...regular board meeting, one where Scribner had given a report at the board's afternoon session the preceding day.

Before the new day in early fall ended, however, the board had asked him to take the helm as Southern States' president and chief executive officer, and he was quickly immersed in efforts to turn around a co-op teetering on the financial brink.

The coming days would be a never-ending stream of meetings with bankers, consultants, the co op's member-leaders, employees and other stakeholders. The decisions and recommendations he made to the Southern States board in the following weeks and months were rarely easy or painless. But now, some 60 months later, co-op has just posted what Scribner views as a breakthrough year with profitable results exceeding its budget goals.

How did Southern States--which in its 76-year history prior to 1999 had never lost money on its own operations--come so close to financial disaster? And how was the co-op able to turn the situation around?

Learning lessons the hard way

Conversations with Scribner, the co-op's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Leslie Newton, and Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Wesley Wright, offer ample evidence of the roller-coaster ride Southern States has been on. Lessons learned often came the hard way, but they provide a checklist of pitfalls to avoid and management tools and practices needed to turn around a faltering business. Scribner firmly believes many of those tools and practices are just as vital for keeping a sound company moving forward and avoiding the problems that plagued Southern States.

Newton recalls that after joining the Southern States' treasury department, the co-op was performing at record levels in the 1996 and 1997 fiscal years.

"Along with others in...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



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