Robert Statsky

How to Drive Change Without Burning Everything Down

When you arrive at a new company as a manager or leader, there’s usually a quiet expectation: you’re here to turn things around.

Maybe the team is underperforming. Maybe there’s friction between CS, Sales, and Product. Maybe there’s no process at all and it’s just chaos disguised as collaboration.

Your instinct might be to make big moves right away. But effective change management requires balance. You need to know what to blow up and what to protect.

Step 1: Learn the Landscape Before You Act

Before making any sweeping changes, understand the culture and operating model you’re stepping into. Every company has invisible systems. The unwritten rules about who makes decisions, how information flows, and what “success” really means. You also need to know who is calling the shots and who has the influence.

Step 2: Be Surgical Where You Can, Explosive Where You Must

You’ll find places, processes and sometimes even people that need immediate removal from the business and others that require a controlled demolition.

Example: onboarding and renewals.
In many SaaS companies, CS evolved from Support. So teams end up “owning everything” post-sale. Full-cycle is fine in the early days, but it eventually collapses under scale.

When you see this, simplify:

• Cut unnecessary steps that slow customers down.
• Rebuild onboarding to focus on first value, not first meeting and introductions.
• Treat renewals as a continuation of service, not a surprise event.

For low-value or auto-renew products, avoid over-engineering the process. For high-value accounts, bring customers into the renewal early 60–90 days before and offer clear metrics and transparent communication.

Step 3: Fix the People Side, Not Just the Process

Processes can be redesigned quickly. Behavior takes time. If performance is inconsistent, dig into why.

Ask:

• “What’s not working for you right now?”
• “What’s the customer saying that we’re ignoring?”
• “What’s one thing that would make your job easier this week?”

You will gain more insight from the people there who are living it each day than you will from the “data” and the written processes. You can have the best data in the world (I’ve never seen or interacted with a company that had this) and the best documented processes you’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is complying, consistently following them or that they are effective. 

Listen, act, and repeat. Make small improvements weekly and show progress visibly and as fast as possible. Celebrate quick wins and give credit publicly. This helps to create psychological safety which is the foundation of real performance improvement.

Step 4: Build Consistency, Not Chaos

The hardest part of turning a team around isn’t the first month, it’s month three. Consistency separates leaders who sustain momentum from those who fade after a few quick wins. Why even bother hiring that new leader if they’re just gonna blow up the thing and not keep it moving forward in the future? A consultant can do that, or someone with the right prompts and authority can as well.

With AI, and access to information, the knowledge, strategy and know-how is no longer a mystery. Consistency, long term vision, and the ability to execute is the most treasured item.

Be the constant force:

• Keep showing up.
• Keep improving.
• Keep communicating results.

Change is uncomfortable, but predictability builds trust.

Improving an underperforming team isn’t about revolution, it’s about rhythm. You diagnose, you act, you adjust. You make progress visible. You help people believe things can get better.

That’s how performance and culture can actually change.