When You Inherit a Struggling Team

You inherit a team you didn’t build—perhaps because of a reorganization or leadership turnover. Insiders say everything is incredible; outsiders say the team struggles with execution.

It’s tempting to say, “That’s not fair. I didn’t hire this team.” You would be right, but here’s a deeper truth: it doesn’t matter. It’s your team now, no matter how wrong, unfair, or frustrating it feels.

You have two choices:

• Blame, vent, and make excuses OR
• Listen, lead, and rebuild

I first hit this wall a few years ago. The early whispers were clear: “That team has issues.” I brushed it off—every org has baggage, right? That naivety cost me dearly – I completely underestimated how deep the dysfunction ran, and how hard it is to turn around a broken team. What followed was months of hard conversations, tough feedback, and slow, deliberate trust-building.

Turning around a struggling team is neither quick nor glamorous—but it’s some of the most meaningful leadership work you’ll ever do. Because when you succeed, when you help a team regain confidence, clarity, and momentum, the impact is profound and fulfilling: the business thrives, the team grows, and your leadership deepens.

This post shares a playbook for navigating such situations.

Start right

Most new leaders, eager to prove themselves, rush to make changes. They announce bold plans, shuffle people around, and roll out new processes. And they do it all before understanding what’s broken. Sadly, this approach rarely yields the desired results.

A more effective strategy begins with radical listening; hear what people are saying—and what they aren’t. Everyone who interacts with your team has a valuable perspective, whether they are direct reports, stakeholders, peers, or customers; you want to hear from them all. Ask simple questions:

• “Where have we missed expectations?”
• “What does ‘great execution’ look like to you?”
• If you could change one thing, what would it be?

Resist the urge to explain how things are supposed to work. Instead, focus on listening and taking notes – the situation will speak for itself. You’ll see patterns emerge – the same problems, echoed by people who don’t even work together.

Once you’ve listened deeply, the next step is to pinpoint what’s actually broken.

Diagnose the Problem

Most dysfunction boils down to one (or more) of three root causes: people, product, and process. Diagnosing the root cause is the first real step. You can’t fix what you haven’t named.

Sometimes, it’s the people. The team might be full of smart folks—but low trust, riddled with unresolved tension, or carrying a history of over-promotion and misfit roles. Maybe the culture rewards heroics but punishes collaboration. Or maybe it’s simply time to level up the team with new talent who can lead the next chapter.

Sometimes, it’s the work. The team is stretched thin, tackling too many initiatives without focus. Or they’re solving the wrong problems—building technically brilliant things no one needs. Or they’ve drifted far away from the business strategy.

And sometimes, it’s the process. Broken handoffs, excessive meetings that waste time, and endless decision loops masquerading as alignment. Or worse: ceremonies repeated out of habit, long after they’ve lost their purpose.

Each requires a different fix.

People problems

Conflict resolution

Unresolved conflict doesn’t fade—it festers. You have to surface the elephant in the room and have the hard conversations everyone has been tiptoeing around. Identify who’s fueling the tension, whether through action or silence, and coach them. Give direct, specific feedback¹, and keep at it until there’s a resolution. If someone refuses to engage or consistently drags the team down, you may need to help them move on. It’s a tough call, but allowing one person to negatively impact the team is worse.

Recommended reading: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Skills

Sometimes, you discover you don’t have the right skills in the team. Perhaps there are team members who were over-promoted or who haven’t grown with the work. Be honest with them. Make the gap clear. Set clear expectations, and give them a real shot to level up quickly. But clarity is key: support doesn’t mean lowering the bar.

Recommended reading: High Output Management

Product maturity transitions

At other times, the gap is about capabilities the organization simply doesn’t have — for example, transitioning from maintaining a mature product to building a zero-to-one bet. Such mature->new shifts require new muscles: fast feedback loops, early customer testing, and comfort with the messy iterations. Teams that have never operated in this manner before will struggle. A fix is to hire experienced hands who have built in chaos before and can model what excellence looks like.

Product problems

Value delivery

If the data indicates that the product is struggling—flat usage, stagnant revenue, and rising customer frustration—you must act quickly.

Start by pulling the team out of the weeds. An off-site works best. Go back to first principles:

• What real value do we bring to our customers?
• What would we build if legacy decisions weren’t in the way?

These questions strip away blinders. They restore clarity and shift the team from maintenance mode to meaningful momentum.

Focus

Sometimes, you’ll need to whittle² down in-flight projects and focus on the highest-ROI efforts.

Start by asking: what must we do, what should we do, and what could we do? You know you’re prioritizing when it stings—when you say no to something you can do and want to do. Fewer, sharper bets beat a buffet of half-finished ideas.

