The subtitle of Gary Sutton’s The Six-Month Fix is  "Adventures in Rescuing Failing Companies," but it captures only half of the book’s approach.  Sutton is "turnaround CEO," and he revels in his personal war stories as "being the CEO du jour in eight different industries."  But he spends an equal amount of time giving utterly down-to-earth, step-by-step advice to sinking companies -- and to other budding turnaround CEOs.  

In fact, most of the book’s 69 brief chapters are commands:  "Make What Sells"; "Incentivize Everyone"; "Kill Meetings"; "Demand Straight Talk."  Sutton is vehemently opposed to beating around the bush, and it shows on every page, starting with the very first paragraphs:

If you’re the CEO of a struggling business, let’s hope we never meet. I’m a turnaround guy. When I arrive, you leave, and profits return....You’re probably smarter than me, undoubtedly know your industry better, and may be a superior leader. But I’ve fixed more businesses. I don’t cling to unrealistic hopes or hesitate to change things.... The process would nauseate you. This faltering child was yours. [I] discipline and save the kid.

Sutton seems to cover virtually every detail of how to salvage a company, and he does it, for the most part, with a refreshing degree of humility:  "Some [of my] success was luck.  Some wasn’t.  I’m not sure which was which, but the same basic tactics somehow worked every time."  However, Sutton at times comes across as dictatorial, with a do-this, don’t-even-think-about-doing-that attitude.  He also can’t resist being a salesman, which requires the ultimate confidence in yourself and your ideas.

Indeed, it’s the lack of emotional attachment to a company and its employees that allows Sutton to focus so clearly on the bottom line. For example in Chapter 1, not so subtly entitled "First Stop the Bleeding," Sutton contends that making swift but necessary changes is “not brain surgery. Getting a loser to break even should take six months or less....  Management can’t manage until the business is self-sufficient.  Investors, bankers, and creditors assume the right to help management when an outfit is losing money, and that kind of help doesn’t [help].  Oh, and please, don’t try to sell your way out of losses.  Knock down your costs first."

Sutton’s prescription for cutting costs is succinct:  "Find the margin.... Rank every product or service you sell by its gross margin.  Sell off, raise prices, or shut down everything on the bottom half of this list within a year.  This takes guts.  It always works." 

Sutton reminds beleaguered companies that "we live in increasingly specialized times, and death is fast for those who ’round out’ their offerings with stuff that can be gotten elsewhere for less."  While the turnaround CEO at Software Express, he sold off two of its three products within 12 months and renamed the company Legal Rainbow to reflect its focus on a single, non-glamorous, but unique offering: the only software package for law firms that offered color text and graphics.  Prospects, "having analyzed every last reason to pick software, tumbled over the edge for our color.  All other differences [versus other firms] were pretty subtle.  [Color] doesn’t hurt with jury presentations, [and] makes the clients feel they’re getting more professional help. Sales tripled in a year.  All the employees got better at color graphics because that became all Legal Rainbow did.  Eighteen months later, a computer manufacturer bought the business."   

On the basis of this and other real-world experiences, Sutton concludes his advice to specialize with these certainties:  "The dumbest words in business are either ’full product line,’ ’no job too big or too small,’ or ’one-stop shopping.’  That proves the company is exceptional at nothing."

Having spent the first 16 years of his career in marketing at Honeywell and Montron (a toy startup acquired by Fisher-Price), Sutton makes an especially strong case for how troubled companies should turn around their marketing and advertising efforts.  He’s emphatic that management "must make everybody think and argue until you agree on what it is that you do better than anybody else.  There are no single secrets to turnaround success, but this comes close.

"Turn this [point of difference] into a mantra that’s repeated under the logo of your letterhead, as a tagline on all emails that go out, in the employee newsletter....  Make it specific.  ’Best’ is meaningless.  ’The only parts NASA certified’ says something.  ’More value’ is meaningless.  ’Lowest cost to operate in its class’ comes closer.  ’Fastest service’ is meaningless.  ’Delivery next day, guaranteed’ says a lot. 

