Turning Stuff Around

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

Tag: turnaround tips

  • Why Cadence Beats Heroics

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    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.

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  • Tenure: A Double-edged Sword

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    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.

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  • The “Work-From-Where?” Conundrum

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    The “Work-From-Where?” Conundrum

    The ongoing debate over remote work versus in-office has grown louder recently, with major corporations mandating a full-time return to office. Amazon, for example, is mandating a full-time return to the office starting in January, citing the benefits of in-person collaboration. Conversely, many employees and organizations advocate for the benefits of remote work, which offers access to a broader talent pool for employers, and flexibility, autonomy, and improved work-life balance for team members.

    Both models have pros and cons. So, what is the “right” approach? And given a turnaround situation, should a full-time work-from-office be mandated? The answer is: it depends.

    The success of any work model—remote, hybrid, or in-office—largely depends on one critical, defining factor: your organization’s culture. An organization’s culture is its DNA. It shapes how teams work, communicate, and innovate. Some cultures thrive on the energy of in-person brainstorming sessions, and the spontaneous “water cooler” chats. Others excel in an environment where flexibility reigns, and employees are trusted to deliver from wherever they’re most productive. In geographically dispersed organizations, you’ll often find micro-cultures that have their own idiosyncrasies: the team in Europe is different than the team in Latin America, and both are different than the team in Asia. Some teams prefer working from the office, while others enjoy a hybrid model.

    In a turnaround, culture becomes even more critical (though, I’d argue that culture is always critical, not just during a turnaround.) You’re not only trying to implement a work model; you’re trying to rebuild trust, create alignment, and drive collaboration and momentum. And remember, the organization you’re working to fix already has an established culture—the slate isn’t blank. In weighing the pros and cons of each model, you should consider how each approach will affect the culture (and in-turn — the bigger goals you’ve set.)

    At my company we opted for a hybrid model: three days in the office, two at home (we didn’t allow a work-from-anywhere model). And we were open to exceptions in different geographies. This worked well for both the business and the teams as we were able to align needs and requirements across our global operation. This included calling a full-time work-from-office when needed. (By the way, some teams chose themselves to work full-time in the office!)

    So what’s right for your organization? The question isn’t only about productivity—it’s about how the work model will influence, shape and evolve the organization’s culture. And, most importantly, whether that changed culture enables your goals and long-term plans. Ultimately, a successful turnaround depends on finding a model that creates a culture to help you deliver on your mission.

    Engage your team, listen to their needs, and tailor your approach accordingly. The right work model isn’t about following trends or making sweeping mandates—it’s about aligning your strategy with your people and enabling their success (which is ultimately yours).

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  • Sustainable Profitability

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    Sustainable Profitability

    As we all know, there are only two levers you can pull to drive profitability: cost cutting, and growing top-line. In stable times you are constantly pulling on both, aligning investments against forecasted business performance. But in a turnaround, things are not as straightforward. The top-line lever appears, at first glance, to be “rusty” and possibly jammed, while the costs lever often has an all too strong gravitational pull.

    The Cost Cutting Lever

    In a turnaround, launching a cost-cutting initiative may seem as an obvious first step. It’s quick and decisive—you give the order to reduce expenses, say by cutting 10% of the workforce—and manage through the fallout. While it may provide short-term relief—and seem like a quick path to profitability—it rarely is a sustainable solution. The “cleaver approach” will not fix the inherent inefficiencies that often plague organizations.

    For a cost-cutting to be impactful, it needs to consider the bigger picture and align with the long-term, strategic plans. For me, using the zero-based budgeting approach has been more effective in creating sustainable cost structures.

    Zero-based budgeting requires you to build your budget from scratch. For example, instead of saying “We had 100 engineers last year, so we need 120 engineers this year!” (assuming 20% growth), you and your head of engineering start with a blank slate. Together you consider the product plans, the technical debt strategy, new technologies as well as other factors, and appropriately align headcount and investment.

    Ultimately, the biggest benefit of this approach is that it forces you to stop and think rather than make inertia-based decisions. It brings to the surface the hard questions (and decisions) required to set the company on the right path.

    The Growth Lever

    Driving top-line growth is a different challenge altogether. You’re not shedding something you have, you’re building something you don’t. This requires a clear strategy, a strong product lineup, and seamless cross-functional execution. It requires the village. And since, in a turnaround, the village may not be, well, a village, it can take time to materialize.

    That’s why you need a bridging strategy—a way to achieve short-term revenue gains to keep the business afloat while laying the foundations for future growth.

    Some of the tactical initiatives that have helped me in the past:

    • Leverage existing customers. Acquiring new customers is a long-term initiative. This is not to say you should not pursue this, but working with your existing customer-base is often easier and quicker. Focused upselling and cross-selling initiatives can lead to fast, much needed, gains.
    • Optimize pricing. Review your pricing models for adjustment opportunities. Sometimes, incremental price increases or new pricing tiers can unlock significant revenue without major operational changes.
    • Identify and prioritize quick wins. The so called “low-hanging fruit”. Look for underutilized sales channels, untapped market segments, or underplayed products. Walk the halls, talk to people—you’ll be surprise at how many ideas are waiting to be uncovered.

    Keep in mind that tactical growth is about small wins that buy time and prove to your team that progress is possible. It also provides some financial flexibility to fund longer-term initiatives, such as product development, organizational redesign, or a revamp of operations. Lastly, deploying tactical initiatives can help you test business hypotheses that can further help hone your long-term strategy.

    The cost-cutting and growth levers are interconnected. Pulling them effectively provides you the breathing room to sustain the business through the turnaround, while aligning investment plans for the long-term. This creates a stable foundation that drives sustainable profitability, ultimately allowing your people and business to thrive well into the future.

