Most people think turnarounds begin with intensity — urgency, pressure, aggressive delivery targets.
But the hardest lesson I learned leading one was this:
You can’t accelerate a system that isn’t coherent. Speed without structure is just motion disguised as progress.**
When I joined Provet Cloud, the problem wasn’t a lack of talent or effort.
It was the absence of an operating system.
No shared roadmap.
No delivery rhythm.
No single definition of product success.
A design system split into five versions of the same component.
The organisation wasn’t broken.
It was unstructured.
And unstructured teams don’t fail dramatically — they fail slowly.
That’s where the real work began.
The First Mistake Most Leaders Make in a Turnaround
The instinct is always the same:
Ship faster.
Add more people.
Push harder.
Burn down the backlog.
But urgency applied to a system without structure doesn’t create progress — it creates noise.
You get movement, but not momentum.
I stopped trying to speed up output, and instead focused on changing the conditions that output depended on.
Teams don’t need motivation.
They need orientation, ownership, and rhythm.
Once those exist, speed becomes a by-product, not a target.
What Changed First (And Why It Wasn’t the Roadmap)
People assume the first priority in a turnaround is the roadmap.
It isn’t.
The roadmap was only a symptom of the real problem:
there was no operating rhythm the organisation could rely on.
So before strategy, I introduced structure:
- Clear ownership through empowered triads
- A Now / Next / Later roadmap visible to leadership and teams
- One unified design system instead of competing versions
- Delivery cadence through demos, releases, and showcases
- Strategic alignment around four product pillars instead of one dominant customer
It was foundational work — and foundations decide whether a turnaround stabilises or collapses.
The Turning Point: From Hero Leader to System Leader
The traditional turnaround story casts the leader as the rescuer — the one with answers, authority, and the loudest voice in the room.
That model dies the moment you leave the room.
My approach was closer to David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around:
Don’t move information to authority — move authority to information.
Instead of centralising decisions, we distributed them.
Product managers stopped waiting for permission and started presenting recommendations.
Ownership sat with the people closest to the work, not the people highest in the hierarchy.
Roadmap reviews became alignment conversations, not approval meetings.
I wasn’t trying to be the person who saved the organisation.
I was trying to remove the need for saving.
That was the shift.
When the system started making good decisions without escalation, I knew the turnaround was real.
Where AI Actually Made a Difference
People assume AI speeds up delivery.
It didn’t — not at first.
What it sped up was alignment.
Once PMs, designers, and engineers could:
- Generate multiple solution paths in minutes
- Summarise customer feedback instantly
- Stress-test roadmap decisions without a workshop
- Translate problems into specs, docs, or prototypes in one sitting
We stopped debating opinions.
We started comparing options.
AI didn’t replace judgment — it reduced the friction required to reach it.
And when the cost of clarity dropped, the pace of real decision-making increased.
The Moment I Knew the Turnaround Had Actually Happened
It wasn’t the launch of the Clinical AI product.
It wasn’t a revenue milestone.
It wasn’t even the shift to 30% YoY growth.
It was the day a product manager ran a roadmap review I didn’t attend — and nothing fell apart.
That is the definition of progress in product leadership:
Clarity that survives your absence.
Leader–Follower systems fail when the leader steps away.
Leader–Leader systems continue, because the structure — not the hierarchy — enables leadership.
That’s the quiet milestone no dashboard will show you.
The Framework That Emerged
I didn’t start with a framework, but one became obvious in retrospect:
- Clarity of direction — People know what matters and why
- Structure of ownership — Decisions have a home, not a crowd
- Rhythm of delivery — Work moves in visible, predictable cycles
- Quality of alignment — Context is shared before output is created
Skip them, and urgency becomes fire.
What I’d Tell Any Product Leader Walking Into a Turnaround
Don't start with the backlog. Start with the belief system.
Don’t promise speed. Promise clarity — speed will follow.
Don’t strip ownership until things “stabilise.” That’s how instability becomes permanent.
Don’t mistake chaos for incompetence — most dysfunction is systemic, not personal.
And don’t measure success by what you ship.
Measure it by what still works when you’re not in the room.
Turnarounds are not about rescuing teams.
They are about restoring the conditions where good teams can do good work.
That is the job.
Everything else is noise.
If You're Leading a Turnaround
Steal anything here. None of this was theory — it was necessity.
If you want the templates, frameworks, or a sparring session, just ask.
Happy to help others get there with fewer bruises.