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At a glance
- Walking dead recovery is not a growth program. It is a decision program. The first ninety days are about restoring decision cadence, not chasing revenue.
- Day 1 to 14: run the Diagnostic. Recover $22,500 to $30,000 of forward-reallocation potential. Restate the three ratios. Draft the first Three-Path Model.
- Day 15 to 45: make the first decision. Day 46 to 90: cadence locks, second decision ships, board narrative resets. By day 90 the company is no longer drifting.
A walking dead portco does not turn around by accelerating. It turns around by deciding. Our engagements run on a ninety-day sequence because that is how long it takes to break the drift, clear the cash, and re-anchor the operating rhythm. What follows is the sequence we run inside Diagnostic and 90-Day Decision Resolution engagements, compressed to a single post.
Day 1 to 14: the Diagnostic window
The first fourteen days do three things in parallel. They surface cash. They restate the numbers the board actually uses. They produce one decision on paper.
- Cash recovery scan across eight categories. SaaS overages, cloud spend, R&D credits, AR aging, vendor terms, revenue leakage, headcount and contractor load, G&A creep. Every Diagnostic we have run has surfaced at least $22,500 of recoverable capital inside this window. Most land between $22,500 and $30,000. Some clear far more. The mechanical work is done by the engagement team; the company keeps the cash.
- Ratio restatement. Gross margin, LTV/CAC, and net revenue retention restated against one explicit customer definition and one explicit cohort break. This is the ratio mirage fix, and it is what makes the next eleven weeks of decisions legible to the board.
- First Three-Path Model. Keep, Kill, Restructure on the one decision the CEO and lead investor have been avoiding for two quarters. Usually the go-to-market motion, the product portfolio, or a senior hire that has not worked. Dollars under each path. Timing. A recommended path.
By the end of day 14 the company has cash back in the account, numbers that mean what they say, and a real decision waiting for a board vote.
Day 15 to 45: first decision, first cadence
The middle thirty days are when walking dead portcos either re-enter operating posture or collapse back into drift. The whole window runs on three moves.
Ship the first decision
The board does not need to love the recommendation. They need to vote. A Keep decision is just as valuable as a Kill decision if it is made explicitly with the numbers on paper. What kills a walking dead portco is not bad decisions. It is undecisions that run by default.
The Three-Path Model from day 14 gets voted on in the next board meeting, no later than day 30. Whatever path wins gets a thirty-day execution plan and a named owner. If the winning path is Kill, the wind-down starts in the same week. If the winning path is Restructure, the specific restructuring moves get scheduled against a calendar.
Stand up the Financial Rhythm System
A one-page monthly operating rhythm that replaces the retrospective close-and-deck cycle. Three instruments: the Decision Slide (what are we deciding this month, three paths, recommendation), the Runway Spine (rolling 18-month cash view with sensitivity), and the Signal Dashboard (Six Trap Diagnostic™ of the walking dead pattern with a current reading).
The rhythm does not replace the close or the board deck. It precedes them. The close feeds it. The board deck uses it. The point is that finance is no longer the department that explains the past. It is the department that frames the decisions.
Co-author the company definition
The CEO and lead investor draft and sign a one-page definition of what the company is right now. This is the repair for the CEO/investor fracture. It is the piece of work most pairs skip and the piece of work most stalled raises actually need.
Day 46 to 90: cadence locks, narrative resets
The final forty-five days are less dramatic than the first two windows. The work is quieter and more durable.
Second decision ships
The Financial Rhythm System produces a second Three-Path Model in month two and a third in month three. By the end of day 90, the company has voted on three material decisions in ninety days. That is more decision cadence than most walking dead portcos produce in a year.
Cash recovery hardens
The $22,500 to $30,000 recovered in the Diagnostic window becomes a floor, not a ceiling. Month two and month three typically surface additional recovery as the team applies the discipline learned in the first scan to their own work. Most engagements end with total recovery well above the Diagnostic floor, all of it on the client’s balance sheet.
Board narrative resets
By day 90 the board deck does not lead with a rearview variance walk. It leads with the Decision Slide. The operating conversations at the board meeting are sharper than they have been in two years. The lead investor’s questions are operating questions again, not orientation questions.
This is the single most reliable external signal that the walking dead pattern has broken. The board’s questions tell you whether you are still inside the pattern or on the other side of it.
What this is not
This is not a growth playbook. Revenue may tick up inside ninety days; it usually does, because decisions that have been blocking go-to-market changes finally get made. But the point of the sequence is not revenue. The point is to restore the decision function so that revenue growth has something to track against.
It is also not a program that runs in parallel with the day job. The CEO’s time, the finance team’s time, and the lead investor’s time are load-bearing for the first forty-five days. A CEO who cannot spend eight hours a week on the sequence for the first month should not start the sequence. That is a separate conversation, usually about whether the company is in a place to be recoverable at all.
Where to go from here
A Diagnostic is the first fourteen days of this sequence. It costs a fixed fee, returns at least $22,500 to $30,000 in recovered capital, and produces the first Three-Path Model on paper. If we miss the recovery floor, the fee refunds. In four years we have yet to refund one.
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