1. WHY BUSINESSES FAILAND HOW TO TRANSFORM THEM – AN INTERVIEW WITH
JOHN GREIG
13th October 2016
Recently I was introduced to John Greig, a specialist in business transformation, and was keen to
download some of his views to see how they can be applied to the start up and fast growth areas
of fintech. In truth, much of what he says could in fact apply to almost any business no matter the
scale. John himself has worked in senior roles at businesses of many different sizes; from early
stage start ups through to large technology and service providers. In addition to his wide-spanning
management experience, in recent years John has established a reputation as a man to turn to
when a business is stalling or under performing. Here are his views on why businesses can fail and
how to successfully undertake a transformation programme.
Steve Clarke, FinTech Connect Ltd
Fintech Connect: Hi John, please give us a summary of your experience in the Fintech Sector
John Greig: In my first experience of the Fintech sector, I was hired as an Interim to turnaround the
fortunes of a B2B/C payments and debt management provider by the Chairman and founders of
the business. The business had a number of blue chip clients in the UK, Europe and North America,
and was friends and family funded. It was however, in company voluntary arrangement (CVA),
needed a next generation product to grow and also needed to improve its delivery performance.
But on a positive note and in addition to its list of very high profile clients, the business also had a
unique high value business proposition which was very well received in the market.
In this role, as COO, I jointly owned the P&L with the VP Sales and I led Operations, Solution
Delivery, Product Management, Engineering and Services.
The high level results of this particular assignment were that we:
• created an engaged and committed workforce who were customer focused
• created a new “go to market” strategy, product roadmap and BOM
• delivered key customer solutions and progressed the next generation solution
• revenue grew from £3m to £5M with a £30M weighted pipeline, and a PE valuation of £15M
• the business moved out of CVA
• sourced new, and improved the quality and timeliness of our outsource partners deliverables
• achieved an additional investment of £500K
And this turnaround in the business’s fortunes led to the business being acquired.
My second experience was as a COO and co-founder of a “Mobile First” solution creation
environment, with the business’s first solution targeted at the payments marketplace. In order to
accelerate the time to market of the solution we targeted the acquisition of an engineering business,
and I held responsibility for the due diligence activities of the acquisition, solution delivery and
support, infrastructure, staffing and funding definition requirements. This start-up failed due to loss
of momentum however, we did learn a great deal about the need for founders to have a common
vision and go forward plan, and the importance of identifying and securing the right investor in a
timely manner to fuel the development of the business.

2. FTC: On at least one occasion you have joined under performing businesses and undertaken
action to “course correct” them. Tell us what you can about these experiences
JG: That is correct, I have been hired as an employee and as an Interim on seven separate
occasions of investor funded start-ups, SME’s and SMB’s, and of a $bn corporation. All of these
were technology driven businesses where my role was to lead the transformation or turnaround of
their performance.
I have generally held responsibility for Business as Usual (BAU) – so creating and delivering
products and services, moving from a licence model to a SaaS business, entering new markets,
managing the P&L, enhancing the culture and undertaking the business and/or technological
transformation.
In these roles I have led significant business change resulting in; improved business
culture, significantly better customer engagement, increased innovation (BOM, Products and
Services), harmonisation of “silo’d departments”, increased investment, an increased focus on
delivering on commitments, top and bottom line growth and improved cash collection.
The actions required to “course correct” an under performing business follow a fairly standard
transformation model. It may sound obvious but the organisation needs to create a state of readiness
for change before a successful transformation can occur. Such a state requires the leadership to be
aligned on the case for change, and to be able to articulate the benefits clearly to the wider
organisation in order to secure business-wide support.
In parallel to creating an organisation that is ready for change, the stakeholders need to create the
business’s “new world” vision and strategy, and once communicated, recruit trusted individuals to
lead change initiatives. Each initiative needs to be prioritised and treated as a “project” with
progress updates, allocated resources, milestones, deliverables and predicted outcomes and then any
changes need to be built into BAU.
FTC: What are the most common mistakes made by start up business leaders as they look to
grow their businesses?
JG: The most common mistakes that I have seen are:
1. Not having a clear business vision, operating model, IP model and commercial plan.
2. Believing that taking an “all things to all people” approach is the best route to success rather then
focussing on having a productised solution and a customer-centric mind set.
3. Not putting the right culture and organisational structure in place to enable growth.
4. Failing to recruit the right people into the business at the right time, since as the business grows
different skills and experience profiles are required to develop the business.
5. Lack of the right KPI’s, processes and quantitative analysis to manage the business.
6. Not upgrading systems, processes and tooling in line with business needs.
7. Contracts with early solution adopter customers that offer unfavourable T&C’s particularly in the

