STARS framework

In a start-up, you are charged with assembling the capabilities (people, funding, and technology) to get a new business, product, project, or relationship off the ground. This means you can shape the organization from the outset by recruiting your team, playing a major role in defining the agenda, and building the architecture of the business. Participants in a start-up are likely to be more excited and hopeful than members of a troubled group facing failure. But at the same time, employees of a start-up are typically much less focused on key issues than those in a turnaround, simply because the vision, strategy, structures, and systems that channel organizational energy are not yet in place.

In a turnaround, you take on a unit or group that is recognized to be in deep trouble and work to get it back on track. A turnaround is the classic burning platform, demanding rapid, decisive action. Most people understand that substantial change is necessary, although they may be in disarray and in significant disagreement about what needs to be done. Turnarounds are ready-fire-aim situations: you need to make the tough calls with less than full knowledge and then adjust as you learn more.

In contrast, realignments (and sustaining-success assignments) are more ready-aim-fire situations. Turning around a failing business requires the new leader to cut it down to a defensible core fast and then begin to build it back up. This painful process, if successful, leaves the business in a sustaining-success situation. If efforts to turn around the business fail, the result often is shutdown or divestiture.

In an accelerated-growth situation, the organization has begun to hit its stride, and the hard work of scaling up has begun. This typically means you’re putting in the structures, processes, and systems necessary to rapidly expand the business (or project, product, or relationship). You also likely need to hire and onboard a lot of people while making sure they become part of the culture that has made the organization successful thus far. The risks, of course, lie in expanding too much too fast. Start-ups, turnarounds, and accelerated-growth situations involve much resource-intensive construction work; there isn’t much existing infrastructure and capacity for you to build on. To a significant degree, you get to start fresh or, in the case of accelerated growth, to build on a strong foundation.

In realignments and sustaining-success situations, in contrast, you enter organizations that have significant strengths but also serious constraints on what you can and cannot do. Fortunately, in these two situations you typically have some time before you need to make major calls. This is good, because you must learn a lot about the culture and politics and begin building supportive coalitions. Because of internal complacency, erosion of key capabilities, or external challenges, successful businesses tend to drift toward trouble.

In a realignment, your challenge is to revitalize a unit, product, process, or project that has been drifting into danger. The clouds are gathering on the horizon, but the storm has not yet broken–and many people may not even see the clouds. The biggest challenge often is to create a sense of urgency. There may be a lot of denial; the leader needs to open people’s eyes to the fact that a problem actually exists. This was the situation facing Karl in North America. Here, the good news is that the organization likely has at least islands of significant strength (good products, customer relationships, processes, and people).

In a sustaining-success situation, you are shouldering responsibility for preserving the vitality of a successful organization and taking it to the next level. This emphatically does not mean that the organization can rest on its laurels. Rather, it means you need to understand, at a deep level, what has made the business successful and position it to meet the inevitable challenges so that it will continue to grow and prosper. In fact, the key to sustaining success often lies in continuously starting up, accelerating, and realigning parts of the business.

⊕ (Watkins 2013, chap. 3)