Shanghai, 2003
A CEO handed a young executive a plane ticket and a problem: a failing operation in Shanghai that was hemorrhaging money. The assignment was straightforward — go diagnose what's wrong, decide if it can be saved, and either fix it or shut it down.
The financial statements said one thing. The structural reality was something else entirely. That gap — between what the numbers reported and what was actually happening inside the operation — became the foundational observation behind everything that followed.
Shanghai was the first. Then South Africa, India, France, Mexico. Twenty-nine countries across five continents. Each assignment reinforced the same pattern: businesses show you what they want you to see. Structural vital signs show you what is actually there.
Years later, a payment processing company that handled over a billion dollars in merchant transactions provided the laboratory. Hundreds of businesses, observed in real time through their transaction data. The ones that survived and the ones that didn't. The same five signals, every time.
The Financial Immune System Method didn't come from a textbook. It came from the field.