“The Sage of Quiznos”

A few years ago Greg Brenneman was asked to give some advice to MBA students thinking about the next step in their careers. “If you have a chance of working for a healthy company or a sick one,” he wrote, “choose the sick one. The sickest ones need the best doctors and it’s a lot easier to stand out in a company that needs help.” He should know. Throughout his career, Mr Brenneman has gone looking for trouble—first as head of the corporate-turnaround practice at Bain, a consulting firm, and then in a succession of senior roles, including stints at Continental Airlines, Burger King and Quiznos, two American fast-food chains.

Each of these three businesses was going through a difficult time when Mr Brenneman came on board—he described Continental as “the world’s worst $6 billion company” before joining it—and at each he applied a similar approach to sorting out its problems. His tactics, which may provide inspiration for those managers whose firms are struggling in the economic downturn, have impressed private-equity partners. On August 19th Mr Brenneman stepped down as chief executive of Quiznos (though he has become its executive chairman) to take up a new role as chairman of CCMP Capital Advisors, a private-equity firm.

I read this Economist article about Greg Brenneman on the plane yesterday, and already have mentioned it to two people in conversations on wholly different subjects. The idea that we can not only acknowledge that business isn’t always a fairy tale, but that “doctors” can even specialize in curing the ailments, struck me as very refreshing — specifically Brenneman’s comment about the choice between a healthy company or a sick one. Problem solving as a career path… who knew?

(In the interest of telling both sides of this story: many Quiznos insiders don’t agree that Brenneman was the be-all end-all solution for this particular company — one with a long and well-documented history of unsatisfactory treatment of its franchisees. What interested me about Greg Brenneman was not his work specifically for Quiznos, but his reputation as a “corporate turnaround specialist.”)