Why Most Turnarounds Fail Before They Start

Most organizations in trouble do not lack ideas. They lack sequencing.

I have seen it more times than I can count. An institution is struggling — maybe with declining revenue, maybe with a structural deficit, maybe with a combination of both — and the first instinct is to go after the exciting fix. A new fundraising campaign. A rebrand. A big hire. A pivot to a new program model.

Those things might be the right moves eventually. But when an organization is in distress, the order matters more than the idea.

The Order of Operations Problem

Think of it like triage. When someone comes into an emergency room, you do not start with the cosmetic work. You stabilize first. You stop the bleeding. Then you plan the recovery.

The same logic applies to organizational turnarounds:

Step 1: Understand the real financial picture.

Not the one in the board packet. The actual one. Where is cash going? What are the structural costs that do not change regardless of revenue? What obligations exist that nobody has named out loud yet?

Step 2: Stabilize the cost structure.

This is the part nobody wants to talk about. But in most turnarounds I have been part of, the single biggest lever is not revenue — it is personnel. Personnel costs represent 60 to 80 percent of a typical nonprofit's budget. If the structure does not match the current reality, revenue growth alone will not fix it.

Step 3: Align leadership.

If the board and executive team are not on the same page about what is actually happening, the turnaround stalls. Alignment does not mean agreement on every detail. It means a shared understanding of the situation and a willingness to make hard decisions together.

Step 4: Then — and only then — go after growth.

Once the foundation is stable, the growth conversation changes entirely. You are not growing out of desperation. You are growing from a position of clarity.

Why This Order Gets Skipped

The honest answer is that stabilization work is not exciting. It does not make for a great announcement. Nobody wants to stand in front of a board and say, "We need to restructure before we can grow." It is much easier to pitch the new initiative, the new campaign, the new strategy.

But when organizations skip straight to growth without doing the stabilization work first, they often end up in a worse position than where they started. They have spent time, money, and political capital on something that was never going to work in the current structure.

What I Have Learned

The organizations that turn things around most successfully are the ones willing to be honest about where they are before they start talking about where they want to go.

That takes courage from leadership. It takes patience from a board. And it takes a willingness to sit with uncomfortable numbers long enough to understand what they are actually saying.

If your organization is in a challenging moment right now, the most useful thing you can do is slow down and ask: are we solving the right problem in the right order?

Sometimes the best strategy is not a new idea. It is getting the sequence right.