has been a consistent theme in my career.   This is how it commonly happens:

A business has gone through an economic downturn or they have purchased, at a very high valuation, an existing business.   In both cases, there was not sufficient investment in the systems to keep them up to date.   Often, for a start-up, the systems were hacked together just to get something in the market.   There is no documentation, no thought of how to change the system, and no quality measures.   Often the infrastructure is neglected because it requires capital that the business did not have.   Then the business signs a big contract and the CEO realizes that he can’t support this business volume.   This is when I get a call.

Anyone taking responsibility for this situation faces challenges across many dimensions, including:

1. Out of date and inconsistent technology.
   

2. Quality is viewed as something the QA testers do.
   

3. No formal development methodology, so adding engineering talent difficult
   

4. The business can’t afford to invest at a rate faster than revenue growth.
   

5. The concept of teaming to solve a problem is unknown.

   

   
   

For start-ups, there are additional challenges, such as:

1. An attitude of working harder to just keep things running, rather than proactively addressing potential problems.
   

2. Everyone busy supporting customers, instead of doing their assign task.
   

3. Product plans continuously replaced by the latest load customer complaints
   

Of course, there is no magic bullet for driving the needed changes.   But there are some ways of working that actually help with the change:

1. 1.Have clear, simple, compelling vision for what the organization needs to be and repeat the vision at every opportunity. 
   

2. 2.Make change an exciting career enhancement for employees.   Your really good people will soon become the leading proponents of the changes.
   

3. 3.Stay honest.   If things are going well say so but also work with people to figure a way to improve it.   
   

4. 4.Make the people who are going to make the changes really work feel in charge and accountable.    Resist stepping in at each problem unless asked.
   

To do this, I firmly believe, you must understand the change in detail.   If you stay at the conceptual level, you will not recognize when the change is going wrong.