Vijay Sajjanhar on Business Restructuring & Leadership

A balance sheet may reveal where a business stands, but it does not always explain how it got there.

For Vijay Sajjanhar, a seasoned CFO, business leader, investor and mentor with more than three decades of experience, understanding a business requires looking far beyond its financial statements. Leadership behaviour, decision-making speed, organisational culture, governance structures, management depth and the ability to execute can often reveal more about the future of a company than its present numbers.

His approach to business restructuring and organisational transformation is built around a simple but powerful principle: fixing the finances without fixing the organisation that produced those financial outcomes merely postpones the problem.

From navigating businesses through the difficult post-2008 environment to transforming internal capabilities at Dubai Sports City into revenue-generating opportunities, Sajjanhar has witnessed how organisations respond when they are tested. He also believes that founders must eventually move from being indispensable operators to architects of organisations that can function and grow without depending on them for every decision.

In an exclusive conversation Vijay Sajjanhar discusses business restructuring, corporate governance, founder-led companies, leadership accountability, investment philosophy, sustainability, hidden revenue opportunities and why the strongest leaders should ultimately build organisations that do not need them in every room, in an exclusive conversation with with Srajan Agarwal of News4Bharat. Edited Exceprts:

“Financial Restructuring Buys Time, But Transformation Creates a Healthy Company”

Q1. You often describe restructuring as much more than repairing a balance sheet. When a company is under stress, how do you distinguish between a financial problem and a deeper problem involving leadership, culture, governance or operating design?

The numbers are like a post mortem – they tell a story where it ended – but we are interested to know where it started.

For an in-depth study I have to look beyond the P&L at how the company actually behaves. Who can make decisions? How long do decisions take? Are people solving problems or simply escalating them? Do management reports lead to action, or merely explain what has already gone wrong? And are responsibility and authority genuinely aligned? In my experience there are those meek voices – closest to the ground - which get submerged in the voice of the power.

They tell the real story of an organisation.

A financial restructuring will buy us time but alone cannot, by itself, create a healthy company. If the leadership model, governance and operating structure remain unchanged, the same problems usually return in another form. That is why my approach has always been to stabilise the financial position while simultaneously addressing the organisation that produces those numbers – seek a transformation not just a repair.

Leadership, governance and operating design often reveal the cause and then the result shows up in the financial statements. If you do not go to the root cause the virus will remain inside the system and pollute it again.

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How Companies Can Turn a Crisis Into Business Reinvention

Q2. Having helped navigate companies through the difficult post-2008 environment, what did that teach you about the difference between organisations that merely survive a crisis and those that use a crisis to reinvent themselves?

Survival is about keeping your head above the water, but reinvention is what helps you move forwards. The post-2008 period fortified this belief that survival and reinvention require two very different mindsets.
The organisations that merely survive a crisis often spend the recovery period trying to recreate what existed before the crisis. The organisations that emerge stronger recognise that some parts of the old model should not be recreated at all.

Survival is necessary but defensive - you preserve cash, reduce exposure, renegotiate obligations, prioritise essential activity and protect the core business. Those measures are extremely important, but they are only the first stage. On the other hand, reinvention begins when management asks a more difficult question: given the world as it exists today and as forecasted for the foreseeable future, what should this business now become?

A crisis gives leadership something quite rare – the permission to challenge its present assumptions and structures that may previously have been considered untouchable. It can be a beginning to a descent or a climb towards greater heights.

“From Founder-Led to System-Led: How Businesses Scale”

Q3 You advocate moving businesses from “founder-led” to “system-led.” How can founders institutionalise their organisations without losing the entrepreneurial instinct and speed that made them successful in the first place?

Let me highlight at the beginning that the objective is not to remove the founder from the business. It is to remove the business's dependence on the founder for every important decision.
As an early-stage investor, I have experienced that founder-led businesses often succeed because they see opportunities early, move quickly, take risks and have a very strong sense of ownership. Those qualities should absolutely be preserved.

The difficulty arises when those same qualities turn the founder into a bottleneck. Every approval comes back to one person, information becomes concentrated at the top, and capable executives gradually learn to wait for decisions rather than make them. I have seen it in my journey as an investor that a company – howsoever, good it may be – which is largely dependent upon a founder or has a team which is sub servient to the founder is a big Red Flag.

Institutionalisation should therefore not mean bureaucracy. It should mean clarity about -

Who has the authority to decide?
What information needs to be available?
What gets escalated?
What outcomes are individual executives genuinely accountable for?

Governance should create guardrails, not traffic jams.

I remember that as a fresh chartered accountant this is exactly what I was trying to do – becoming a controller. That becomes an impediment to growth and was an issue which I identified much earlier in my career.

A founder should continue to add value in areas such as vision, culture, capital allocation, strategic relationships and major opportunities. But routine execution should increasingly sit within the organisation.

The strongest founder-led companies eventually capture the founder's entrepreneurial instinct in the culture without requiring the founder's physical presence in every decision.

The key is to keep the founder's instinct, but remove the founder as the operating bottleneck.

