The New CEO

CHAPTER 6Navigating the Crash

“You're riding high in April. Shot down in May …”

—Frank Sinatra, “That's Life”

Alan Beacham was six months into the president role at Toll Group, a global logistics and transportation company, when the challenges really began to take hold. “The honeymoon period was over,” he told me. “Almost as quickly as we got the first milestone done, I realized that I had an even bigger mountain to climb.”

Alan had moved quickly during his transition, identifying the areas of the business that were underperforming, reviewing the organizational structure, and reforming his SLT. But the mountain ahead included steering the company forward on the heels of a global pandemic, which had upended supply chains across the world.

“The outlook when I started was that it would be a difficult six months, then it would all be better,” he said. “The reality was it would be a difficult six months and then it would get worse, and then it would almost certainly get worse again the year after. It was like a gradual incline that kept getting steeper and steeper.”

Alan was by no means a rookie in the transportation world. But the realities of the new job—and the new business context that Toll Group found itself in—meant he began to question himself. “Are we doing the right things? Is my strategy right? Is my approach right? Is my team right? Are all of these things right?”

For every leader, there comes a point when you crash, when you wonder if you are really up to the challenge—or ...