The finance club had the honour of witnessing Mr. Gustavo Campos speak about "Business turnaround during an economic crisis: An American perspective".
Mr.Gustavo spoke illustratively about how he managed to turn around the business of Campus Property Management, the company where he currently holds the position of CEO.
The discussion got us all hooked on as he decided to let us assume his position and decide what we would do to solve the problems, given that we were to face the same dilemmas as he was faced with.
Having discussed our inputs, he was rather impressed that they matched most of the strategies adopted by him.
He followed an organized approach to dealing with the problems on the table:
First, he ensured that primary revenue stream of the business, i.e., rental collection was flowing smoothly- this generated cash for the business, which, in his opinion was of prime importance. He strongly emphasized on the fact that, once we have cash on the table, other problems could be dealt with rather smoothly.
Next, he focused on people. He adopted the process of leading by example where he himself got down to improving his skill sets so as to execute the required tasks.
Being a family run business, he also had to face the challenges associated with dealing with the family members owning the company and yet take the right decisions to help move the business in the right direction.
Besides this, he spoke about the importance of streamlining operations and cutting out slack in divisions which did not add value or improve the overall performance of the company.
As a parting note, Mr.Gustavo motivated us to look at being "general leaders" versus focusing on narrow specializations as he believed that it would meet the need of the hour.
Overall, it was an enlightening experience to hear, first hand, how businesses get transformed! The style in which Mr. Gustavo conducted the seminar was an eye opener to one and all attending the seminar, irrespective of the background they came from- a fantastic value adding talk from all perspectives.
