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Luncheon speeches at conferences usually go down with the ease of the rich desserts they accompany, and for the same reasons: All too often they're sweet, insubstantial, and none too provocative. But when Sunbeam Corp. CEO Albert J. Dunlap spoke in New York recently at the Conference Board's management conference on driving global growth, he came on more like a pineapple with the rind still on it.
With his brand of radical downsizing subject to increasing skepticism not just in the popular press but in strategy circles, Dunlap has every reason to be prickly. He also has a book to flog, Mean Business: How I Save Bad Companies and Make Good Companies Great (Times Books, 1996). He expounded on a wide range of business issues, most of which have enveloped him in controversy. Here are a few:
Restructuring: The most misunderstood word in our language today. People would have you translate that to mean firing people and making a lot of money. That is rubbish. Had the word been properly defined from the onset as "rescuing," it would not have the bad connotations. Today, corporations get in terrible shape because people do not make the difficult decisions. I would
not exist if corporate America did their job. If you do a restructuring-or, more aptly, a rescue-you must do it in one year. You show me a threeyear restructure/rescue plan, and I'll show you one that does not get done.
How to turn a company around: Every rescue plan must consist of four components. Number one, you must get the best management team. If you go into a a company that is failing, God doesn't come down. So what do you do? You get rid of the senior management. They caused the problem, after all.
Second, cut the costs. Invariably you'll find there are too...