Turning Stuff Around

A blog about the grit, grind, and occasional glory of turnarounds.

Tag: leadership

  • Why Cadence Beats Heroics

    in

    Why Cadence Beats Heroics

    Turnarounds do not usually fail because the leadership team lacks intelligence. They fail because the business runs out of consistency before it runs out of ideas.

    I’ve seen this more times than I care to count. In the early days of a turnaround, energy is high. Everyone talks about urgency. Everyone wants action. The room fills up with plans, dashboards, workshops, priorities, and declarations of a “new chapter.” For a few weeks, sometimes the first months, it even feels like momentum.

    Then reality shows up.

    Sales miss targets again. A customer escalation blows up. Cash gets tighter. A key leader goes defensive. Decisions that seemed obvious on Monday are suddenly “more nuanced” by Thursday. And just like that, the organization starts slipping back into old habits.

    This is why I’ve learned to value cadence over heroics. While heroics are dramatic, cadence is boring. Heroics get attention, cadence gets results. And in a turnaround, boring wins.

    The Trap: Confusing Activity with Progress

    One of the most common mistakes in troubled businesses is mistaking motion for traction.

    When a company is under pressure, leaders often respond by increasing volume: More meetings, more updates, more initiatives, more escalations, more “alignment.” It makes things feel more productive because everyone is busy. But busyness is not recovery.

    The question is not whether your people are working hard (they usually are). The question is whether the business is moving, week by week, in a deliberate direction. Are the biggest problems being addressed in sequence? Are the same priorities showing up consistently? Are owners being held accountable on an operating rhythm that is impossible to ignore?

    If not, then all you have is noise.

    Why Cadence Matters

    Cadence does three things that most turnaround teams underestimate.

    First, it forces clarity.

    When you review the same handful of critical metrics every week, ambiguity starts to die. Excuses become visible. Drift becomes visible. Wishful thinking becomes visible. You stop debating abstractions and start dealing with facts.

    Second, it creates organizational muscle memory.

    A business in distress is usually suffering from some combination of denial, fragmentation, and exhaustion. People do not need more slogans. They need repetition. They need to know what matters, when it will be reviewed, who owns it, and what happens when results do not show up.

    Third, cadence lowers the leadership dependency.

    This is the part many CEOs get wrong. They think their job is to keep injecting energy into the system. It is not. Your job is to build a system that produces forward motion even when energy dips, because energy always dips.

    A turnaround that depends on the leader’s daily emotional intensity is fragile by definition.

    What Good Cadence Actually Looks Like

    A real turnaround cadence is not a bloated operating model with twelve committees and fifty KPIs. It is a disciplined rhythm built around the few things that actually determine whether the business stabilizes.

    That usually means:

    A short list of non-negotiable metrics. Cash. Pipeline quality. conversion. backlog. churn. delivery performance. margin. Whatever actually drives survival and recovery in your business.

    A weekly operating review. Not a storytelling session. Not a slide parade. A working session where owners report facts, gaps are confronted, and next actions are clear.

    A monthly strategic checkpoint. This is where you lift your eyes and ask whether the actions are adding up to a coherent shift, or whether you are just managing symptoms.

    Clear ownership. Every major issue needs a name next to it. Not a function. Not a department. A person. And visible follow-through because if actions disappear into meeting notes, your cadence is fake.

    That’s it.

    Your Real Job

    In a turnaround, you should not be the chief firefighter forever. That may be necessary for a short window, but it cannot become the operating model.

    Your role is to do three things:

    • Set the rhythm.
    • Protect the rhythm.
    • Model the rhythm.

    Set the rhythm by deciding what gets reviewed, how often, and with what level of rigor.

    Protect the rhythm by refusing to let distractions hijack it. Every struggling company has a dozen reasons to break cadence. A customer issue. A board request. An internal drama. A senior executive who wants “more time”. It’s fine to deal with the issue but do not abandon the rhythm.

    Model the rhythm by showing the organization that commitments matter. If someone misses repeatedly and nothing happens, the cadence becomes theater. And theater is deadly in a turnaround, because it creates the illusion of control while performance keeps deteriorating.

