Management Team Under the Cosh?
Operational Support for Stabilisation and Recovery
When performance dips and conditions tighten, the question often arises: is it management, or the market?
Right now, the answer is usually both. The economy is tougher, costs are higher, and the headroom that once allowed small mistakes to slide has disappeared.
Many leadership teams are still trying to run their business in a way that worked twelve months ago, but doesn’t now. Running a business in good times is not the same as running one through a downturn. It requires sharper focus, faster decisions, and a more disciplined operational rhythm.
This article follows on from 10 Steps to Business Recovery and A CEO/MD Guide to Leading the 10 Steps, which explored how management can lead recovery from inside the business. This piece looks at the same challenge from the portfolio manager’s perspective, how to support management to stabilise and respond before replacement becomes the only option.
Before changing management, it’s worth asking a simpler question:
Can the team adapt, if they’re given the right structure, clarity, and support?
Backing Management Through the Turn
When conditions deteriorate, management are often under the cosh long before investors are. They’re firefighting to hold the line, trying to sustain confidence, and juggling issues that compound daily.
The problem isn’t always capability. It’s often lack of experience in operating through a downturn. Good managers can struggle when the game changes. What they need is structured operational guidance to help them refocus on what really matters.
That’s where practical, hands-on support comes in. It helps them reset priorities, stabilise cash, and rebuild rhythm, fast.
The principles are the same as those set out in A CEO/MD Guide to Leading the 10 Steps: face reality early, rebuild rhythm, and align behind one mission. What changes here is the vantage point, investors helping management apply those disciplines under pressure.
Why It Works
Replacing management can take months and risks losing hard-won operational knowledge. The process burns time, disrupts teams, and can create new uncertainty when the business least needs it.
By contrast, direct operational support can be deployed within weeks and starts delivering traction immediately. It helps management:
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Refocus around a single stabilisation mission
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Rebuild rhythm, accountability, and reporting discipline
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Protect core capability so the business can move fast when conditions improve
It’s faster, less disruptive, and provides a real-world test of whether the team can respond under pressure.
A Practical Intervention, Not Oversight
This isn’t about observation or commentary. It’s about doing the work with them. Structured facilitation sessions help the team confront facts, define the mission, and act decisively. Operational diagnostics uncover where effort is wasted and what needs protecting.
Coming from a turnaround background, I know how to move quickly, protecting the core of the business while positioning it to deploy that capability the moment markets improve.
In tough conditions, the goal is not to make the business smaller. It’s to make it tighter, sharper, and ready to move when opportunity returns.
When to Act
The best time to intervene is early. Once a liquidity crisis has started, options close quickly.
Early operational support preserves value, strengthens leadership discipline, and gives management the best possible chance to prove they can adapt.
If they can, you retain momentum, confidence, and continuity.
If they can’t, you have clarity, not speculation, for your next move.
Introducing Operational Support
You may start to hear or sense that management are under strain, firefighting, stretched thin, or struggling to stay across competing priorities. Often it’s not lack of effort, it’s lack of bandwidth. The team simply doesn’t have the capacity to manage day-to-day delivery and the wider stabilisation work needed to restore control.
In these moments, a soft introduction works best. A private conversation that encourages the CEO or Chair to explore external operational support. Something like:
“You’ve got a lot on your plate, and the market’s moved against everyone. It might help to speak with someone who’s worked through this kind of phase before, someone practical, who can help you and the team refocus and stabilise.”
This gives the CEO ownership of the next step. It preserves dignity, allows them to take initiative, and ensures any engagement starts on the right footing, by invitation, not imposition.
Handled this way, operational support is seen as a resource, not a review. It signals confidence in management, not doubt.
When I’m brought into a business, my first focus is always to build trust with the leadership team. I understand the pressures they’re under, and the last thing a business in recovery needs is another layer of conflict. I’m not there to take sides or to unsettle management; I’m there to help them regain control. Of course, I’m no soft touch when hard decisions are needed, but I’ll always aim to be seen as a supportive, steady presence that makes their jobs easier, not harder.
For portfolio managers, the key is to:
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Keep the tone constructive. It’s about giving management bandwidth and experience, not questioning their ability.
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Let the CEO lead the contact. That keeps engagement authentic and ensures the relationship starts with trust.
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Stay close, but not intrusive. Once support is in place, stay visible and informed without crowding the process.
When introduced well, operational support becomes an ally to both sides, helping management regain control, and giving investors confidence that the business is back in capable hands.
The Case for Backing Management
Backing management through a downturn isn’t about sentiment. It’s about protecting value.
You might also be interested in the article Before You Replace the CEO: The Smarter Intervention for PE-Backed Businesses
The challenge for most portfolio managers isn’t spotting underperformance, it’s deciding whether the team in place can deliver recovery. Structured operational support answers that question faster and with less risk than a full leadership change.
Sometimes, the right move isn’t to change the team.
It’s to give them the structure, clarity, and support to lead differently, and recover their grip on the business.
And beyond the commercial logic, it’s also the right thing to do. Most management teams work hard, care deeply, and want the business to succeed. When market conditions turn against them, supporting them through the transition is both good leadership and good business.
For those interested in the management perspective, 10 Steps to Business Recovery and A CEO/MD Guide to Leading the 10 Steps set out the leadership side of this same process.