"It doesn’t have to be true yet, by the way.  If this unique benefit is within reach, start preaching now.  That’ll get you there faster.  Quarterbacks don’t throw the ball to receivers.  They toss the ball to where the receiver will be in a few seconds."

Again and again, Sutton stresses the absolute necessity for a company’s leadership to cut through management clutter.  One of his war stories attributes the death of Checks-To-Go -- which he turned into "the profit leader of the industry" -- to excessive meetings under its new management.  "They increased the meeting schedule to 16 hours a week on every conceivable subject.  For two days out of every week, the managers were all meeting and boosting their social skills while production waffled and customers were ignored."  Sutton advocates no more than three to six hours of meetings a week, with each lasting no more than one hour. 

Sutton is particularly admiring of the management style of Robert Vlasic, who not only owned the pickle company bearing his name, but also an auto-leasing company, a nursing home and a real estate company.  He quotes Vlasic as saying, "I have a rule that one, and only one, piece of paper is submitted to me weekly from each business.  This type of communication is critical."  Sutton’s point is "there are just a few facts that count in every business.  If those things are happening right, everything else falls into place." 

In his chapter "Duck Computer Traps," Sutton relates a personal case study from his days as CEO of Precision Machine Company of Seattle.  "The hardest worker of all was the CFO.  He was a maniac on the mainframe.  He was the CFO and his purpose was to create reports.  All else would fall in line if there were just plenty of reports."  The day after Sutton took control, he visited the general manager of Precision Machine’s subsidiary.  "He was wide open and friendly, happy to have some attention.  I noticed a stack of computer printouts on his desk.  ’Bill, how do you use those reports?’ I asked. ’I get my paper clips from them,’ he said, ’Watch.’  He picked up the report of green-and-white computer paper.  It was at least a quarter-inch thick.  Bill pulled the thick metal clip off the report.  He reached into an upper desk drawer and pulled out an oversized coffee cup.  He dropped the paper clip into the black cup ... then pushed the report off the side edge of his desk.  It plopped into the circular file.

"’I never complain, and they never complain,’ he said.  ’I’ve got other things to do, and it saves me searching for paper clips.’  He smiled."  From that eye-opening experience, Sutton developed a strategy for testing the necessity of computer-generated reports:  "Kill any that aren’t read.  Find out by killing each one in sequence, and don’t regenerate any until requested.  At least once a year hold a report-killing meeting and don’t let anybody leave until three or four are buried." 

Clearly, Sutton is a defiantly no-nonsense leader.  He can’t stand bureaucratic layers or corporate jargon.  He wades right into the fight to turn periled companies around, and nothing is too small to escape his attention -- from literally staying in Holiday Inns instead of Ritz-Carltons to playing hardball with creditors on his very first day on the job. 

More than anything, The Six-Month Fix is both a cautionary tale of how companies get into deep trouble and an incredibly detailed plan of how to fix any "nonregulated business."  Early on, Sutton states, "If you’re a director, shareholder or executive of a company that’s losing money at a rate that’ll bankrupt you within the year, please do not read the whole book.  You don’t have that kind of time, pal.  Go straight to the turnaround chapters titled in boldface.  These tell you how to stop the bleeding.  Follow them and within six months your loses will be gone, your cash stabilized, and employees shall smile once again.”

For those companies that are breaking even or making modest money, Sutton directs readers to his 52 management lessons and commands that management execute the weekly action steps.

Three further caveats about The Six-Month Fix:  First, like 99% of business books, it is repetitive, in both Sutton’s real-world examples and his formulas for success.  Second, his pithy, there’s-not-a-second-to-waste writing style -- while usually more refreshing than the management or consulting jargon used in most business tomes -- can at times grate.  

Third, many of the examples he cites are as much as 30 years old.  For instance, Sutton concludes his "Attack Drugs and Alcohol" chapter this way:  "Alcohol problems are easier to spot for those of us born in 1942 or before.  It’s our drug of choice, our pal.  When it interferes with work, talk to the employee about it immediately.  If you’re of my vintage, you probably don’t understand drugs and the telltale signs.  Do yourself a favor and learn."

Still, the common sense Sutton brings to the turnaround process, and the amount of ground he covers, makes the book a valuable, company-saving manual. 

July 2003