    Where Leaders Usually Blow It

    They overcomplicate.

    They make the cadence too heavy, too polished, too slow. By the time the reporting pack is ready, the facts are already stale.

    Or they under-enforce.

    They let people show up unprepared. They allow vague language. They tolerate chronic misses without consequence. They confuse being supportive with being soft.

    Or they keep changing priorities.

    This one is brutal. Every week brings a new “top priority,” usually driven by whichever problem screamed loudest most recently. The organization stops listening because it knows this week’s emergency will be replaced by next week’s emergency.

    Consistency is what gives cadence power. Without consistency, cadence is just a calendar invite.

    A Hard Truth About Momentum

    Momentum in a turnaround is rarely a breakthrough moment. It is usually the result of repeated, disciplined, almost unremarkable execution:

    A clean weekly review.

    A decision made on time.

    A missed target confronted early.

    A blocked initiative unblocked.

    A leader held accountable.

    A team seeing that this week’s commitments still matter next week.

    Do that long enough and the business starts to feel different. Not because of magic. Because people begin to trust that what is said will actually happen. That trust matters more than most leaders realize.

    When a company has been struggling for a while, people stop believing. They stop believing the priorities are real. They stop believing underperformance matters. They stop believing this time will be different.

    Cadence is how you rebuild belief without giving speeches.

    In the trenches, turnarounds are not won by the most inspirational plan or the loudest call to action. They are won by a leadership team that can impose a steady, credible rhythm on a business that has lost its footing.

    When the company is unstable, your job is not to create more motion.

    Your job is to create repeatable forward movement.

    That is the difference between a burst of activity and an actual turnaround.

    Tags:

    , , , , ,

    Share this post:

  • Tenure: A Double-edged Sword

    in

    Tenure: A Double-edged Sword

    Every organization has its ‘village elders’—those long-tenured employees who have been with the company for 10, 15, 20 years (or more!) Their tenure brings a wealth of knowledge, deep trust, and a sense of solidity that can anchor an organization. But what happens when that anchor becomes a weight that holds it back?

    Edge 1: The “Bad“

    Tenure has a tendency to breed stagnation. Over time, tenured employees can develop a resistance to change as they try and keep things “as they’ve always been”. This mindset defaults to the known and familiar, while pushing back on the new and riskier. Fresh ideas may be dismissed too quickly, stifling innovation and fostering a culture of complacency.

    It’s easy to picture this: an aspiring young developer consults a tenured principal. She demos something new, something innovative, only to be advised to use the existing tech. “We’ve always done things this way” she hears. The fire dies out. The idea is lost.

    Edge 2: The “Good”

    But tenure isn’t all bad. Just as it can stifle progress, it can also be one of your greatest assets.

    Beyond being beacons of trust and continuity, tenured employees are also incredible sources of historical knowledge. These individuals often hold key insights that can help you avoid repeating past mistakes. They’ve been-there-done-that, and can provide a historical lens into what’s worked and what hasn’t for the company. Their institutional memory can serve as a safeguard, offering advice that could prevent you from unknowingly stepping onto the same landmines of the past.

    The Turnaround Context

    In a turnaround, both “edges” can make or break your efforts. On the one hand, a turnaround demands agility, fresh thinking, and a willingness to challenge the status quo. On the other, not learning from past mistakes and avoiding known pitfalls can be very costly—almost detrimental—to creating the trust and momentum needed.

    So, should tenure be curbed or promoted? The answer is both! And the key is balance.

    Maintaining the Balance

    Maintaining the balance is not as complex as you may think. First, you will need a good measure of the tenure ratio which, as its name suggests, measures the proportion of tenured people within a given group (a team, a division, or the entire company.) Start by defining the number of years that constitute tenure for your company (this varies by company size, industry, and the organization’s current growth stage). Once defined, measuring the ratio is straight forward:
    For the purpose of the exercise, let’s assume that tenure is reached after 4 years. Now consider a team of 12 developers, of which 7 have been with the company for over 4 years. Your tenure ratio for this team is therefore 60%, indicating a strong concentration of long-tenured employees.

