10 Steps to Business Recovery
Building the runway to reach safer ground
How You Got Here
As I write this, (October 2025) my wife has just boarded her flight home from holidaying with friends. The captain has warned that Storm Amy, the first named storm of 2025, will bring turbulence. In other words, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
That same phrase could describe the position many businesses now find themselves in. For whatever reason, and usually there are several, you now find yourself and the business under pressure. You may not yet feel like you’re in outright survival mode, but if left unaddressed, chances are you’ll end up there whether you like it or not.
Let’s not waste time debating the whys and wherefores. You are here. Face into it.
Here’s the hard truth: businesses rarely fail because of a lack of customers or ideas. They fail because they run out of cash. The good news is that cash, unlike creativity or customer demand, can be measured, managed, and influenced directly if leaders face into it early enough.
That brings us to a term some may not have heard before but must now embrace: cash runway.
Your cash runway is the amount of time your business can continue operating before it runs out of cash, assuming no changes are made. It is the distance between where you are now and the point where liquidity ends. Every decision you make either shortens or extends that runway.
Recovery, then, is about one thing above all else: building and extending your cash runway long enough to reach safer ground.
Before Step One: Anchor the Leadership Mindset in Runway Thinking
Every recovery starts with mindset. If the senior team stays anchored in “business as usual”, defending old structures, retaining customers who drain cash, protecting pet projects, the runway burns faster than you realise.
Runway thinking changes the frame:
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The runway is finite. Every business has an end point unless leaders act to extend it. Pretending otherwise is fatal.
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Every decision must be tested against the runway. Does this initiative, customer, or hire extend survival, or shorten it?
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The old world no longer applies. What worked before may now be a liability. Recovery is about the business that can take off tomorrow, not the one that is failing today.
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Runway creates shared reality. Decisions stop being about politics or preference. They are grounded in one neutral truth: how much time is left, and whether an action extends it.
Step 1 (Stabilise): Confront reality without filters and show the way
The first enemy of recovery is denial. Strip back to the non-negotiables: bank balance, liabilities, hard order book. Pressure-test assumptions. If funding stopped tomorrow, how long would you last? That is your runway.
But how you communicate this reality matters as much as the data. Delivered bluntly, you risk paralysing the team. Delivered with calm authority and a plan, it can be a galvanising moment. The kind of moment where teams pull together and surprise you with what they can deliver.
That plan does not need to be perfect, but it must exist. People can handle bad news if they can also see a way forward. Introduce a simple Recovery Roadmap that makes clear the sequence of action:
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Stabilise – Get control of cash, stop the immediate bleeding, and ensure liquidity covers the coming weeks.
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Align – Reset the leadership team around one clear mission and enforce new rhythms.
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Act – Take visible, decisive steps: simplify, cut, renegotiate, and communicate progress.
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Reset – Once stabilised, rebuild a credible medium-term plan and position the business for growth.
The combination of truth + roadmap + calm leadership builds credibility. Without the roadmap, reality sounds like doom. With it, reality becomes the starting line for recovery.
Also insist on confidentiality. The rumour mill can kill a business as fast as a cash crisis.
Step 2 (Stabilise): Treat cash as the mission, not just the metric
Cash is the oxygen of recovery. A 13-week rolling cashflow is essential, but leadership behaviour is what turns it into action.
Everyone must understand that the FD, CFO, or FC is only creating the forecast based on the assumptions they are given. The numbers are no more accurate than the inputs. That is why the leadership team must review, challenge, and update those assumptions every single week.
If the finance function is simply rolling forward the current run rate or applying a crude sensitivity percentage, you may as well be reading today’s horoscope to predict the future. The discipline lies in openly debating the assumptions: will that customer really pay on time, is that cost reduction locked in, can sales deliver that uplift?
Frame cash as a shared mission, not a finance exercise. Use simple language: “This decision buys us four weeks of runway. That one costs us two.” Bring every leader into the conversation, so they feel ownership.
Small visible wins — a key payment collected, supplier terms renegotiated — show the roadmap is moving forward. Each one proves to the team that stabilisation is working.
Step 3 (Stabilise): Re-prioritise customers and revenue with brutal clarity
Not all revenue is runway. In recovery, many leaders cling to top-line volume, even if contracts erode margin or soak up working capital. The courageous choice, and often the hardest, is to cut loss-making customers, exit unprofitable contracts, and double down on the profitable core. Painful in the short term, but liberating for the team who can now focus energy where it really counts.
But profitable revenue only matters if it turns into cash quickly. Too many businesses undermine themselves through poor billing discipline: invoices raised late, errors in detail that delay payment, or a culture of “we’ll get round to chasing next week.” Every day lost is runway burned.
Invoice financing may be an option to smooth working capital, but it must never be a substitute for discipline. If you rely on it to mask poor accounting processes and weak credit control, you are not extending the runway. You are shortening it by adding cost and complexity.
Revenue is only valuable if it converts to cash, cleanly and predictably. In recovery, disciplined invoicing and credit control are not back-office housekeeping. They are survival tools.
Step 4 (Align): Reset the leadership team around one mission
In distress, leadership teams scatter. Each function firefights its own priorities, and the business loses coherence. Recovery collapses when activity replaces alignment.
The reset begins with one clear mission for the next 90 days. But simply declaring a mission is not enough. You need a tool that translates intent into focus across the business.
I use a simple one-page A4 framework called MOST:
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Mission – the overriding intent: where we must get to and why.
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Objectives – measurable outcomes that show progress towards the mission.
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Strategy – the broad approaches we will use to achieve those objectives.
