Team Turnarounds: A Playbook for Transforming Underperforming Teams

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Stage I: Leading Past Losing

Organizations in stage I are at the bottom. For those who are guiding organizations at this early stage, the diagnosis is obvious. Your team is failing as you consistently and unequivocally lose games, customers, profits, and credibility. And losing can become a comfortable norm that team members cling to, accepting poor performance because winning simply isn’t seen as possible.

To the outside world, such organizations appear to be hopeless case studies of bad decision making, poor management, and weak execution. Internally, the destructive dynamics are crippling. Resources are scarce, attitudes and teamwork are abysmal, the willingness to accept failure is often trumped by convenient rationalizations and denial, ...