    Applying this calculation to the rest of your teams, gives you a clear picture of tenure concentrations throughout your organization. And from there you can plan your balancing initiatives. Here are a few of those initiatives that have helped me in these situations:

    • Reassign individuals: balance tenure across teams
      The benefits of this are obvious: under-tenured teams enjoy an injection of expertise, and tenured teams are exposed to fresh ways of thinking and new perspectives. The challenge with this initiative is, well, that tenured people resist change (and moving desks), so this needs to be managed carefully.
    • Realign work: mirror tenure with subject matter
      Alternatively to reassigning tenured members, encourage them to become subject-matter experts of critical systems and shift their focus to maintaining them. While maintaining systems may seem mundane, it often involves complex technical challenges that benefit from the expertise of tenured employees. Furthermore, it indirectly supports innovation by giving the rest of the team the room to move faster on other newer initiatives.
    • Reprocess for ideas: purposefully enable fresh perspectives
      Beyond reassigning individuals, and realigning work, be sure to implement processes that encourage questioning of the status quo, exploring new ideas, and overseeing their implementation. Though the initial reaction to the words “process” and “innovation” appearing in the same sentence is often an eye-roll, when they enable individuals to speak up about new ideas and ways of doing things—and be heard—they are good! Especially in more tenured organizations that may require that foundation to break the default thought cycles.

    Tenured employees can be your greatest allies or your biggest roadblocks, depending on how you engage them. Consulting them early and often helps you leverage their wisdom while avoiding past pitfalls. With that in mind, leadership plays a crucial role in balancing tenure. By fostering a culture of collaboration and openness, leaders can ensure that tenured employees feel valued while encouraging innovation and adaptability. The goal isn’t to sideline or discredit their experience but to channel it in ways that drive progress and enable your goals.

    Tags:

    , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Share this post:

  • Silos, Silos, Everywhere!

    in

    Silos, Silos, Everywhere!

    Silos are one of the most pervasive and most persistent barriers to success. Yet, they seem to exist in nearly every organization, big and small, despite the fact they stifle collaboration, breed inefficiency, and often create a “them vs. us” mindset. In a turnaround, addressing silos isn’t optional—it’s critical to driving meaningful change.

    At their core, silos are often an unintended byproduct of growth and complexity. As organizations scale and expand geographically, physical sites are formed, functional boundaries are better defined, and management layers naturally develop. While these structures bring clarity and focus, they also create physical, operational, and cultural divisions within the company—silos!

    The problem with silos is that once they are formed, they are difficult to dismantle. Factors like geography, leadership influence (especially in highly political organizations), or fear of change, often keep them alive. Left unchecked, silos will drain your organization of its full potential.

    Building bridges

    There are two ways to address silos: you can either try and beat them, or you can try and join them… together! I’ve found the latter to be far more effective, productive, and surprisingly easier to achieve.

    Breaking down silos isn’t about dismantling teams or forcing a change to working processes. It’s about creating a culture of connection and shared purpose—building bridges. Though changing (or building) culture may sound like a daunting task, with committed leadership and a clear plan, it can happen faster than you think.

    Here are three key areas to focus on as you build your plan:

    • Nurture a unified vision—a shared goal
      This is by no means the corporate vision statement. But a real reason for being. It’s a call to action that rallies people behind a shared purpose, connecting their day-to-day work with a bigger, more meaningful goal.
      A turnaround is a perfect spark to light that fire (crises usually are.) Don’t be afraid to use it.
    • Encourage cross-functional collaboration
      Once you’ve clearly articulated the problem statement, encourage collaboration by bringing people together—preferably in-person to bridge geographical silos—and empower them to figure solutions out on their own. Most people want to contribute meaningfully, and feel part of something bigger. Your job is to promote this mindset, and make sure your leadership team actively supports it. Collaboration is never forced; it’s enabled.
    • Improve communications across the organization
      One of the biggest factors keeping silos alive is poor communication. When one silo hears one message, and another hears something different, alignment becomes impossible and silos persist. Consistent, and transparent communications are key to bridging silos and creating a cohesive organization. Establish your way of communicating to the broader team and commit to it.

