Navigating Change, One Turn at a Time

It was supposed to be a routine Tuesday. My team was delivering reliably, morale was strong, and the operating rhythm felt healthy. Then my phone rang.

My CTO asked if I could take on an additional department. The team was struggling. Engagement was low, trust had eroded, and the organization had started to normalize underperformance.

The immediate temptation in moments like that is to act dramatically. Reorganize. Replace processes. Change leadership structures in one sweep. But before deciding what to do, I kept returning to one image: the Ever Given stuck in the Suez Canal.

Why the Ever Given analogy matters

What stayed with me about that rescue was not the scale of the ship. It was the method.

• No heroic single move solved the problem.
• The team worked with the environment rather than against it.
• Progress came from sequencing, timing, and coordinated pressure.

That is often what organizational change requires as well. Teams that look broken are frequently stuck in a system that no longer supports good outcomes.

The real problem was not motivation

The team did not need a speech about urgency. It needed a better environment for good work.

I had to understand four currents before making any material change.

1. The cultural current

One team had a new engineering manager. The long-time leader had left. Confidence was low, and legacy architecture had become part of the team’s identity. Any move that felt like "here we go again" would have pushed trust even lower.

2. The product current

The team had shipped work, but several initiatives had failed to create visible impact. We needed a strategy that could create momentum, not just more activity.

3. The technology current

The systems were not just old. They were deeply embedded in business-critical workflows. Manual work dominated daily operations, and on-call pressure was consuming engineering attention.

4. The talent current

The people were not the problem. They were the source of the recovery. But they needed the trust, space, and direction to do meaningful work again.

This is the same reason I often start with system constraints and team ownership before recommending a broader operating model change.

The leadership lesson: precision beats force

What changed the trajectory was not one large intervention. It was a set of smaller, carefully sequenced moves.

Start with a visible win

Instead of launching a major transformation program immediately, I started with smaller operating changes that improved morale and rebuilt credibility. The team became part of the change process rather than the target of it.

Respect the environment

That low engagement score was not just a metric. It was a constraint. It told me how much change the team could absorb without losing stability.

Use informal influence deliberately

Just like the tugboats around the Ever Given, the real leverage came from alignment. Informal leaders, domain experts, and trusted team members helped create movement that top-down pressure alone could not.

Be patient enough to time the move

Strategic patience is not indecision. In many transformations, timing is part of the intervention.

The result of small, disciplined changes

Six months later, the department looked materially different. Engagement improved from 25% to 52%. Deployment frequency increased, voluntary turnover fell, and the team began to adopt some of the stronger operating practices used elsewhere in the organization.

What mattered most was not one individual action. It was the combined effect of several targeted shifts:

• Clarified domain boundaries to reduce friction.
• Created visible wins to rebuild confidence.
• Reconnected the work to business value.
• Elevated the right people at the right time.

Questions worth asking before you reorganize

If something in your organization feels stuck, ask:

• Which environmental constraints am I ignoring?
• Where am I using force where precision would work better?
• Who are the trusted people who can help move this change?
• What conditions need to align before I push harder?

If those questions are showing structural gaps rather than local issues, the next step is usually not another workshop. It is a clearer engineering framework and a more intentional advisory conversation about ownership, metrics, and execution. You can start that discussion here.

Final reflection

The most durable transformations do not start with a dramatic announcement. They start with better diagnosis, better timing, and smaller changes applied with discipline.

Leaders who learn to steer that way do not just rescue stuck teams. They create the conditions for those teams to move confidently again.