Spot the Fake — The Real Work Behind Corporate Turnarounds & Restructuring
Last Updated on 18 November 2025 at 16:07
Corporate culture is built around the idea that visibility is key to success — and it promotes people who can articulate visions over those who can achieve them. Emotional showmanship is the way — nor logic or data. This concept is especially true in flashy sectors such as venture capital, consulting, marketing, and media.
Showman performers who oversell themselves with confidence dominate the spotlight. Such entertainers thrive on networking alone, talk about “transformation” and “agile” as part of the club and have a track record — but with “strategically abandoned” initiatives. Read: spectacular failures to the point of corporate-buried projects. Behind every turnaround mandate sits an operating model that has not been restructured; the symptoms were treated but the cadence, ownership and interfaces remained unchanged. This is where authentic operational restructuring differs sharply from cosmetic fixes. For organisations requiring the real intervention, the Operational Restructuring Consulting service and its glossary definition outline the governed architecture of a turnaround that holds.
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Why Showmen always Win the First Round ?
In a crisis, companies panic — and the board of directors even more.
They often stop thinking rationally and start looking for saviours — preferably the visible kind. After all, anyone showing up at every networking event with copy-paste decks and hundreds of AI-generated LinkedIn humblebrags must be a very important and knowledgeable person. Right ?
Besides, the board and leadership team often overlook the need for a methodical rebuild and are desperate for the illusion of quick certainty. Moreover, a consulting misconception relies on the belief that distressed companies always need magical strategies and 180-degree changes. The showman-saviour knows how to present such visions — at least in buzzwords.
This is where the disconnect happens — executive teams are looking for visionary storytellers to “save the day” and cover themselves. At the same time, the real work requires someone with hands deep into the operations, making hard decisions, and executing disciplined strategies.
Companies regularly fall for slick showmen because they confuse leadership motion and visibility for company progress.
Businesses are paying a heavy price for such misconceptions. Investors and/or the board of directors realize their error when it is too late — at the precise point when the “visionary showmen” have all burned through the budget with a golden parachute and disappeared in a cloud of excuses. Those “accomplished leaders” will continue building their brand and repeating the same show elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the operational restructuring people are kept in the shadows to clean up the mess and quietly calculate what needs to be done. Such operational people are buried from early morning to late night in complex spreadsheets, renegotiating supplier contracts, stabilizing cash flow, discovering markets for new products, and fixing operational inefficiencies.
The Quiet Wins
Within most companies, impostors often rise to the top, while genuine contributors burn out or quietly leave. That is why one of the most sensitive tasks during a restructuring or turnaround is subtly elevating the “value producers” while weeding out the fakes. Both “quick wins” and “quiet wins” are necessary.
Indeed, companies that survive and thrive through crises recognize discretion over show, substance over style, processes over promises, and execution over eloquence.
Here are a few situations and approaches.
1. Stress-Test the Turnaround Plan(s).
One of the biggest issues with showmen people is that their plans look great on paper but rarely withstand scrutiny.
Does the person or the team proposing the solution understand the details ? Can they explain how it will be executed operationally ? For how long ? Tear the plan apart before any major resources are committed. Quickly create an internal task force within the distressed company — led by true experts who deeply understand the market and operations.
2. Create a Culture of Accountability.
Do not buy a vision without execution because turnarounds and/or restructurings are not about promises but results. So, hold leadership accountable.
If someone says they can turn things around in 90 days, it’s ok— and start tracking progress on day one. Showmen avoid accountability by speaking in broad, strategic terms. Don’t let them run free, but break their ideas down to a granular level, turn on KPIs, and see if they have the know-how to back them and deliver.
3. Resist Flamboyant Strategies.
Showmen arrive with a sense of superiority and impressive speeches that promise full transformation.
In turnaround and/or restructuring, a company should embrace the boring. It is mainly about auditing financials, renegotiating leases, and cutting back on non-essential spending and useless positions. For example, many companies can effortlessly cut spending by 40% and become genuinely agile — valuable work that lacks the glamour of Steve Jobs’ or Elon Musk’s industry-shaking moves.
The work that saves companies is not ostentatious nor attention-seeking.
4. Run the “Bullshit Audit” and Exclude the Fakers.
Showmen are good at talking but much less when it is about delivery. So make the invisible visible.
Create an internal system that forces them to outline specific deliverables and useful KPIs — with timelines. Then, audit ruthlessly. If they miss, there are consequences and no promotions. Think of it like an internal scoreboard. The people delivering results become visible without having to shout about it — and it is a nice win-win feature in such complex situations.
5. Focus on Execution.
Weekly operational reviews — where execution is the only thing that matters — are essential. Who is delivering ? What is actually getting done ? What roadblocks are in place ?
Break every strategy into executable steps and ensure the person who proposed the solution is responsible for delivering it. Force the conversation to focus on measurable outcomes. Visionary BS and a 5-year plan have no place in a crisis. Results delivered do.
In summary, the key to success is to shift the reward system to recognize and celebrate teams and individuals who lay the groundwork for sustainable transformation. Such an approach ensures the company’s recovery is built on solid foundations.
Turnaround and/or restructuring are about discreet execution, not theatre.
Elena Debbaut is a strategic execution expert to boards and executive teams. She leads and advises on complex transformations when governance barriers, internal politics, or structural fragmentation prevent organizations from executing critical decisions.
Specialities:
• governance-constrained transformation
• operational restructuring
• strategic recovery & execution