“Why Accountability Without Authority Hurts Business Performance”

Q4 You have said that accountability without authority creates organisational frustration. Why do so many companies still struggle to align decision-making power with responsibility, and what does this imbalance ultimately cost a business?

Many organisations say they delegate, but what they actually delegate is responsibility while retaining authority at the top. A manager is told, “You own the result,” but cannot approve the price, select the supplier, recruit the person, change the process or commit the resources required to deliver that result.

At that point accountability becomes largely theoretical. This often happens because leaders fear losing control.

The cost is higher - decision-making becomes slower, senior management gets overloaded with matters that should never have reached them. Moreover, good people become cautious and initiative declines. You end up creating an organisation of escalators rather than decision-makers.

When you give authority to people you need to set clear boundaries, financial thresholds, policies and escalation rules. But within those boundaries, people need the freedom to act.

My logic is that if I hold you accountable for a result I need to provide that person with sufficient authority to influence that result. Accountability without authority does not create performance. It creates escalation, delay and eventually disengagement.

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“How Companies Can Find Hidden Revenue Opportunities”

Q5. At Dubai Sports City, capabilities such as facility services and owner’s association management were transformed into independent revenue-generating businesses. How can leaders identify hidden businesses or untapped commercial opportunities within assets and capabilities they already possess?

Businesses often look outside the organisation for their next growth opportunity before looking carefully at what they already possess. Very often, hidden businesses are sitting inside cost centres, internal service departments, proprietary processes, customer relationships or underutilised assets.

One question I like to ask is: what capability are we already paying to develop internally that an external customer might willingly pay us to provide?

At Dubai Sports City, capabilities such as facility services and owner’s association management were not simply overhead activities. They represented expertise, systems, relationships and operating knowledge that potentially had value beyond the immediate organisation. They preserve the value of the organisation. Not only that we had a sewage treatment plant in the project that was a cost center.

We converted that into a revenue generation by ensuring that the treated water is used for the purpose of landscaping. Not only did it encourage circular economy but it generated additional revenue for the organisation.

A word of caution, do not be tempted with the option to jump into a business if it is working internally. If the business is not scalable it could turn out to be a loss leader. Evaluate the problem you are solving and whether the operation stand independently. Another important factor is that it should not distract us from the core business.

In mature or stressed businesses, some of the best new opportunities may already be sitting inside the organisation.

One of my favourite discussions I have with the entrepreneurs is that do not look outward for the next opportunity because there may be one that is already hiding inside a cost centre.

“Beyond Financial Statements: Signs of a Healthy Business”

Q6. Your philosophy is about looking “beyond the numbers.” What are some of the most important signals that never appear on a financial statement but can tell an investor or leader whether a business is genuinely healthy?

As I have said earlier the financial statements are indispensable, but they are largely lagging indicators. They tell you what has happened. I am equally interested in the signals that tell you what may happen next.

One is the quality and speed of decision-making. Healthy organisations can debate an issue, make a decision and move forward. Unhealthy organisations repeatedly reopen the same questions.
Another is management depth. If one or two key individuals disappeared for a month, would the business continue to function effectively? A company can be profitable and still be institutionally very fragile.

I also pay considerable attention to how quickly bad news travels upward. In strong organisations, problems surface early. In weaker cultures, people manage the message until the problem becomes expensive. Customer complaints, loss of strong employees, repeated policy exceptions, unresolved operational issues and dependence on a handful of individuals or relationships can all tell you a great deal. I also watch the gap between what management says in meetings and what actually happens afterwards.

Numbers matter enormously. But culture, decision quality, leadership depth, customer behaviour and organisational candour often tell you where those numbers are heading. A healthy business is one where decisions travel clearly and the organisation can function without heroes.

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“What Investors Should Look for in Stressed Businesses and Startups”

Q7. As both an operator and investor, when you evaluate a stressed business or startup, what matters more to you initially—the market opportunity, the numbers, the founder, or the organisation’s ability to execute? And what is the biggest red flag that makes capital alone insufficient?

None of them exists in isolation – they all form a part of the chain and a chain without the interjoined links is just that - links. Let me elaborate it. A large market opportunity is attractive, but a market does not execute. Good numbers are important, but early-stage numbers may not yet tell you enough, and the numbers of a stressed company may reflect circumstances that can potentially be changed. The founder is extremely important because character, judgement and adaptability matter enormously.

But ultimately what I am need to establish is whether there is a credible path from opportunity to execution. That will be lie within the following questions - Can this team make decisions, learn from mistakes, attract people, allocate capital sensibly and turn strategy into results? Therein will lie the biggest red flag - leadership explaining every difficulty as somebody else's fault.

Markets can be difficult and competitors can disrupt you, but when management cannot identify what it could have done differently, additional capital is unlikely to solve the underlying problem.
Capital is like the gas in the car – it will allow you to move the car but if you do not know where to go, you will burn the fuel and be stranded again. Nothing can substitute for self-awareness, governance or execution.

Capital can solve a liquidity gap. It can fund talent, expansion or technology but what it cannot solve on its own is denial, weak governance or an inability to make difficult decisions. I am comfortable investing into problems. I am much less comfortable investing into an organisation that refuses to recognise the real problem.

