Reality Check Starts Rebounds (John Harrison Newman Commentary)

My wife Darla has ovarian cancer. We were shocked when she was diagnosed in January. She has since been through a major operation and has recently finished her round of chemotherapy. It is going well, but the future will be a question mark for several years to come. It has, of course, been hard. Hard for her and not so easy for me either. There is, however, another part to the story.

On the day before her operation, we went for a walk in the park. Darla noticed that my mind was wandering, and asked me what I was thinking.

“What was I thinking?” Hmm. I had not been paying attention. Then it hit me. I had been daydreaming about what I would say at her funeral!

“My god,” I thought, feeling guilty. “That’s terrible. No way can I tell her. They’re negative thoughts when she needs optimism. If I have crazy ideas about her dying, then they are my problem, my problem alone.”

On the other hand, she does not ask me about my thoughts often, and past experience has taught me that sharing them is usually good.

So I told her.

Then she said, “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Well, let’s hear it. What were you planning to say at my funeral?”

“Oh crap,” I thought. I wanted to forget that I had even been having the awful thoughts, now she wanted to know the details.

So I dredged up the daydreams and gave her my rough-draft eulogy.

She loved it. True to the task of giving a eulogy, my thoughts were not objective, but rather a portrait of Saint Darla. As she listened, the smile on her face widened, as if a weight lifted off her shoulders.

For the rest of that walk, I experienced a level of intimacy unparalleled in 20 years of marriage.

It was an incredible experience, and it surprised me. It shouldn’t have, though, because from my work, I know that the “crisis creates opportunities,” as we say in the turnaround business. The way to access those opportunities is to stare the tough issues right in their face, to look directly at the unpleasant truths of the situation.

I have a former client who used to tell me that when he is dealing with large problems, he pictures them as “big, ugly frogs” lined up on the front of his desk. He pushes himself to “swallow the biggest frog first.”

When I get called into a turnaround situation, one of the first things I do is take my client to a bankruptcy attorney, and the three of us discuss what happens if my client liquidates his business. Why would I do that? I think of myself as a doctor, not an undertaker.

I do it to give my client a realistic view of what happens if the business closes. Am I trying to scare him? No, in ways it is the opposite. Prior to that time, my client was worrying nearly 24 hours a day about this possibility. The worry, though, took the form of a vague gray cloud, a feeling of dread rather than a clear picture. After the visit to the attorney an extraordinary thing usually happens. My client lightens up. He sees that while liquidation is indeed a repugnant choice, it is an option. Should it come to pass, the sun will still rise the next morning.

The visit to the bankruptcy attorney is a technique to move my client from inaction to action. Gymnasts practice falling before they learn their moves. You cannot execute a good flip if you are worrying about hurting yourself. Paul Simon sang, “Before you learn how to fly, you’ve got to learn how to fall.”

If you are human, you have fears. Find out what your worst fear is. Maybe it is bankruptcy, or the loss of a key employee, or your vulnerability to competition. Run through the scenario of what happens if it comes true. If possible, talk it over with someone.

Now you are ready to fly.

(John Harrison Newman of Fayetteville has led turnarounds of troubled companies since 1985. He serves as interim CEO or an advisor to the CEO of mid-sized firms, typically having $30 million to $1 billion in revenue. He may be reached through www.NewmanTurnaround.com.)