Manufacturing Leadership Transition
The Challenge
A mid-sized manufacturing company was struggling with a leadership transition. The new Operations Director had been promoted from within, but the team wasn't responding to their leadership. Communication had broken down, production targets were slipping, and turnover was increasing.
The company tried several solutions: leadership training for the new director, team-building activities, revised communication protocols. Nothing improved. The CEO was considering whether they'd made the wrong promotion decision.
What I Would Do
I spent four weeks on-site, observing daily operations, team meetings, and informal interactions. Rather than conducting interviews or running surveys, I simply watched how the organization actually functioned.
What I discovered wasn't a leadership failure—it was a cultural clash no one had named. The previous Operations Director had run the floor with an informal, relationship-first approach. The new director was implementing the process improvements the CEO wanted, but doing so in a more structured, systems-focused way.
The team experienced this as a loss of connection and autonomy. They weren't resisting the new director—they were grieving the old culture. But because no one had language for this dynamic, it showed up as 'performance issues' and 'attitude problems.'
I facilitated a series of conversations where we named what was actually happening, validated the team's experience of loss, and created new agreements about how decision-making and communication would work going forward. We didn't change the new systems—we changed how they were introduced and maintained.
Projected Impact
Before
After
Projected Outcomes
Within six weeks of my engagement: - Production metrics returned to baseline and then improved 12% beyond previous performance - Voluntary turnover dropped from 18% annualized to 7% - The leadership team reported feeling 'aligned for the first time' - The Operations Director gained confidence in their approach and learned to balance structure with connection
The CEO later said: 'I was ready to make a change. Turns out the change we needed wasn't in the org chart—it was in understanding what the transition actually meant for the team.'
Key Insights
Team resistance often signals cultural grief, not performance issues
New leaders need time to build trust before implementing change
What looks like pushback is often unexpressed loss and uncertainty
Systems changes fail without emotional and cultural acknowledgment