Fixing broken
I’ve spent a decade rehabilitating broken teams. Not “underperforming” teams, broken ones. The ones where behaviors have drifted so far from the mission that people are being paid for work that isn’t on their contracts and nobody’s shipping anything they’re proud of.
One post that resonated with me was How to Fix Broken Teams on the Stay SaaSy blog. It helped me articulate a pattern I’d been running intuitively for years. With that clarity, I formalized my own approach into a formula.
AMD + T(T)R = ECM
It’s a sequence, not a buffet. Skip a step and the outcome degrades. Follow it and a team can shift its trajectory in 12–18 months.
Audit, map, diagnose (AMD)
Audit. Collect every available fact, mandate, scope, responsibilities, outputs, performance metrics, morale signals, cultural indicators. Build a raw inventory of “what is.” This is where I run L3 tours: look, listen, learn. Sit with every team. Ask open questions. Shut up and take notes.
Map. Translate the audit into a visual operating model. Show inputs, workflows, outputs, and dependencies. Identify gaps, overlaps, and structural inefficiencies. If you can’t draw it, you don’t understand it.
Diagnose. Compare the current model against contemporary operating practices. Highlight systemic problems, cultural blockers, skill gaps, and, critically, where the team is already thriving. Frame the true health of the organization, not just the symptoms.
Talent minus toxicity, then rally (T(T)R)
Talent. Profile skills and capabilities across the team. Identify, retain, or bring in people who are hungry, humble, and smart, contributors who are coachable and aligned with the vision. Place the right people in the right seats.
Toxicity. Isolate or remove culture carriers who block change, hoard knowledge, or drain momentum. This is the step most leaders flinch on. Attrition here is not only acceptable, it’s required. A broken team cannot heal around the people who broke it.
Rally. Make the standards explicit. Call the team to a higher bar of conduct, clarity, and shared vision. This is the commitment point, the moment where the new culture begins. If you skip this, you’ve done surgery without closing the wound.
Execution, clarity, momentum (ECM)
Execution. Deliver under the refined model with accountability to the new standards. Run a clear change-management program, communicate, reinforce, and embed new behaviors until they stick. This is not a memo; it’s going to take roughly 12-18 months to lock in good behaviors once you’ve removed the toxic or under-performing elements of the team.
Clarity. Direction and expectations are visible, unambiguous, and reinforced in plain language. Tribal team names, or codenames of any sort that isn’t intentionally hiding something that has to be confidential, are removed. No team banana, starfish, nova, or pirates. Plain language names of teams and products.
Momentum. Small wins accumulate, confidence compounds, and the cultural shift takes root. This phase is where most leaders declare victory too early. A typical transformation runs 12–18 months depending on scope and tolerance for disruption. Stay in it.
The formula highlights a truth that’s often missed, transformation is not abstract. It’s a deliberate chain of actions: fact-gathering, modeling, diagnosis, talent management, explicit cultural signaling, and finally sustained execution. The sequence matters.