It won’t be easy. You’ll sunset well-loved but low-return projects, redirect teams from projects they’re attached to, and double down on what matters most. But you’re trading short-term pain for long-term clarity. Do it quickly, transparently, and with empathy.

Alignment

Misaligned autonomy is like Brownian motion—teams moving in every direction, adding up to nothing. It’s common in large orgs, where intentions are misread and incentives misaligned. The result? Fragmentation. Work that never adds up.

The symptoms are familiar: conflicting timelines, disjointed products, and, in the worst cases, teams canceling each other out.

Your job is to align the entire org around a clear, shared goal. Alignment amplifies impact—when teams complement each other, one team’s output becomes another’s unfair advantage.

Expect resistance: “My slice just got smaller,” or “Are we cannibalizing our product?” Remind them—synergy grows the pie. But only if everyone rows in the same direction.

Process problems

Friction

Talent can’t outrun chaos. A broken process slows things down; a clear one speeds things up.

If people are colliding—duplicating efforts, missing handoffs, stepping on toes—it’s not a team problem. It’s a clarity problem. Fix the ambiguity. Your process doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be clear—and shared.

When everyone understands how work flows from idea to delivery, they waste less time second-guessing. Capable people, paired with a clear system, can deliver 10x more than they ever could in confusion. That’s how you unlock consistent, compounding execution—not just occasional heroics.

Outdated processes

Audit every process and tie it to a real outcome. Busy work is anything that doesn’t help you deliver faster, better, or cheaper. Ask: Does this process actually help us, or are we doing it out of habit?

Start with the outcome you want. Pick the mechanics that fit. Keep tuning as you go. That’s how you build a system that works for your team.

If it works, keep it. If it’s clunky, fix it. If it’s deadweight, cut it. Quick test:

• Does it shorten cycle time?
• Does it raise quality?
• Does it clarify ownership?

Two “no”s? Cut it.

Bonus tips

• Don’t overhaul everything at once. Run small, controlled experiments. Tweak one piece at a time, measure the results, and keep iterating.
• Don’t cargo-cult—blindly adopting a process just because it’s trendy rarely ends well.

Turning the ship around

Land a quick win

Turnarounds don’t start with 50-slide strategy decks. They begin with an early win: a visible proof that things are improving. Early wins rekindle hope, close trust gaps, and generate credibility.

Find the smallest shippable change that matters. It doesn’t need to be flashy; it just has to make a difference. Tangible results earn more trust than any promise or presentation ever will.

When that win lands, broadcast it. Highlight the impact. Give credit to the people who made it happen. Small wins create momentum, which in turn compounds.

Consistent deliveries

A succinct delivery plan outlines which high-impact features will be implemented and when, making the near-term roadmap visible to everyone. Sharing it with critical stakeholders upfront ensures the work addresses the most crucial business priorities in the proper order.

While the team ships against that plan, you gain breathing room to think about what comes next. Each on-time delivery also deposits credibility in the “trust bank,” giving you capital to invest in future initiatives.

Narrate the Turnaround

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is doing the hard work yet letting silence swallow the story. If you want people to believe the change, show them the proof.

Speak plainly about what’s improving and keep the team center stage. Celebrate every win, large or small. The more you broadcast steady progress, the faster belief spreads through the team and across the organization. Tangible stories, told in real time, prove the turnaround is real.

Look further ahead

Once the org is humming, lift your sights from the next sprint to the next horizon. Now is the time to tackle ambitious, system-level goals that will compound over time. Ask the team: Where do we want this organization to be in a year, and what capabilities must we add to get there? Then invest accordingly: in the initiatives that will make that future real and in a bench of leaders who can carry the vision beyond you.

Conclusion

Turnarounds aren’t won in a single sprint, two-week offsite, or a polished slide deck. They’re earned day by day through listening, precise diagnosis, focused execution, and relentless storytelling. When you stack those actions, trust compounds, momentum accelerates, and reputations flip.

So, if you’ve just inherited a “can’t-execute” team, remember: the narrative isn’t fixed. Show up, land the early win, and keep the flywheel turning. Lead visibly, celebrate loudly, and let tangible progress do the talking.

That’s how broken teams become high-performing ones—and how leaders turn doubt into undeniable results.

What’s the hardest turnaround move you’ve pulled off? Share your story below.

1. The SBI feedback model is great for situations like this. ↩︎
2. Check the engineer-to-project ratio. If it’s near 1:1, the team is doing too much. Aim for 3:1 or 4:1—that’s a sweet spot for balancing execution, ownership, and energy. ↩︎