I Was the One Being Replaced. Here's What Was Built Because of It.

What Got You Here Won't Get You There

For most of my career, I had a pretty reliable track record.

I stepped into roles where I was building teams, taking over teams, or creating something from white space, and I made them work. I turned around team performance by changing how we operated, how we served customers, how we communicated, and how we measured success. It wasn't always clean or fast, but the pattern held.

I felt good about that track record. Probably too good.

A few years ago, I stepped into a new leadership role with a clear mandate: turn around the performance of an underperforming team and get a struggling product line off the ground. My family and I relocated to a new part of the country. I accepted the challenge with confidence, maybe overconfidence, that I would find the same footing I always had.

I didn't.

I chipped away at it. But things weren't getting better. I had to make layoffs. I changed models. I restructured the approach more than once. I found myself increasingly frustrated, and increasingly isolated. There was a visible division inside the organization, the wins were too occasional, and the setbacks were keeping pace. I kept working at it, kept believing the next move would shift things.

It didn't.

After a few years of frustration and disappointment, I was the one being replaced.

There is a book on my shelf called What Got You Here Won't Get You There. I have thought about that title more times than I can count in the years since. It is a reasonable summary of what happened to me.

What was I missing?

This experience has eaten at me. I have dissected it from every angle: what I missed, what I got wrong, what I would do differently. I have probably said "if I had it to do over again" more times than I would like to admit.

But something shifted when I started working with clients and deepening my research into brand, culture, and organizational leadership. I kept noticing patterns. For many of the organizations I worked with, and many more I studied, the things that were going wrong were hiding in plain sight.

The gap between what the organization knew and what it was willing to say out loud. The complexity that had accumulated without anyone consciously choosing it. The drift between what the brand claimed to be and how it actually operated.

When you are in the swamp, it is hard to see past the muck and the reeds directly in front of you.

I know that from experience.

The Clue

One day I was listening to an interview with Howard Schultz, founder and former CEO of Starbucks. I have been a Starbucks customer, and fanboy, for more than two decades. I have read the articles and both of his business books. I thought I knew the story pretty well.

Something landed differently that day.

I realized that Schultz has essentially saved Starbucks three times. The first was when he was given the opportunity to purchase the struggling original franchise from its founders. Twice more, he was called out of retirement to pull the company back from a downward spiral - the second turnaround documented in his book Onward, which is required reading for any serious business leader.

What struck me listening to that interview was not the drama of the story, but rather, the pattern underneath it. If Schultz could do this - not once, but repeatedly - and if other leaders had done the same at Ford, Microsoft, Apple, and Chipotle - then there had to be a transferable system. Not something dependent on personality. And, not just pure luck.

So I went looking for it.

The turnaround hall of fame

I assembled what I now think of as a turnaround hall of fame: Steve Jobs at Apple, Howard Schultz at Starbucks, Alan Mulally at Ford, Brian Niccol at Chipotle and Starbucks, and Satya Nadella at Microsoft. I went deep: into primary filings, earnings calls, internal memos, and management philosophies.

What I found was not what the glossy business press tends to celebrate. None of these leaders opened their tenure with some big inspiration. None of them saved their organizations with a great speech or a bold strategic pivot.

Every single one started by making it safe to tell the truth, and then built a system around it.

That is the obstacle. And it is also the unlock.

Before any strategy, any restructuring, any new initiative, ask yourself one question this week: 

What does my team collectively know that nobody is saying out loud in a leadership meeting? 

The answer to this question reveals the gap between what your organization knows and what it will say out loud is almost always where the stall begins.

You don't need a framework to start. You just need to make it safe for one honest conversation to happen. That is where every turnaround in this research began: not with a bold move, but with someone finally saying the thing everyone already knew.

The start of something new

This research has became the foundation for how we work with organizations today through our BrandTruth Alignment™ methodology: a structured process that helps leadership teams close the gap between what their organization claims to be and how it actually operates.

Next week I will walk through the seven principles at the heart of that framework.  And for each one, we will look at a single question worth sitting with before you move on.

If any of this sounds familiar - if your organization feels stuck and you are not sure why - we would like to talk. The conversation costs nothing.

And if this resonates with someone you know, please pass it along. The leader who needs this is probably not saying so out loud.