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Tasks – the critical “must-do” actions.
If it is not in the model, you should not be doing it. If it should be done, it must be in the model.
When used properly, MOST cuts out noise, creates coherence, and channels energy into what truly extends the runway.
Step 5 (Act): Simplify the operating model
Complexity kills speed, and speed is how you buy runway.
Simplifying means stripping back pet projects, steering groups, and legacy routines. These are hard conversations, but they are vital. Use positive communication where possible. Frame it as a pause: “We will revisit this when we move into Reset.”
Simplification is not about discarding ideas. It is about freeing energy and sharpening focus. That discipline extends runway and often gives teams relief from unnecessary workload.
Step 6 (Act): Take visible, decisive actions early
Hesitation corrodes confidence. Quick, clear actions such as cutting overheads, closing loss-making operations, and renegotiating suppliers send the signal that leadership is steering.
But decisive action is not just about speed. It is about manoeuvrability: the ability to shift deliberately from one posture to another, as military doctrine teaches. Businesses must switch quickly from cost-cutting to stabilisation, from defence to signalling growth, without losing alignment.
Done well, these shifts do not just extend runway. They extend belief.
Step 7 (Act): Communicate with radical clarity
Silence burns runway. Radical clarity means telling people what you know, admitting what you do not, and explaining what is next.
Never bluff. As the modern phrase has it, do not “gaslight” your people. They will spot it instantly.
Edward R. Murrow once said of Churchill that he had “mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.” That line was dramatised in Darkest Hour, where Lord Halifax reacted to one of Churchill’s speeches: “What just happened? He just took the English language and weaponised it.”
You do not need Churchill’s eloquence, but you do need his balance of candour and conviction.
Hold weekly senior team meetings to align priorities and agree one “version of the truth” to cascade within 24 hours. Blend hard updates with recognition and thanks. Anchor your communication in reassurance of stability, then lift people’s sights to the mission.
And remember the importance of cultural architects. Sir Clive Woodward used this phrase to describe those who shape the culture more than their title suggests. Some are positive, natural amplifiers of clarity and belief. Others may seem like negative troublemakers. Do not rush to push them out. If you can win them into the vision, they can become your most powerful allies. Ignore them or mishandle them, and they can become blockers.
Handled well, cultural architects help cascade clarity and belief faster than any formal channel.
Consistency, humanity, and honesty extend runway.
Step 8 (Act): Win small, visible victories
Small steps, even baby steps, matter. Each one builds cadence, which builds momentum. Before long, the business that felt paralysed is walking, striding, then jogging again.
And with momentum comes confidence. Each win says: “The plan is working.”
Seek out real successes deliberately. Do not manufacture them, but do not overlook them either. Morale is fuel, and it comes from proof that effort makes a difference. Churchill, as a warfighter, knew morale was as vital as ammunition.
Momentum restores confidence, and confidence extends the psychological runway just as much as cash extends the financial one. Recovery is rarely about one dramatic turnaround. It is built from a series of small steps that gather pace. And once pace builds, belief follows.
Step 9 (Act): Build trust with stakeholders
Stakeholders are humans, not machines. They operate in systems designed to protect their organisations, and they are less interested in you than their rhetoric might suggest. But they do not write businesses off lightly.
Most are juggling several distressed businesses. Make their job easy. Provide accurate information. Nothing destroys confidence faster than errors. Show them you are in control, serious, and have a plan.
Support often comes down to a 50/50 call. If your contact is asked internally, “It is borderline — what do you think?” you want them to say, “Back them,” not “I am not sure.”
Give them structured progress: “We are stabilised. We are aligned. Here is what we are acting on. Here is when we will reset.”
Patience is time. Time is runway.
Step 10 (Reset): Reset the medium-term plan
Once stabilisation is secure and early actions are visible, move into Reset.
Reset is not just about numbers. It is about belief. Stakeholders and teams must see a future that is both credible and worth committing to.
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Credible numbers – no optimism bias, no heroic assumptions.
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Visible conviction – a leadership team that looks capable and aligned.
Shift posture deliberately from defence to growth. Too slow, and the business drifts. Too reckless, and you burn the last of the runway.
Externally, communicate not just survival, but readiness to thrive. This is where your 50/50 backers need to carry your story upwards inside their organisations. Give them the numbers and the narrative.
And most importantly: do not slip back into the old way. A crisis strips away illusions. You will have learnt more than you realise — some lessons immediately, others only years later. Hold onto them. Build them into how you lead, how you set strategy, and how you watch warning signals.
Reset done well lifts the whole organisation out of survival mode. It restores ambition, renews energy, and gives people a future to commit to. That is when the business stops living off the runway and starts preparing for take-off.
Final Thought: Runway as the Organising Principle
Recovery is not about clinging to the old business. It is about extending the runway long enough to reach safer ground.
The Recovery Roadmap — Stabilise → Align → Act → Reset — gives leaders and teams a shared language and sequence. It stops decisions being political, reactive, or paralysed, and turns them into deliberate moves tested against one question: does this extend our runway or burn it?
While clarity and discipline are vital, so too is hope. People need to believe that recovery is possible, that their effort matters, and that better days lie ahead.
Hope, handled with honesty, keeps people engaged when the runway feels short. It gives them the reason to endure the tough choices recovery demands, and the belief that effort today will create a better business tomorrow.
The businesses that make it are led by CEOs who hold both truths together: the hard numbers and the human response, discipline and belief, runway and hope.
For more information you can read the CEO/MD Guide to leading the 10 steps to business recovery
