The Market Exit

Most companies stay in markets longer than they should. The decision to exit feels like failure, so leadership iterates, rebrands, and funds one more product cycle — spending time and capital defending a position that was never going to improve. Knowing when to exit, and how, is as strategically important as knowing when to enter. The key distinction is between lines of business with structural margin problems and those with solvable execution problems. A 4% margin after two full product cycles is almost always a structural ceiling, not an execution gap.