Read Now Default to Bold: Anatomy of a Turnaround DOC
Default to Bold: Anatomy of a Turnaround is a guide to surviving and thriving, in business and life, during moments of crisis. While logic would tell you the best response is to keep a low profile, it is the counter-intuitive response of defaulting to bold that works best, throwing your enemies off balance and reminding your allies why they trusted you in the first place. Over the past three decades, Rupert Scofield built a billion-dollar microfinance empire in some of the most difficult markets on earth, including failing states like Afghanistan, the Congo and Haiti. Against all odds, he delivered 80 straight quarters of profits, becoming in the process a “living legend” in the microfinance and social enterprise spaces. Suddenly, a global crisis in Emerging Markets, triggered by collapsing oil and other commodity prices devalues currencies worldwide and plunges FINCA into losses. The six minority investors, including the International Finance Company (World Bank) and five (5) other self-described “social investors”, organizations that turn decidedly anti-social at the first sight of red ink, scream for the author’s resignation, trying to impose their cookie-cutter solution to the crisis. Also arrayed against FINCA are over 40 lenders, including the investors, who collectively have lent $800 million dollars to FINCA and are now clamoring for their money back. How the author and his colleagues prevail against these enormous odds is a testimony to the power of a bold strategy. Default to Bold also contains a plethora of “Lessons Learned” on how to recognize the true motives of your investors, and above all how to follow the Prime Directive in any business: “Never give up control.” Told with wit and total honesty, Default to Bold is Liar’s Poker meets Steve Jobs, written with the pacing of a novel after the fashion of the best of the “Business thriller” genre.
