The need for an International Turnaround Management Standard (ITMS)

Turnarounds are a very common situation that statically 30% of the listed companies on the NYSE run into within ten years. The research led by Christoph Lymbersky of turnaround cases suggests that a lot turnarounds are done in house by the companies themselves, few have professional turnaround help. It seems that these companies follow a rather unstructured approach to overcome their problems and to being able to achieve a successful sustainable turnaround . This is backed up by the Administrative Office of the U.S. courts that states that only one out of eight cases that file for Chapter 11 have achieved to reorganized themselves successfully. – here it is left open what is defined a successful turnaround – Only about one-third of these firms continued in operation two years after their chapter proceedings closed.

Until now there has been no real method or standard of how to conduct a turnaround. Also most turnarounds fail and if they successed then about 80% go back into a company wide crisis situation within 5 years. Hence, there is room for improvement. Throughout our studies of turnaround management we have recognized that most turnarounds are focused on specific areas, that symptoms rather than causes are treated and that, turnarounds are done by experts from specific areas such as purely financial experts or legal experts.

In our research we have not encountered a standard structured way of turning a company around. We know that some turnaround firms have their own loose “guidelines” on how to do a turnaround. Also, a few authors have published books about something that outlines different strategies and stages of a turnaround process (especially C.B. Bibeault, Slater & Lovett), but nothing comes close to being as comprehensive universal and applicable as the ITMS (International Turnaround Management Standard). We have not found substantial evidence of Change-Management and Project Management techniques applied to turnaround management in such a structured way as in the ITMS. Or at least there has not been a focus on it.

For more information please contact the:

Turnaround Management Society

www.turnaround-society.com