Why would anyone of sound mind ever contemplate doing a retail turnaround? The reality is that if you pursue a career in retail, the volatile nature of this sector means that you are more likely than not to spend some of your career in a business undertaking a turnaround.

As someone who has specialised in business turnarounds for much of my career I can give you many reasons why you might want to avoid this experience. There is the stress of not knowing whether what you are planning will work. There are the difficult and often very painful decisions that need to be made. And there is the reputational battering throughout the process that only abates when you finally come out the other side.

Turnarounds are, by their nature, risky enterprises. Your starting point is always a business that is in trouble. Perhaps the worst aspect of the turnaround role, though, is the way that these businesses attract attention from some rather unsavoury characters.

Every ecosystem has its parasites and scavengers and capitalism is no different. It is still disheartening to experience individuals and companies deliberately attempting to destabilise a business in the hope of being able to reap some form of benefit. Most of the turnarounds I have led have, at one stage or another, attracted the attention of such individuals.

In this respect I have enormous sympathy with the management team at the JJB turnaround who are dealing with unprecedented storms around them while they try to get on with the very tough day job of restoring that company to health. 

But there are many positives too. In my view these outweigh the many disadvantages of a turnaround. There is the satisfaction when you finally succeed. There is no better feeling than having pitched oneself against adversity and won.

There is the adrenalin that such business situations create. It would be hard to be as engaged or as excited by a business in a steady state where the brief was to deliver incremental improvement rather than revolutionary change.

But there is one overwhelming positive of becoming involved in a business turnaround that should be noted: the insight into the resilience and determination of human nature in the face of adversity is profoundly uplifting. To experience a team of people forget their differences and pull together in a common cause. To see politics and rivalry put to one side as people concentrate on what really matters. To watch the grace and maturity with which people at all levels of the organisation handle difficult news and uncertainty. These are the positive experiences that make a turnaround worthwhile. 

In my view no career is really complete until you have spent time in a business turnaround. Business, at its heart, is about understanding human nature. You will see all extremes of human nature when you take part in a turnaround but in my view you will experience considerably more good than bad. There are few better learning experiences.

 ➤ Neil Gillis is chief executive of Blacks Leisure