“Why Leaders Must Build Strong Second-Line Management”

Q8. You emphasise building strong second-line leadership and moving leaders from “doing to designing.” At what point should a successful leader deliberately make themselves less indispensable to the organisation?

Earlier than most leaders think. In the early stages of a business, a leader naturally has to do almost everything—sell, negotiate, recruit, solve operational problems and personally push things across the line. But as the organisation grows, continuing to be the best problem-solver can become a weakness.
Every problem the leader personally solves is potentially a problem the organisation has not learned how to solve without them. Therefore, the transition should begin when the volume and complexity of decisions exceed what one person can reasonably handle without slowing the business.

Instead of making every decision, the leader should design the environment in which good decisions are made. That means building strong second-line leaders, defining authority, creating useful management information, setting performance rhythms and coaching people through decisions rather than automatically taking those decisions back.

As a leader the job eventually has to shift from doing the work to designing an organisation capable of doing great work without you.

I can explain the case of a business leader - who I was coaching - and he had just listed his entity, but was reluctant to move away from the day-to- day decision making process despite hiring a new CEO. His squabbles with the CEO were affecting not only the company but his own anxiety level. My advice to him was – focus on being critically productive – a new vision on the company will take it beyond what you need. A simple change enabled him to focus on new products and the company grow into new markets. You are seeing this trend in India now with the promoters of Boat and Zomato wearing a different hat and leaving the company in hands of the right guys to grow beyond them.

"Why Sustainability Must Become a Business Strategy”

Q9. Your work has combined commercial restructuring with sustainability initiatives, including the conversion of a street-lighting network to solar power. Do you believe sustainability becomes truly scalable only when organisations stop treating it as a compliance obligation and start treating it as a business opportunity?

Yes, it is possible. Compliance may start the conversation, but economics is what makes sustainability scalable.

When sustainability is treated primarily as an obligation, it tends to sit at the edge of the organisation—something to report, audit or budget for.

When you approach it as a business and investment question, the discussion becomes much more interesting.

Can this reduce operating costs? Improve resilience? Reduce dependence on external resources? Increase asset value? Create a new revenue stream? Improve financing economics? Or create a better customer proposition?

The conversion of a street-lighting network to solar power at Dubai Sports City illustrated that mindset well.

Not every sustainability initiative will produce an immediate financial return, and organisations should be realistic about that, but the initiatives that scale most easily are usually those where environmental benefit and commercial logic reinforce each other.

Once sustainability becomes part of capital allocation and operating design rather than a separate corporate programme, it becomes much more powerful.

Sustainability scales fastest when doing the responsible thing and doing the economically intelligent thing become the same decision.

“What the Next Generation of CEOs Should Do Differently”

Q10. After more than three decades as a CFO, business leader, investor and mentor, what is one widely accepted management belief that you now fundamentally disagree with—and what would you advise the next generation of entrepreneurs and CEOs to do differently?

One management belief I increasingly disagree with is the idea that strong leadership means being the person with the answers. Early in a career, expertise is rewarded. You solve problems faster than other people, and that makes you valuable. But as you become more grow, that same instinct may become dangerous if you have a team of yes man.

If every difficult question has to reach the CEO, the organisation has not really built leadership. It has built dependency. Strong leaders are not absent from important decisions. But they are very deliberate about identifying which decisions genuinely require them and which decisions should be made elsewhere.

Once a senior executive I mentor asked me “Vijay everyone comes back with their problems to me and I am happy to solve it for them” My answer was you are a scared man trying to preserve your chair – that is why you are doing the job of the people reporting into you. A simple change was to ask for answers not provide solutions from the persons reporting into you and train them to work for themselves. The time it freed for him enabled him to be more productive.

That is a big lesson that I advise the next generation of entrepreneurs and CEOs not to measure their importance by the number of decisions requiring their approval but by the quality of decisions the organisation can make without you.

Further it is important that as you grow you remain intellectually uncomfortable. Success has a dangerous tendency to turn yesterday's assumptions into tomorrow's unquestioned truths. Continue challenging your business model, your organisation and even your own role.

About the author

Vijay Sajjanhar is a distinguished business leader and strategist, recognized for his extensive expertise in corporate governance, restructuring, and enterprise transformation. Over the course of his career, he has specialized in helping complex organizations—particularly founder-led businesses—transition into sustainable, professionally governed institutions.

A steadfast advocate for a merit-based culture, his leadership consistently marries fiscal discipline with operational rigor and strategic clarity. Known for navigating challenging environments with resilience, Sajjanhar’s work reflects a profound understanding of organizational design and human dynamics.
This deep commitment to human potential extends far beyond the boardroom. It is actively reflected in his authorship of the book, Life is Easy, We Complicate It.

His professional journey stands as a powerful testament to disciplined execution, responsible decision-making, and purposeful leadership.

His career includes senior leadership roles at organisations including Emaar MGF, Ansal Properties & Infrastructure and Dubai Sports City, where his responsibilities extended across finance, operations, infrastructure, facilities management, business creation and enterprise restructuring.