The morning the posters went up, everyone looked up. Be lean, it’s a win in clean letters on the front glass, along the stairs, into the boardroom.
Three months with a U.S. firm, $350,000, and a deck shining like a freshly waxed floor. The core idea made sense—too many styles, diluted product, production losses—and for a week, enthusiasm filled the halls. Then reality came back. Same urgencies, same stuck decisions. Nothing had really changed, except the paint.
The CEO called in the CHRO and COO. Not crisis operators. Two strong professionals, respected, methodical. They pulled what they remembered from the U.S. consultants: cut variety, set clear thresholds, speed up decisions. Over a strong coffee, a bit of English slipping in, they agreed: run the reorg internally to give the slogan legs. No outsiders this time. We’ll handle it.
They closed the door and spoke with the other VPs. Quietly, office to office, careful phrases: “we’ll review flows,” “we’ll simplify.” In the hallways, a wave rose. You could feel it before you saw it. Questions moved faster than answers; rumors beat emails. Three key people resigned without noise; they left like switching off a lamp. The CEO learned a fourth was leaving. He met him, asked straight. Eyes on the carpet: “It feels unstable. We’re out before it spills.” The CEO’s neck tightened. He called an emergency with the CHRO and COO.
They met that evening. Harsh light, tight shoulders. “Let’s do a town hall,” said the CHRO. “We’ll reassure,” added the COO. The CEO nodded: “Go.” The date was set too soon to prepare well. The room filled; marker smell mixed with reheated coffee. The CHRO spoke about alignment; the COO about efficiency. Questions flew. “Are we cutting people?” — “That’s not planned.” “So what changes, exactly?” — “We’ll improve how we work.” Those small hesitations, the reformulations, the seconds hunting for words—that’s what scared people. You don’t hear the rumble right away; you hear it in the stairwell after, when sentences come back and don’t mean the same thing.
Meanwhile they “unfolded ideas.” Costs had to drop. A list of roles passed between the CHRO, COO and CEO. The CEO crossed a name: “Not her. Her boss came to see me. He’s not on board.” He tapped another: “And him—couldn’t we use this to let him go? He wears everyone out.” Logic slid into diplomacy. In the end, instead of touching the real totems, cuts landed where there’s least noise: reduced hours on modest roles. Lives already tight pulled tighter. The slogan hadn’t said anything about that.
Then hope changed shape. We said ERP with the seriousness of a cure. We didn’t spend an hour laying real flows on the table or checking tool-fit. No gap analysis, no proof. Just the urge to move fast and look “modern.” We called the Head of IT, an excellent developer underused for four years. His eyes lit up. He loves Microsoft—“I loooove Microsoft,” he joked. That was enough. We picked Microsoft 365 because he believed in it, not because a sober comparison forced it. No “floor-to-slide” mapping, no end-to-end test on a full process. We chose the shortest path: enthusiasm. Very quickly, because “our business is special,” we customized. The tool hugged the maze… then hardened it.
A year later the verdict was simple: we got the order wrong. A quarter of the system ran—badly—because we adopted the preferred tool before framing decisions, then bent the tool to match old habits. To feed the beast, we hired: IT payroll rose from about $350k to $1M. Operations replanted forests of Excel to fill gaps. The next town hall looked smoother, not clearer. Better answers; same decisions.
Eighteen months in, the poster looked cleaner and the org chart more tired. Departures we hadn’t chosen. Senior tension (“you’re poking into our perimeter”). The CEO carrying it all, the CHRO burning slowly. The ERP swallowed hours and gave back little. Stores lived with colored spreadsheets. And “Be lean, it’s a win” kept smiling from the walls. Twenty-seven months after kickoff, the CEO asked: “Where are we on the reorg?” Slides rolled. The room said, without sound, that nothing essential had moved.
What we saw blames no one. It’s the common story of an internal reorganization led by competent people… who aren’t crisis surgeons. A slogan can spark desire; it doesn’t replace decision.
To make an internal reorg stick, accept three simple, hard things.
End at the start. Not “Q2/Q3,” not “soon”: a visible date when a concrete shift becomes real—who decides what, at which threshold, in what time, and which rare exceptions are allowed, written, temporary. Without that clock, the reorg turns into a season. You get used to it, you talk about it, it never arrives.
Decision before tool. Be lean means nothing until someone can clearly say no to a style, yes to an assortment, stop to a variant. A standard ERP that enforces discipline beats a bespoke one that rebuilds the maze. You lay asphalt afterredrawing the road—never before.
Politics named, not denied. Loyalties exist. It’s internal physics. Naming them out loud halves their power. That’s not harsh; that’s clarity. And clarity here is: this time, we touch this hard point—not the easy edges.
When internal teams want to succeed, they need to play the outside in posture: a mirror with no sugar-coat, a clock that doesn’t negotiate, and a ritual exit. Friday we hand back the keys; Monday it holds without us. That exit is the cure.
Seedz is neither coaching nor therapy. We hold the mirror, we name, we cut clean, we hand over… and we leave. So Monday can move.
