from friction to function: How to turn around a struggling team
About Case Study Authors
Ibex Tactics LLC, was founded by Alex Bolowich & Ben Foodman. Before starting the company, Alex and Ben were working with athletes on an individual basis, helping them improve their mental performance using sport psychology-based interventions. While both professionals had incredible success working with some of the world’s most elite athletes, a significant portion of the time they were unable to help some of their clients due to the poor cultures these athletes were immersed in. As a result, Alex and Ben created Ibex Tactics LLC, which dedicated towards providing science-driven solutions to helping teams build resilient cultures.
Introduction: The Delicate Art of Team Transformation
When performance begins to falter and a once-thriving team starts to struggle, leaders face one of their most complex challenges. The decline rarely stems from a single cause—more often, it's the culmination of subtle shifts in dynamics, gradual erosion of practices, or environmental changes that went unaddressed. What makes this situation particularly difficult is that struggling teams develop psychological patterns that further entrench underperformance: diminished psychological safety, defensive communication, blame-shifting, and reduced risk-taking.
This comprehensive guide moves beyond conventional turnaround advice to explore the nuanced psychological, sociological, and systemic dimensions of revitalizing teams in crisis. Rather than offering simplistic solutions, we'll examine a three-phase approach that acknowledges the complexity of human systems and the interdependent nature of team performance.
The approach outlined here draws from diverse disciplines—complex systems theory, psychological safety research, status dynamics, motivational psychology, and organizational neuroscience—to provide a holistic framework for meaningful transformation. What distinguishes this methodology is its recognition that team improvement requires not just structural changes, but shifts in collective meaning-making and narrative.
Before diving into the framework, it's worth acknowledging an uncomfortable truth: approximately 70% of organizational change initiatives fail. This sobering statistic reflects not the impossibility of change, but rather its true complexity. By approaching team turnarounds with appropriate depth and nuance, you dramatically increase your chances of being among the successful 30%.
Part I. The Observation Phase - watch, listen, and learn
The Art of Observation: Seeing Your Team's Reality
The observation phase is about witnessing what's actually happening, not what people want you to show you. Think of yourself as a detective gathering evidence rather than a boss making rounds.
Set a realistic timeframe that works with your schedule—whether a full day of shadowing or specific hours across a week. The quality of your attention matters more than the time spent observing.
The Emotional Landscape
Pay attention to how emotions flow through your team. Notice who functions as emotional "transmitters" whose moods affect others. When Jamie arrives frustrated, watch how the marketing team's energy visibly drops, while Sasha's enthusiasm tends to lift everyone.
Identify the team's energy rituals—what consistently energizes or depletes them. Monday status meetings might drain everyone's motivation, while informal Thursday problem-solving sessions leave people energized.
Observe status dynamics in action—how senior developers might interrupt junior team members but fall silent when the tech lead speaks, regardless of the value of ideas being shared. And watch how the team handles uncertainty—whether they problem-solve collaboratively when client requirements change or fracture into blame and defensiveness.
Information Flow Analysis
Track how critical information moves (or doesn't) through your system. Look for bottlenecks where information gets stuck, like customer feedback that reaches sales but never makes it to product development.
Notice informal networks where important decisions happen outside formal channels—like during smoke breaks that non-smokers miss entirely. Identify power imbalances where certain people hoard information others need, and spot tacit knowledge that "everyone knows" but nobody has documented, like handling procedures for your biggest client.
Pay attention to handoffs—how projects might stall for days when moving from design to development because of unstated expectations.
Narrative Archaeology
The stories people tell reveal how they make sense of their world. Listen for the metaphors they use to describe their work—"we're always putting out fires" versus "we're building something great."
Note which tales from the past keep coming up, like a failed product launch from years ago that still shapes current thinking. Pay attention to how people explain problems when speaking casually—issues blamed on "market conditions" in meetings might be attributed to leadership indecisiveness at lunch.
Most revealing are the undiscussable topics—what everyone works around but never addresses directly, like an underperforming team member.
Temporal Patterns
Notice when problems typically occur. Are there predictable times when things break down, like quality issues spiking at quarter-end when teams rush to hit targets? How efficiently does the team transition between activities, and what's their rhythm of productive work and recovery?
