knowledge management systems work best in the functional organizations where the people who generate the knowledge are the ones who administer the knowledge. A matrix organization (as used in turnaround management) must rely on those who generate the knowledge to coach others to implement and administer the knowledge. There is a “knowing-doing” gap we experience because we don’t successfully transfer that knowledge into action. Charles de Gaulle, a former general and president of France, gives us a perfect quote for this situation, “Victory often goes to the army that makes the least mistakes, and not to the army that makes the most brilliant plans.”
Law No. 6: Most lessons learned will be forgotten and not applied in the future. As frustration and stress build during each turnaround, we swear the next time things will be different but somehow the lessons learned from past turnarounds don’t get implemented. Here again, Ben Franklin showed his wisdom when he said, “If you do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always gotten.”
I will close with two of my favorite quotes by Elbert Hubbard, the American publisher and philosopher. He said, “To escape criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing” and “Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes each day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.” Which reminds me — I have just exceeded my limit!
For more information, contact Mike Bischoff at (281) 461-9340, email sales@tamanagement.com or visit www.tamanagement.com.