3. areas of SLA’s and payment terms.
8. A reluctance to trade equity in the “envisioned business” to generate investment and growth, and
following a self funding strategy for too long can mean the business may for instance have to divert
resources away from core product development in order to undertake short term cash generating
assignments. This defocussing can have a negative long term impact on the success of the business.
Management regularly needs to review whether 100% of “current business” is better than (let’s say)
80% ownership plus additional investment of the “envisioned business”.
9. Lack of knowledge sharing between domain specialists and engineers, can potentially stifle
growth. What I mean by this is that a lack of shared knowledge can become a bottleneck, stalling
the pursuit of new opportunities since “all” the knowledge of the system is sat with a few people. So
build knowledge sharing into the businesses culture.
10. Lack of a harmonised organisation (all functions working together – from the same “hymn sheet”),
resulting in less than optimal business effectiveness and efficiency.
FTC: What are the typical steps required to transform an ailing business into a healthy one?
JG: The approach I have utilised successfully is to create a state of “transformation ready”. The first
step to doing this is that the stakeholders, if not already available, need to create an agreed single
business vision and the case for change, this is a critical piece of work which will influence greatly
the future success of the business and the transformation or turnaround, if there are any not
discussed or unresolved issues (“elephants in the room”) with regard to the way forward for the
business then these will need to be uncovered and addressed within the transformation
implementation programme.
It is critical to the success of any transformation programme that we garner the support of
executives and the workforce, and for the chosen “change leaders” to lead the change initiatives and
the embedding of the changes into BAU.
The 7 key stages of a business transformation programme are:
1. Create a state of ‘transformation ready’, and maintain this state going forward.
2. Create and communicate the case for change – if this is not done then this can lead to
complacency.
3. Enlist stakeholders to create the Vision and the Strategy – if this is not done then there could be a
view that the programme is not important.
4. Communicate the Vision and Strategy – if this does not occur then there will be a sense of
frustration in the organisation.
5. Remove the barriers to change – if this is not done then this could lead to cynicism and loss of
momentum.
6. Set targets and milestones, and acknowledge progress and the results of the change – without
regular reporting of the state of the initiatives then the programme could be viewed as a wasted
effort.
7. Reinforce change – communicate the outcomes, build the changes into BAU methods
of working, processes and tooling, and train the staff on new working practices – otherwise the
business will not reap the benefits of the initiative.

4. FTC: What are the do’s and don’ts of managing change in a successful transformation project?
JG: Very good question. The first point is that transformation or change is not a one off project.
Great companies institutionalise change within their organisations because they recognise the
requirement to evolve in order to meet the needs of an ever changing business environment.
In terms of the “do’s”, there are a number;
• firstly, the project sponsor needs to openly support the vision of the individual initiative
• the change leader of a particular initiative needs to have domain knowledge in order to gain
respect and drive the initiative forward
• appropriate KPI’s need to be established in order to monitor the right business drivers
• it is important to ensure that any changes made are repeatable
• finally in order to ensure the business has staff buy-in we need to communicate, communicate,
communicate the vision, the progress being made and the resultant successes.
In terms of “don’ts”;
• the first is to avoid undertaking too many changes at once – or to just focus only on the big wins,
also focus on small wins and “no brainers” that can be measured and celebrated positively to
invigorate the process
• secondly, it is important not to focus the organisation on change at the detriment of the business;
• finally, never underestimate the power of measurement (nor make it too complicated), as they say
“…if it gets measured (and particularly if it’s rewarded) it gets done”.
FTC: In your experience do roadblocks in a company’s growth usually stem from product/tech,
strategy, or culture?
JG: From my experience the edge that successful companies have is that they have developed a
culture that supports growth. That through their culture they have the ability to change direction,
be more innovative, increase the top and bottom line, provide excellent customer service, and can
go “the extra mile” to win larger customers and projects.
Some of the aspects of how improved culture can enable sustainable growth are:
• increased operational effectiveness and efficiency through increased employee feedback on what
is working and what is not, and where there are opportunities for improvement
• increased staff engagement in the business by increasing their trust in the leadership
• maximisation of the organisations ability to focus, execute and provide excellent customer service
by setting agreed norms of behaviour
• businesses with great cultures can retain and hire great people, and its great people that make
great businesses
The right business culture (subject to finance) will enable a company to better tackle issues such as