Watch how approaching deadlines change behavior—perhaps testing procedures get abbreviated two weeks before delivery despite their importance.
Documenting What You See
Be systematic in recording your observations. Sketch relationship maps showing who connects with whom, note communication patterns and decision points, and write down exact phrases that seem significant, like how often you hear "that's not my job" versus "how can I help?"
Managing Your Own Reactions
Perhaps the greatest challenge is controlling your urge to jump in and fix things. Keep a separate journal for your reactions to what you observe. When you feel frustrated watching the team spend 30 minutes discussing an issue you think could be resolved in 5 minutes, ask yourself: Is this actually a problem, or just my preference for efficiency?
This self-awareness prevents you from confusing your personal preferences with genuine system issues. By distinguishing between the two, you'll gain insights that most leaders miss entirely.
Part II. The Discovery Dialogue - Engaging Leadership Insight
Setting the Stage for Truth-Telling
The success of your discovery conversations depends on creating an atmosphere where people can speak freely. Design a space where normal hierarchies and defensive routines are temporarily suspended.
For blame-heavy teams, establish a "no attribution" rule focusing on what happened, not who did it. With conflict-avoiding teams, require everyone to share different perspectives. For hierarchical teams, consider reversing the speaking order, and for groups with dominant voices, implement timed speaking turns.
Encouraging Systems Thinking
Prime your team to think systemically by using non-threatening examples, like mapping how a coffee shop handles rush hour before discussing your own challenges. Create visual maps showing connections between different parts of your team or processes. Share stories about unintended consequences to illustrate how well-intentioned changes can create unexpected problems.
Balancing Problems with Strengths
Don't focus exclusively on what's wrong. Identify bright spots functioning well despite struggles and celebrate small wins. Connect team members to the meaning behind their work and leverage historical strengths by recalling what the team has always excelled at.
The Five Dimensions: Asking Better Questions
1. WHAT: Defining the Problem Clearly
Separate outcomes from processes and quantify the gaps whenever possible. Look for patterns rather than focusing on isolated incidents, and distinguish between chronic issues and temporary problems.
2. WHERE: Mapping the Context
Consider where problems appear—in physical locations, digital environments, or relationship contexts like handoffs between teams. Examine organizational boundaries where friction might occur.
3. WHEN: Understanding Timing Patterns
Investigate whether problems happen at specific times or process points. Note when you discovered the issue, but more importantly, trace back to when it began—this origin point is critical for preventing recurrence.
4. WHO: Understanding Relationship Dynamics
Look beyond individuals to how people interact. Consider how authority influences information sharing, what informal alliances affect dynamics, whose voices might be missing, and where role ambiguity exists.
5. WHY: Multi-level Root Cause Analysis
Examine causes at different levels—from individual factors to relationship dynamics, team processes, organizational contexts, and external pressures affecting your work.
Putting It All Together
Help your team integrate their understanding by creating visual maps showing how factors influence each other. Identify issues that make other issues worse and find leverage points where small changes could make big differences.
Avoiding Mental Traps
Watch for the tendency to focus too heavily on recent events rather than patterns. Counter the habit of blaming individuals instead of examining systems. Challenge confirmation bias by seeking contrary perspectives, and use methods that equalize input from all team members.
This structured approach will uncover deeper insights than typical problem-solving meetings, leading to more effective solutions.
Part III. The Alignment & Action Plan
Designing the Right Scale of Change
Think beyond simply choosing between "big change" or "small tweaks." Consider multiple dimensions:
Focus deeply on one critical area or make broader but lighter changes across multiple domains? A struggling sales team might need deep reform of their prospecting process rather than minor adjustments to everything.
Balance timing needs—do acute issues demand rapid intervention, or would a gradual approach allow better learning? When facing imminent client losses, quick action may be necessary.
The most effective turnarounds typically combine elements from multiple approaches, thoughtfully sequenced rather than applied all at once.
The Five Dimensions of Effective Solutions
1. WHAT: Designing Smart Interventions
Create interconnected changes that reinforce each other. When one team redesigned customer service, they simultaneously updated metrics, training, and feedback systems—each supporting the others.
