Bassem Mansour, co-chief executive officer of Resilience Capital Partners, is a seasoned private equity leader with deep expertise in distressed investing, operational restructuring, and organizational turnaround work. Since co-founding the firm in 2001, Bassem Mansour has guided investments in more than 80 companies across manufacturing, business services, and value-added distribution. His background in leveraged buyouts, Chapter 11 reorganizations, and complex financial structuring—supported by earlier experience as an investment banker at McDonald Investments and KeyBanc Capital Markets—has positioned him as an active member of the Turnaround Management Association (TMA). Through this involvement, Mr. Mansour brings insight into the early warning signs TMA professionals often identify long before a formal crisis emerges, emphasizing proactive discipline, operational clarity, and organizational alignment as key defenses against escalating distress.
What the Turnaround Management Association Sees Before a Crisis
Some distressed companies do not face collapse all at once. Instead, their systems show small, sustained signs of trouble: delayed reports, inconsistent forecasts, vendor pushback, and accumulating execution gaps. The Turnaround Management Association (TMA), a global nonprofit community of turnaround and restructuring professionals, describes these patterns as early warning signs that appear before formal distress. Warning signs typically fall into three categories: financial inconsistencies, supplier strain, and performance instability.
Leaders often wait too long to respond to these signs. Internal dynamics, such as pride in legacy systems, resistance to change, or concern about overreacting, can delay action. Boards may avoid confrontation. Leadership teams may hesitate to acknowledge that existing practices no longer fit current needs. These delays often erode internal alignment. Priorities blur, progress slows, and silos deepen before anyone formally names the problem.
When turnaround professionals begin their work early, they focus on stabilizing operations. They start with targeted steps like short-term cash forecasting, supplier prioritization, and weekly reporting check-ins. These measures do not involve restructuring. Instead, turnaround professionals use them to restore rhythm and clarify short-term execution while conditions remain manageable.
External stakeholders also respond to internal behavior. TMA-aligned advisors note that companies that demonstrate discipline through consistent reporting, vendor transparency, and scheduled oversight earn more trust from lenders, suppliers, and customers. When companies maintain clear updates and demonstrate progress, vendors may extend terms or hold pricing. Internal responsiveness strengthens external continuity.
Centralized leadership and poor communication weaken a company’s ability to respond under pressure. TMA professionals frequently observe execution slowdowns when one decision-maker controls most levers, or when teams avoid cross-functional coordination. These structural limitations create bottlenecks and delay adaptation. Addressing them early spreads responsibility and improves organizational range.
Early-stage advisors also bring objectivity that internal teams may lack. Leadership groups often protect processes they built or defer decisions out of loyalty to long-standing relationships. Advisors with no legacy attachments can identify misalignments without internal baggage. This neutrality helps teams diagnose problems faster, hold more productive tradeoff discussions, and offer outside partners clearer signs of progress.
The consequences of external delay build quickly. When red flags go unaddressed, vendors shorten terms, financial partners become more cautious, and employees begin to disengage. Boards have less flexibility to negotiate or shape direction. Early action preserves those options and keeps decision-making inside the organization rather than driven by outside pressure.
Rather than waiting for external advisors, some teams adopt early stabilization processes themselves. Regular practices like cash position reviews, cross-functional risk check-ins, and supplier tracking help surface issues early. Dashboards highlight deviations before they spread. These tools do not require distress to be useful; they operate as part of everyday risk discipline.
This internal readiness becomes especially valuable during transitional periods, such as leadership changes, acquisitions, or rapid scaling. These situations do not always signal failure, but they often reveal execution friction. When detection tools are already in place, teams can respond faster, reduce confusion, and stay aligned without outside intervention.
TMA’s guidance on working capital and cash-flow visibility, operating controls, and routine reviews points to a practical cultural shift. Organizations that internalize stabilization habits early through defined check-in rhythms, near-term cash position reviews, and team-wide coordination do more than avoid disruption. They develop the ability to self-correct under pressure. That discipline, built through routine practice rather than outside intervention, creates a long-term buffer against volatility and reduces dependency on last-minute rescues.
About Bassem Mansour
Bassem Mansour is the co-chief executive officer of Resilience Capital Partners, a private equity firm specializing in distressed investing and operational transformation. With a background in investment banking, leveraged buyouts, and Chapter 11 reorganizations, he has led investments in more than 80 companies since 2001. Mr. Mansour holds degrees from the University of Dayton and Case Western Reserve University and is active in the Turnaround Management Association, the Association for Corporate Growth, and the Young Presidents Organization.