US Business Turnaround
Margin improvement of 35 percentage points in nine months.
The situation
A North American subsidiary of a global consumer goods manufacturer had been through a leadership and strategy renewal three years prior. Early signs were encouraging. By year two, losses had begun to mount. By year three, they had deepened. Incremental adjustments were made, none moved the needle. The business needed a different kind of intervention.
What changed
The starting point was an honest assessment of what the business actually was, and what it could realistically become. The answer pointed in one direction: smaller, more focused, and structurally profitable. The organisation was overhauled completely. Strategy was rebuilt from the ground up, customers, products, and pricing all reconsidered. The business that emerged was a deliberate choice, not a compromise.
The result
A 35-percentage-point margin improvement over nine months. The business was structurally profitable on a smaller, sharper footprint, with a strategy that its team could execute rather than aspire to.
The principles in this engagement
- Clarity — a grounded, evidence-based view of what the business actually was, not what it had once been positioned to be.
- Focus — a deliberately smaller footprint, with the discipline to de-emphasise everything outside the new perimeter.
- Momentum — nine months of compounding decisions rather than a single restructuring announcement.