Choose initial actions with high symbolic value. One leader began by personally taking customer calls alongside frontline staff, powerfully signaling priorities without words.
Target high-leverage points where small changes yield big results. One organization discovered that simply changing how they started meetings shifted their entire focus over time.
Be explicit about what will NOT change, providing stability amid transformation.
2. WHO: Assigning Responsibility Thoughtfully
Form cross-functional groups with collective responsibility. When manufacturing and engineering shared ownership for quality improvements, solutions emerged that neither could have created alone.
Create unexpected collaboration pairs. Partnering your most skeptical veteran with an enthusiastic newcomer often leads to more robust solutions.
Identify boundary spanners who naturally bridge different groups, and elevate hidden talent who bring fresh energy but might lack formal authority.
Plan specifically for resistance by involving potential opponents early in designing solutions.
3. WHEN: Getting the Timing Right
Schedule early victories to build momentum before tackling more complex issues.
Plan the rhythm of change carefully—fast enough to maintain energy but paced to prevent overwhelm, like the retail chain that implemented their approach in quarterly waves.
Build in recovery periods. Successful transformations include deliberate consolidation phases that allow new practices to be refined before adding more.
Establish regular checkpoints to prevent changes from fading without accountability.
4. WHERE: Choosing the Right Contexts
Test changes in specific areas before broader rollout. The customer service team that piloted new protocols with just two account managers refined their approach significantly before expanding.
Pay special attention to boundaries between teams. One company's performance jumped when they redesigned how projects transitioned from sales to delivery.
Consider how environmental changes might support new behaviors, from digital collaboration spaces to office layouts.
5. HOW: Implementing with Care
Craft a compelling narrative that gives meaning to the transformation. The manufacturing team that framed improvements around "craftsmanship pride" rather than "error reduction" tapped into deeper motivation.
Create ceremonies that mark transitions and provide frameworks that help people interpret their experiences during change.
Establish real-time feedback channels to quickly identify what's working and what isn't, and address the emotional dimensions of change through proper support and celebration of progress.
Building a Learning System
The most sophisticated turnarounds establish systems for continuous adaptation through regular reviews, tracking early warning signs, and maintaining psychological safety where people can speak honestly about challenges.
Look systematically for positive exceptions—pockets where performance already exceeds expectations—and bring in outside perspectives to challenge assumptions.
Managing the Unexpected
Build processes for identifying unintended consequences, track interdependencies to spot ripple effects, and maintain flexible resources to address emergent issues.
The most successful transformations recognize that change is messy—and build that reality into their approach from the beginning.
Part IV. The Continuous Nature of Renewal
Team turnarounds are rarely one-time events with clear beginnings and endings. Rather, they represent entries into cycles of continuous renewal. The most successful turnarounds establish not just improved performance, but enhanced capabilities for ongoing adaptation.
What distinguishes truly transformative leaders is their ability to simultaneously address immediate performance gaps while building the team's capacity to navigate future challenges. They recognize that sustainable improvement comes not just from solving today's problems, but from developing more sophisticated ways of understanding and addressing tomorrow's challenges.
The framework presented here invites leaders to move beyond simplistic change formulas to engage with the true complexity of human systems. By approaching team turnarounds with appropriate depth, patience, and nuance, you create the conditions not just for recovery, but for unprecedented new levels of collective performance.
Remember that the most profound transformations often don't look dramatic from the outside. They consist of subtle shifts in how team members make meaning together, how they navigate their interdependencies, and how they learn collectively from experience. These changes, while less visible than restructurings or personnel changes, tend to produce the most sustainable results.
The journey of team turnaround is ultimately one of collective growth—for both the team and its leadership. By embracing the full complexity of this challenge, you transform not just performance outcomes, but the very capability of your organization to thrive in an uncertain future.
NOTE TO READER:
Alex and Ben wanted to compile their expertise in the Ibex Tactics Case Studies to help teams in the sports and corporate sector better understand how many of the issues they are dealing with are more often than not related to culture. Most teams recognize that culture is an important component of their success, but do not always have the resources or expertise to analyze the complexity of culture. If you are interested in learning more about the services that Ibex Tactics offers to help with culture development, use the contact form below and sign up with your email to receive updates on new services and case studies!
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