The Turnaround Expert - How do you become one?

Professionally I'm known as a "turnaround guy". Time and again I get hired to run or am 'bequeathed' programs and projects and teams that have failed in the past for a variety of reasons. Getting the reputation as a turnaround expert isn't such a bad thing. It implies that you deal well with confrontation from day one, that you are able to establish credibility very quickly and that you are able to inspire and motivate teams of folks who are likely not in a good mood given their recent results.

Below are four straightforward (but not necessarily easy) steps I have taken with much success to change the negative course of a project:

1. Eliminate bad elements - First thing I do stepping into a failing situation is ask everyone what's not working in their opinion and in their own words. I pay particular attention to complaints that can be directly tied to the poor results attained rather than the "he said/she said" or "blamestorm"* that arises when things aren't going well. Mind you, I don't prevent people from "blamestorming" away (i.e. "it's all the business' fault because they keep changing their minds") because you do gain a lot of contextual and behavioral info. That's valuable too in the short and long term. The key thing here is you must LISTEN to everything that's being said and like a detective work out where the "crimes" are being committed - in other words, where things are going wrong. Sometimes the things that are wrong are the processes or information being used. Those are easy to correct. Other times it's lack of the right amount or kind of resources. That's a bit more difficult to correct quickly. The hardest "bad element" to purge are team members themselves. Sometimes though that is simply necessary because one "unproductive" or "negative" person on a team can easily bring everyone and the project down.
2. Find out what motivates the team and give it to them - This blog has covered motivation many times because it's such a key ingredient in success. Motivation is a powerful influencer. Find a way to connect a project's success to each team member's needs and desires in some way and you have created a self-fixing engine. Make sure to figure out (and write down notes!!) what each and every person needs out of this project and their jobs. Make a commitment to work on those needs and keep people posted on progress. Perhaps someone needs a little extra time off and another needs to go to a class. Perhaps a third person needs a little monetary incentive at the successful conclusion of a project. Whatever it is take it seriously. What I've found over time though is simply having a manager care enough to ask the team these types of questions is motivation enough.
3. Fix some 'low hanging fruit' problems quickly - You've probably heard the expression "you need money to make money" well it's equally true that there's nothing that generates success like success! If you can start to turn around small things people in and around the team, including management, will notice. They all start to feel good about these positive changes however small and a "can do" attitude starts catching on. I have seen it myself many times. Small wins snowball into big wins and pretty soon you're done!
4. Hit the 'reset' button - you've got to get everyone, and I mean everyone, on a project team to hit the 'reset' button. This means each member of the core and extended team letting go of the past. Everyone needs to let go of past behaviors, results, habits and feelings and start anew. (If you can include your internal or external customer on this one too that would be optimal but not always realistic.) This is the most difficult of the 4 steps because people like to hang on to the past for dear life for a variety of reasons sometimes just to cover their own backsides. How to do this? I like to propose a team "amnesty day". From such and such a day forward no one is to refer to the past other than in a factual fashion to get work done. Make people imagine that they are meeting everyone on the team for the first time and that the project didn't exist before that day. This is a cleansing, second chance step that everyone needs once in a while to move forward and be successful.

This list is not meant to be comprehensive as there are many other things to do to turn around a project. This list is also inwardly focused rather than outwardly (i.e. towards the rest of the organization). That's how you turn a project or even yourself around - you start at the core and work outward. I'll have another post discussing more outwardly focused steps at a later date.

I hope this was helpful! If you have other turnaround tips please share! 

*blamestorm - is a pejorative term I've heard at IBM and seems to sum up those set of behaviors quite nicely (i.e. a storm of blame that rains on everyone's parade).