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  • The Change Tolerance

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    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.

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  • Small Wins, Big Impact

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    Small Wins, Big Impact

    Beginning a turnaround is like staring at a half-finished jigsaw puzzle of the Mona Lisa. You’ve got a few key pieces in place—a hint of her nose and mouth, some scattered fragments of the lake in the background—but the full picture is still elusive. Being able to see the end state, and formulate a strategic plan to get there is critical. But when it’s time to set out, I’ve found small wins to be incredibly powerful at building momentum to steer the ship in the right direction.

    Small wins give you something to hold onto when the bigger picture feels out of reach. They help you—and the team—believe that change is possible, one step at a time. Especially in turnaround situations, small wins are critical for restoring confidence, building hope, and reminding everyone that progress is possible. And as progress happens, the end result begins taking shape in front of their eyes.

    In my experience, the most important decision you can make as you set out on your turnaround, is the decision to move—before “analysis-paralysis” grips you and the team. The key is to stop waiting for the stars to align to tackle everything at once. But to look for the first small thing you can fix, and fix it. The fix becomes a win; the win sparks momentum. And momentum powers continued progress.

    At my company, for example, after assessing the different areas that needed fixing, each function head set out to achieve one small win within three to four weeks. In the people function, we fixed company communications. In the commercial function, we addressed pricing. In finance, we made incremental cost-control improvements. And each of these small wins demonstrated progress towards our shared goal of turning around the company. (More on these moves later in the blog.)

    In turnarounds, finding problems, is like finding sand at the beach—they’re everywhere. Don’t focus on fixing everything. Instead find your next small win, then build from there.

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  • Doubt the Doubt

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    Doubt the Doubt

    Like in all major events, there’s a moment (actually, many moments) in every turnaround where self-doubt sneaks in. Usually uninvited. It’s that little voice in your head that whispers questions you’d rather not hear: Did I make the right call? Am I leading this team the right way? What if I’m in over my head?

    I know that voice well. It doesn’t just question your decisions—it questions you. It makes you feel like you don’t belong in your role, that everyone else’s opinion matters more, and that you’re just one mistake away from being exposed as a fraud. It can grow especially loud when the stakes are high and the path is uncertain.

    Here’s the thing I’ve come to realize: that voice of doubt? It’s not your enemy. It’s your brain’s way of trying to protect you, to keep you in your comfort zone and away from risk. And while the comfort zone is a safe place, it’s not where growth happens, it’s where the status quo is kept.

    Self-doubt forces you to reflect, to question, to reassess. And yes, it can get very uncomfortable. But here’s the thing: that discomfort means you’re pushing boundaries, stepping into new territory, and challenging yourself in ways that matter. Doubt is a sign of effort. It means you’re trying something new, taking a risk.

    The key is to doubt the doubt itself. Instead of letting it paralyze you, recognize it for what it is—a protective reflex, not a prophecy of failure. Use it as a signal to pause, reassess, and adjust if needed, but don’t let it stop you.

    Every leader I’ve seen navigate a tough turnaround has wrestled with self-doubt (myself included). The ones who succeed aren’t the ones without doubt, but the ones who move forward despite it. Their confidence comes from taking thoughtful, deliberate actions, not from the absence of doubt.

    Doubt isn’t a sign you’re failing, it’s proof you’re trying! Doubt the doubt. Keep pushing. You are probably on to something.

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  • The Biggest Myths About Turnarounds

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    The Biggest Myths About Turnarounds

    Turnarounds are often glorified in stories and media. The fearless leader charges in, makes a few bold decisions, and everything miraculously falls into place.

    If only it were that simple…

    The reality of turnarounds is far messier and more nuanced than the myths would have you believe. And clinging to those myths can do more harm than good.

    Here are a few of the biggest myths about turnarounds—and the truths I’ve learned firsthand:

    Myth 1: It’s All About Bold, Big Moves

    When people imagine a turnaround, they picture sweeping changes—a major restructuring, a massive product launch, or a dramatic cost-cutting move. While big moves can have their place, most successful turnarounds are built on small, consistent wins. Addressing small inefficiencies, rebuilding trust, and fixing foundational problems often have a far greater impact than a single dramatic gesture. Turnarounds aren’t won with a sledgehammer; they’re carefully carved with a scalpel.

    Myth 2: One Leader Can Fix Everything

    There’s this romanticized idea of the lone savior who swoops in to save the day. But the truth is, no leader—no matter how skilled—can do it alone. Turnarounds rely on teams. The best leaders aren’t the ones who have all the answers; they’re the ones who inspire people to step up, collaborate, and own the solutions together. It’s not a solo act—it’s a team effort.

    Myth 3: Once You Fix the Problem, It’s Over

    People often assume that a turnaround ends when the immediate crisis is resolved. But that’s just the beginning. Turnarounds require sustained effort to stabilize and grow. The real work starts after the major fires are out—ensuring the changes stick and the culture evolves to prevent another collapse.

    Myth 4: Turnarounds Always Succeed

    I wish that were true! The hard truth is that not every turnaround has a happy ending. I’ve seen many companies die in spite of the effort put in to try and fix them.

    The Reality of Turnarounds

    If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that each turnaround represents a unique challenge of varying complexity and conflicting priorities. In those circumstances, the chances of a silver bullet—a bold move, a fearless leader, or a quick fix—solving everything are slim. Instead, it’s small wins, by a solid team, that set you on the right path. Allowing you to adapt, reiterate, and keep the forward momentum going, step by step.

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