EBITDA doesn’t move by accident.
It moves through pricing discipline, working capital control, and execution cadence.
These articles break down what actually drives performance.
Focused on EBITDA growth, margin performance, cash flow management, and operating cadence across industrial and distribution businesses.
What These Articles Cover
EBITDA improvement, pricing discipline, working capital and cash flow, post-acquisition integration, execution cadence, and the commercial decisions that determine whether a business performs or drifts. Written from 25 years of P&L accountability in industrial and distribution businesses across Australia and APAC.
When revenue grows but EBITDA doesn’t, something is breaking underneath.
Most businesses start EBITDA improvement with cost. The fastest lever is pricing — and the room is larger than expected.
Revenue activity without margin discipline is not progress. Understanding what the pipeline is actually worth changes everything.
Most forecasts are built on assumptions that don’t survive contact with the customer book. What to look for — and how to fix it.
The discipline to remove what you would never approve from scratch separates good operators from great ones.
Pricing is rarely broken in one place. It leaks.
SKU rationalisation releases cash, improves margin and reduces complexity simultaneously. The constraint is decisional, not commercial.
The gap between what businesses think their working capital position is — and what it actually is — is where cash disappears.
Activity is not output. A sales team can be fully occupied and commercially unproductive at the same time.
Field sales breakdown is rarely a talent problem. It is almost always a system problem — territory design, pricing governance and accountability.
Profit on paper doesn’t mean cash in the bank.
The gap between what businesses think their working capital position is and what it actually is — is where cash disappears.
SKU rationalisation releases working capital and improves cash conversion — the constraint is decisional, not commercial.
The customers, products and costs businesses would never approve today — but carry anyway. The operational cost of inaction.
Execution failure is usually cadence failure.
There is a moment in every underperforming business when the CEO must stop delegating and step in. Recognising it is the difference between recovery and drift.
Autonomy doesn’t fail dramatically. It fails through small signals that accumulate until performance has already drifted beyond easy recovery.
The first thing that breaks in a decentralised business is cadence. When the rhythm of accountability slips, performance follows.
Most multi-site businesses have unclear decision rights. Decisions get made at the wrong level — or not made at all.
More data than ever. Less clarity than five years ago. The problem is not data volume — it is signal.
The deal doesn’t create value. Execution does.
Most acquisitions underperform because of five operational failures in the first 100 days. What they are and how to prevent them.
Most expansion failures come from assuming what works domestically will translate. It almost never does directly.
Multi-site businesses that decentralise without the right frameworks don’t gain agility — they lose performance consistency.