    At my company, I held a global standup meeting every two weeks. We flew teams across geographies for in-person workshops. Leadership actively visited offices worldwide to drive alignment and communicate our shared goal. We transparently tracked progress using a set of OKRs, and even created a hashtag for our internal communications: #BreakingDownSilos. Ultimately, we built strong bridges across the functional and geographical silos we faced. How did we know we succeeded? We saw measurable improvements across all our internal culture survey metrics; Alignment, in particular, was up an impressive 11% year-on-year!

    Silos may form naturally, and are not always “bad”. What matters is that you don’t allow them to define your organization. Breaking them down and building bridges requires persistence, and nurturing a culture that values collaboration. The returns on this investment are huge: a unified organization, ready to tackle bigger and bigger challenges head-on.

    Tags:

    , , , , , , , , , ,

    Share this post:

  • The Change Tolerance

    in

    The Change Tolerance

    One of the first variables to measure, as you assess turnaround readiness, is the organization’s change tolerance. In other words, how much change can your organization handle before resistance turns into disengagement or even chaos? It is very much like a rubber band—stretch it too far and it breaks.

    Some organizations have a high tolerance and thrive on bold, sweeping transformations. Others have a low threshold, where even minor shifts can trigger disruption. Understanding where your organization stands on this spectrum is crucial. And the most critical element is your people. Consider the following key questions:

    Culture

    • Are people engaged?
    • Are there silos (geographical, functional or otherwise)?
    • How political is the organization?
    • Is there trust in leadership?
    • Does information flow freely throughout?

    Most of these questions can be answered by walking the halls and talking to team members. You’ll be positively surprised at what people share with you if you take the time and interest.

    People

    • Do we have the right skills and capabilities?
    • What is the talent pool looking like and can we lean on it more?
    • How fatigued—or fed-up—are people?

    Sit down with your HR team and function heads to explore these questions. If needed, augment your learnings with interviews with your leadership team’s direct reports.

    Leadership

    • Do you have the right skills and capabilities on the team?
    • Is the team cohesive?
    • Is there trust and healthy conflict, or only artificial harmony?
    • Is there buy-in to your plans?

    Beyond your own observations, I recommend seeking an objective, coach-led assessment—especially if you suspect lack of trust in the team, as people will hide their true colors in this setting. (If you haven’t already, I highly recommend reading “The 5 Dysfunctions of A Team“ by Patrick Lencioni. It’s been my go-to model, and has worked wonders with every team I’ve led.)

    Building Change Tolerance

    Getting a well-informed reading on your people and leadership team should be a top priority. Remember, people challenges are often the most difficult and resource-intensive to address. They are also the most impactful to the rest of the organization, and have the potential of completely derailing your turnaround plans.

    Once you’ve assessed the change tolerance, ask yourself whether it aligns with the level of change your turnaround requires. If the answer is yes—great (consider yourself lucky!) But more often than not tolerance will be too low. If that is the case, then you have a bigger, more immediate challenge to tackle: increasing the change tolerance.

    Increasing tolerance isn’t done overnight. It requires intentional trust building—especially true if you’ve been parachuted into the organization from the outside. Since trust is built slowly, by delivering on promises, small wins matter even more and can help you build early momentum. This will demonstrate that change is both manageable and doable, and will ultimately allow you to stretch the change tolerance further.

    Finally, always stretch carefully. Continuously assess the tension with your team, and work to increase the organization’s capacity and resilience to change. Over time, culture will become more adaptive and capable of handling larger more transformative changes.

    Cranking up the change tolerance is an ongoing task. As the saying goes, change is the only constant, and this has never been truer than in today’s fast-paced world. Keep challenging the organization to achieve more—but ensure you’re doing so on the right foundation.

    Tags:

    , , , , , , , , , ,

    Share this post: