emphasizes the improvement of operational efficiency and is probably most appropriate when a corporation's problems are pervasive but not yet critical. Research shows that poorly performing firms in mature industries have been able to improve their performance by cutting costs and expenses and by selling off assets. Analogous to a weight- reduction diet, the two basic phases of a turnaround strategy are contraction and consolidation 62 Contraction is the initial effort to quickly "stop the bleeding" with a general, across-the- board cutback in size and costs.