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Rajat Batra was brought in as the youngest ever CEO at 35 with a stiff mandate to figure out a way of stemming the accumulated losses built up steadily over the last 12 quarter. He was handed over the operational plans and financial statements of 92 different budget centres to study and recommend a turnaround strategy to the board for approval within the next 30 days.

Adopting the Theodore Levittian question `What business are we `really' in?' Rajat figured out that ultimately there were only three businesses the company was into. They either completed one-time projects or manufactured and distributed the goods originating from that facility or maximised the traffic by way of patronage for the produce, facility or knowhow. This reduced the budget centres to just three.

Generating profits required balancing the resource demanded by the task (Xaxis) with the level of productivity leap demanded (Y axis). He called for an off-site workshop with the senior team to rank order the various initiatives on the basis of their ability to impact four universal goals he identified for the entire organisation to meet collectively:

Improve the cash-flow and gross margins by either getting a higher price realisation or sell at cash with an incentive for advance payment.

Reduce break-even point or increase ROI by virtue of maximising the cashflow for every facility and throwing the system of allocation of costs out of the window.

Speed to market candidates identified as being those that will start earning revenue from day one with no gestation period.

Compounding the premium multiplier pointed to directing the value accretion to customers down the line rather than focused on just their own company.

The good news was that Rajat knew what he had to get done. The challenge was how to manage a diverse set of business models and go through the stages of envisioning, chartering, mandating, empowering, steering and institutionalising all these into a programme to formulate a formidable work ethic for the future?

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