For highly ambitious business leaders, there’s nothing more exhilarating than turning around a business that some thought couldn’t be saved.
Earlier this week, we highlighted two CEOs who have brought companies back from the brink.
One of them is Jamie Dimon protégé and Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf. When Scharf took the helm of Wells in 2019, it was embroiled in a regulatory crackdown, and its brand had been severely damaged due to a widespread “fake accounts” scandal.
“I remember knowing what I was getting myself into, but it was much worse directionally than I thought,” Scharf told Fortune’s Shawn Tully. “The regulatory pressure was beyond anything I’ve experienced, and so was the political pressure.”
His first move was to create a physical plan of attack in the form of a 3,162-page document with 6,000 tasks. Progress on the extensive to-do list was tracked every Monday morning in a two-hour meeting where leaders either sank or swam.
Today, the work isn’t finished, but the company is much healthier. The central bank has lifted an asset cap that checked Wells’ growth, and under Scharf’s watch the stock has jumped from $52 to upwards of $80.
Meanwhile in retail, a wunderkind is minting a reputation as a turnaround guru. Damola Adamolekun had his first success at age 34, when he brought P.F. Chang’s through the pandemic and back to profitability. Now at 36, he’s attempting the “greatest comeback in the history of the restaurant industry” at the helm of Red Lobster. With a background in private equity, Adamolekun is moving fast, cutting bureaucracy, and making analytics-driven decisions to stabilize the business while also trying to improve employee morale.
For more on their turnaround playbooks, read the full features on Wells Fargo and Red Lobster.