5. changing strategy, or common product/technology issues such as digitalisation, moving to devops,
or re-architecting their products since the staff and the business are better aligned.
FTC: Not everybody would be able to fundamentally shift the fortunes of a business. What
characteristics do you need to own in order to be able own in order to do this?
JG: In order to be able to fundamentally shift the fortunes of a business, the person needs to be a
leader, they need to be able to take control of the situation and by working with the team to create
a clear vision, associated goals and the target culture for the business, they must be able to
demonstrate in their work the culture and values of the business. They need to be passionate
and focused, they need to have the capacity to understand the business and its solutions.
They need to be able to create the right business KPI’s and financial targets, and they need to be
able to make the rest of the team feel energised.
During this process they must also be able to take calculated risks based on the analysis of current
scenarios, they need to create a culture of openness so that new ideas are discussed, they need to be
self managing and proactive and need to be able to make the difficult decisions where necessary. By
creating such an environment the business will generate employee trust which is one of the main
cornerstones of any successful transformation initiative.
This leader also needs to operate with a high level of integrity, be the champion for creating a
customer centric culture, a harmonised organisation and for the implementation of the right overall
organisation culture which maximises employee engagement.
Many start up business leaders won’t necessarily have undertaken a wholesale transformation
project before so it may be necessary to look outside of the business for help from someone with the
right level of expertise, someone who can deliver a significant shift in a businesses’ fortunes. I
believe the individual needs to have successfully undertaken at least one technological and one
business transformation, and the person needs to have led a transformation whilst still leading BAU.
Finally it’s of critical importance that this person is able to build a rapport with the executives and
other team members.
FTC: If you were launching a new start up yourself now, how would you go about doing it? i.e. is
there a particular methodology that you subscribe to?
JG: Starting up a business requires a unique set of people with the right set of entrepreneurial,
inter-personal, operational and technological skills. The business needs the team to act in a
harmonised manner since the path from moving from an initial idea to a proof of concept, to a
validated solution, through to being a funded, PO and cash generating business that is scalable,
profitable and repeatable business is not a linear set of activities.
With this understanding there are a number of guidelines I would however utilise:
Create a great culture. During the evolution of the business there will be a need for significant
changes in order for the business to reach its next stage of development. Possible changes can
include working with a business mentor to support business growth, staff up-skilling, organisation

6. restructuring, or a re-architecture of the solution. In order to scale your business you may need to
outsource more or less, or improve tooling, systems and processes, and you may need a new
business model, to name but a few of the possibilities. By having a great culture in place this will
enable such changes to be better orchestrated.
Other key points to consider include:
• As soon as possible work with a target client, and provide them with excellent service.
• Getting the right “obsessive people” on board and working together is crucial, as is creating a
culture of trust and openness with a focus on delivering great products and customer service.
• Create and socialise your business vision, value proposition and associated road-map. This is
often best done in the form of a compelling story showing how your team and you are uniquely
qualified to deliver value to your target customers. This can act as your mechanism for hiring the
right staff, generating team commitment and focusing them on what needs to be done. Such a story
is also invaluable when presenting to potential investors.
• True validation of your offering is when you receive customer PO’s. Implement a business model
that makes money, manage your finances well and be frugal.
• Utilise agile practices and tools across the business not just in Engineering.
• Seriously consider trading stock for investment when this improves your odds for success.
• Last of all but no less important: Communicate, Communicate and Communicate, keep your team
on-board at all times!
A big thank you to John for taking the time out to talk with us. Anyone interested in speaking
with John directly can reach him on John.Greig@bellquest.co.uk. Better still, John will be
running a workshop on ‘Tips for avoiding business failure’ at FinTech Connect Live on the
7th of December. For more information or to register then visit www.fintechconnectlive.com