Turnaround expert: ​How to lead a struggling organization through major change


Leading organizations through profound change is an increasingly common management challenge, and yet few roadmaps exist for how to do it well. 

Pat Nichols has led more leadership transitions than any executive I know. As the president of Transition Leadership International, it is what he does on every assignment. I sat down with him to get the insider perspective on how to lead an organization when things are at their worst.

Corlett: So it’s your first day as an Interim CEO with a new organization. You’re there to lead them out of some sort of major organizational struggle. How do you even begin? Are there some difficulties you often find when you first arrive?

Nichols: Well, for a struggling organization, there’s always some form of dysfunction in the organization’s relationships. Typically, I find that the remaining staff are fearful, they’re frustrated, and they tend to blame each other for the challenges their organization faces. 

After an extended period without the experience of success, people tend to hunker down and just try to hang in, growing ever-less transparent about the serious issues their organization is facing. Some may even hide or hoard information and only dole it out in little spoonsful. The leader of a major transition has to work very hard to get the information into the light of day.

Corlett: What’s the method you have found most effective for getting a struggling organization to open up?

Nichols: It’s most productive in my experience to set short-term goals and start working on those immediately. I’m coming in as an outsider, and sometimes the staff or board will try to circle the wagon and grow very protective of the organization in its current form. I want them to open up, so I focus on what we are going to accomplish by working together, my dedication to their mission, my desire to build on what they have already accomplished. 

I emphasize my experience in leadership transitions, but that I’m not an expert in their field or their organization, so at first I will spend a lot of time listening and learning. I try to demonstrate my respect by acknowledging some of their achievements, especially during the downturn.

Then through a series of group and one-on-one meetings with the staff, we identify the two to three things that can be accomplished in the first 90 to 120 days that will have an immediate impact on our operational success. I try to find someone to take direct responsibility for each of these goals, as I need to spend my time beginning to understand the strategic issues facing the organization. 

I’m not trying to have the goals feel like a test that my colleagues can fail or pass, though clearly failure is not acceptable. I’ll be their partner and do whatever is necessary to help success happen — rally the troops, etc. And I ensure we have very regular interaction on the progress we’re making — more or less once a week.

Corlett: But why not focus on the broad-stroke, major strategic changes that the organization will eventually need?

Nichols: Those are vital, but they are too big to solve in the first 90-120 days and I’m not yet knowledgeable enough to be a good partner at that point. I steer the staff away from a focus on those mission-level imperatives. Struggling organizations have typically lost their experience of success, and it is far more important to rebuild that first. A smaller change always exists - maybe their monthly financial information always comes out late and/or is unreliable. Maybe their database is a mess - data goes in and nothing comes out. Within 90 days, we work to solve these sorts of issues, and start to rebuild and regain that lost feeling of success. And, as I mentioned, this period is a time for me to get up to speed on the strategic issues so that I’m a better partner in those bigger dialogs.

Corlett: So by focusing on these “small wins,” you rebuild a feeling of success and start to generate momentum away from the old hunker-down mode?

Nichols: We make those small wins extremely significant. Like rolling a snowball down a hill, you start small and build momentum over time toward the big goals. By recognizing the small wins and not focusing on the big picture right away, you generate an overall stronger sense of urgency and an imperative for success. If you just focus on the giant snowball at the end, the team will not look back and see a long string of accomplishments — they’ll just see the difficult task and long slog toward building the giant snowball.

Corlett: Is there an attitude change you notice around the 90-day marker?

Nichols: Absolutely, though it’s a feeling of incremental growth, not a switch being turned on. People aren’t unhappy or ineffective until Day 90 and then happy and effective thereafter. The team gains confidence and momentum along the way. By the time they’ve crossed the finish line, they’ve often known for a few weeks that accomplishing the goals is a foregone conclusion. 

They were down in the muck for a long while, but now that they’ve had a success or two, they can climb to a higher altitude and get a better look at the organization. They start to see things differently. And then we can build on that.

Bob Corlett writes about innovation, staffing, leadership and performance management for The Business Journals. He is a founding member of the Editorial Advisory Board for The HR Examiner and the founder and president of Staffing Advisors, an executive search firm located near Washington DC.
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