Work the Problem in Front of You
Summary: In turnaround situations, how a crisis is managed can be more damaging to a business than the crisis itself. Alan Chaffee has seen the pattern repeat itself, where "scarcity mentality" takes hold and leaders begin operating as though there is no margin for error, ultimately driving decisions of costly inaction. Alan identifies the three decision-making traps that stall recoveries: acting too fast, under-resourcing promising initiatives, and killing projects before they have a chance to prove themselves, and makes a compelling case that the antidote is not certainty, but structure. Drawing on decades of turnaround engagements, he outlines the framework that helps leadership teams move forward with confidence when the path is anything but clear.
There is a pattern I have seen repeat itself across decades of turnaround work, and it is one of the most dangerous threats a struggling company faces. No, it’s not panic. Quite the opposite, it looks like careful, strict leadership.
Decision makers start scheduling more meetings, requiring more analysis, and asking for greater alignment before anyone commits to a direction. The plan keeps getting refined, but it never gets executed because no one wants to be the person who makes the wrong call. What I’m describing is “scarcity mentality,” where leadership begins operating from the belief that there is not enough margin for error, enough time, or enough opportunity to recover from a mistake. When leaders fall into that mindset, protecting against failure becomes more important than creating progress. In a turnaround, scarcity mentality kills a company faster than the original problem ever could.
Scarcity mentality takes hold when the path forward is not clear. And in a distressed business situation, the path forward is almost never clear. The data is incomplete, the signals are mixed, and the advisors are cautious. In that environment, a leader operating from scarcity tends to fall into one of three traps: they pull the trigger to kill too early, before an idea has had a chance to prove itself; they fail to resource a promising initiative when it needs a champion; or they terminate a project simply because the outcome is not guaranteed. That last one is particularly costly because most worthwhile initiatives live in the gray, requiring conviction and investment before they reveal their full potential. Eliminating them because the outcome is not black or white is not risk management; it is opportunity destruction.
Scarcity mentality does not just distort decision-making. It also affects organizational culture. The cost of inaction never appears as a line item on the financial statements, but it is always felt. In a turnaround, people are already anxious. They are watching leadership closely for any signal that someone in the room still believes the company can win. When every decision is delayed, overanalyzed, or treated like a potential disaster, confidence begins to erode. When that happens, the best people start making other plans.
Structure Over Optimism
The answer to scarcity mentality is not optimism or the pursuit of certainty. It is the commitment to creating a new framework. A well-built strategic plan converts ambiguity and assumptions into a decision-making structure. It tells the entire organization where we are going, how we will know if we are on track, and who owns each piece of the journey. That clarity is what allows a leadership team to make confident decisions even when certainty is not available.
At Turning Point, we build strategic plans for every turnaround engagement. This does two things at once: it communicates the decision framework across the entire organization, and it creates genuine alignment because the people who build the plan believe in the plan.
Decisions Are Learning, Not Failure
One of the most important things a leader can do in a turnaround is change the language around decisions that do not go as planned. In a scarcity mindset, the fear of being wrong becomes the reason nothing moves forward. Teams treat every decision like it is the only one that can be right. The antidote is cultural. Leaders must name it directly: We will make decisions with the best information available. Some will not turn out as planned. We will call those learning, not failure, and we will use them to make the next decision sharper. This should not be interpreted as an excuse for poor judgment. It is a commitment to keeping the organization in motion, because in a turnaround, thoughtful action and continuous learning will always outperform paralysis. A team that is afraid to be wrong will never move fast enough to recover.
Work the Problem in Front of You
I say this to leadership teams constantly, and I mean it as both a discipline and a relief. There are three instincts that stall recovery efforts. The first is future tripping: catastrophizing outcomes that have not happened and may never happen. The second is awfulizing past decisions, which is replaying what went wrong in a way that creates guilt and paralysis instead of learning. The third is searching for perfect alignment before taking the next step, which is scarcity mentality in its purest form.
The only productive place to lead from is the present. What is the problem in front of us right now? What do we know? What can we control? What is the next right move, and how does it fit into our plan? That discipline, practiced consistently at the leadership level, keeps teams focused on execution instead of becoming immobilized by fear and negativity, and it gives the broader organization permission to do the same.
The companies that emerge from turnarounds stronger are not the ones that waited for certainty. They are the ones that built a framework, owned it together, called their missteps learning, and kept working the problem in front of them. That is the imperfect path on which recoveries are actually built.
