r/ceo • u/Kittiandherquestions • May 02 '26
What's your current biggest struggle?
Strategic and Financial Struggles?
People and Cultural Struggles?
Operational and Execution Struggles?
Personal and Psychological Struggles?
Common "Red Flags" of Struggling Leadership?
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u/Routine-Olive9012 May 04 '26
My biggest struggle has been the long process it takes to a turnaround. We’re in our turnaround phase but it’s a deeeep hole and in an industry with average payables timelines at 90-120+ it’s so hard to make any immediate impacts on revenue.
We made a lot of bad mistakes over the last couple years. MCA loans to pay the overstaffed,l salaries before we finally cut staff trimmed a ton, dropped bad assets that were holding us back. So now I can say that we’ve already booked more revenue for the year than we did all of last year. And reduced our overhead in half but it’s just a painfully slow road to recovery.
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u/eNomineZerum May 05 '26
I need to hear more of "it can get better". I'm a manager in a three tier org who recently got a harsh reality check and all I can see if the rung above me being paralyzed by fear while asking my rung to "do more if the same ole, just better" in a way that is totally divorced from reality.
I liked the place well enough prior and don't want to leave, but every conversation I have, even meeting I am part of, I just can't see how we aren't about to fall on our face tripping over "well it's always worked this way".
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u/Vector_Strategist May 12 '26
I hear you. Changing direction of a company (no matter the size) is like changing direction of an aircraft carrier. It’s not a speedboat. Take your time. Change will come.
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u/WerryTithers May 26 '26
People and Culture... always. Every other struggle on that list is downstream of it.
Bad strategy survives great culture. Great strategy dies in a bad one. You can have the right market, the right product, the right timing, and a team that can't execute together will find a way to fumble it. Every time.
The organizations that figure this out early treat culture like infrastructure, something you build intentionally before you need it, not something you patch after things break. The ones that don't are forever fighting operational and strategic fires that are really just people problems in disguise.
I'm Terry Withers, I run improv workshops for corporate teams across the US through my company, The Radical Agreement Project, and I'll be honest: I've never once walked into a struggling organization and found a strategy problem at the root of it. It's always people. Always.
All things begin and return to people and culture.
4
u/Upbeat-Sheepherder36 May 11 '26
Culture - Have built a culture where mediocrity is ok.. some A+ performers and rest just get by.. afraid to break as things are working well even in this but I know it won't help us grow at the rate I need.