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Free minibook · PDF, 23 pages
Audit the Team You Inherited, Fill Four Positions and Settle Misalignment in Thirty Days, Fairly
The leadership meeting ran on time. Every report was green or had a reason not to be. The company was losing money and the meeting felt like a company that wasn't. That's not a bad team. It's a team built for a different job. This free minibook shows you how to look, what to do with what you see and how to settle it in thirty days without being unfair to anyone.
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By Todd Hagopian, who has led business transformations at Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works and Whirlpool.
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Who it's for
Leaders who have just taken over a business, division or function that has to change and inherited its leadership team, or who have run the team for years while the job changed underneath it. Score your top ten leaders against four positions, test every judgment against behavior and incentives, and run a fair, documented thirty-day conversation with anyone who's misaligned, with HR at your side.
Not for you if choosing your first turnaround move, setting the turnaround calendar or designing an org chart. It's about who sits in the room and what each of them has to bring.
What you'll learn
- Good People, Different Game
- The Four Positions
- Audit the Room
- Test the Label Before You Judge the Person
- Thirty Days, Fairly
Plus a final action plan and a worksheet you can use the same week.
Key takeaways
- A steady-state team is selected for reliability. A turnaround rewards decisions under uncertainty and pressure sustained while the organization pushes back.
- The four positions are the provocateur, the pragmatist, the people champion and the pattern reader.
- They're capabilities, not titles. You find out who has them by watching what people actually do.
- Test the label before you judge the person: the facts test, the incentive test and the change test.
- The 30-Day Rule: misalignment gets a clear conversation and a decision within thirty days, documented with HR.
From the book
The leadership meeting ran on time. It always did.
Every report was green or had a reason not to be. Every question had an owner. Nobody raised a voice, and nobody raised anything that wasn't already on the agenda. The company was losing money and the meeting felt like a company that wasn't.
That's not a bad team. It's a team built for a different job. It was assembled to run a stable business well: protect the routes, hit the numbers, avoid surprises. It's very good at that job. A turnaround is a different job, and it needs things this team was never selected for: someone to break the comfortable assumptions, someone to turn bold ideas into plans that work, someone to carry the people through the uncertainty, and someone to see what's coming before it arrives.
Todd Hagopian, The Four People Every Turnaround Needs, from the prologue "The Team That Got You Here"
Frequently asked questions
These people are competent. Why would I change anything?
Because competent at what? A steady-state team is selected and rewarded for reliability: running established processes and protecting what's already won. A turnaround rewards decisions under uncertainty, money concentrated on a few bets, old habits broken and pressure sustained. A leader can be excellent at the first and absent from the second.
What are the four positions every turnaround needs?
The provocateur challenges assumptions and refuses comfortable consensus. The pragmatist turns bold goals into plans that can actually run. The people champion manages what the change does to human beings. The pattern reader sees trends early and connects scattered information.
How do I know someone is actually misaligned?
Run three tests before you treat any label as true: the facts test, the incentive test and the change test. When people push back with facts, that's often a pragmatist or people champion doing the job.
Related free minibooks
The First 90 Days of a Turnaround
Pick your path on Day 1, then run the 90 days week by week.
Read more
The 70-Percent Rule
Sort every decision, set the right bar and clear the queue without betting the company.
Read moreRelated reading on the blog
- The Four-Position Leadership Framework
- The 30-Day Rule for Misaligned Leaders
- The Four-Position Battalion: BU President's Team
Go further
Stagnation Assassin: The Anti-Consultant Manifesto is about the bigger fight: the conditions that make companies decay from the inside, the team you need to fight them and the tools to keep a recovered business moving. It's available now. Todd's next book, 10-Minute Transformation, is out February 23, 2027.
The full library
Two ways to get it. Preorder now and it ships on release. Or buy on launch day, February 23, 2027, and get three free audiobooks (10-Minute Transformation, Stagnation Assassin and The Unfair Advantage) plus the full minibook library, on the honor system. Preorders don't include the launch-day bonuses.
About the author
Todd Hagopian, The Stagnation Assassin, is VP of Product Strategy and Marketing. He has led business transformations at Berkshire Hathaway, Illinois Tool Works, and Whirlpool Corporation, with $3B+ shareholder value across five turnarounds. He speaks to leadership teams on business transformation, turnarounds, and breaking stagnation.