The red programme
you just inherited.
You’ve been handed a programme that’s already red. Multiple vendors, an SKI framework agreement that locks you in, a steering committee that meets monthly to watch it get worse, and a board that reads about it in Version2 before it hears it from you. Here is exactly how I’d take the first 90 days.
What red actually looks like.
- Time, cost and scope have all blown past what anyone will admit out loud.
- The SteerCo reviews the same amber slide every month; nothing moves.
- Vendors have read the contract more carefully than you have.
- Everyone is busy. No one is deciding.
- The real conversation about the programme happens in the car park, not the meeting.
- Someone already owns the failure — and they’re still in the room.
Not sure how red yours really is? Take the 2-minute check · or see what the delay is costing you →
Control → Stabilise → Correct.
A turnaround isn’t a Gantt chart — it’s a sequence of decisions made in the right order, against people who don’t all want the programme to succeed. Click through each phase: what I do, the political reality nobody writes down, and the tools I reach for. This is my Control · Stabilise · Correct method in motion.
Control
Get the truth. Decide honestly whether it can be saved.
What I do
- Run a fast, diplomatic assessment — the real scope of the mess, not the reported one.
- Find the root causes: unclear decision rights, diluted accountability, slow escalation.
- Map two org charts — who’s accountable, and who actually decides.
- Say the unsayable early: recoverable, or should it be stopped?
The political read
- Someone owns this red status. They’ll help you in the meeting and undermine you in the corridor.
- The board wants a scapegoat almost as much as a solution — don’t become it.
- The vendor is already positioning the contract as your problem, not theirs.
Stabilise
Re-establish decision rights. Get a recovery plan the board will sign.
What I do
- Rebuild the governance: clear decision rights, real accountability, fast escalation.
- Make the unpopular calls — descope, re-sequence, reset the delivery baseline.
- Reset vendor governance against the framework agreement — obligations, not goodwill.
- Produce a recovery plan that survives both a steering committee and a board.
The political read
- Make the hard calls before the politics makes them for you.
- The people who benefit from vagueness will fight a plan with named owners and dates.
- Reset the vendor relationship now — the honeymoon is the only leverage you get.
Correct
Deliver a visible win. Rebuild trust with reporting the politics can’t argue with.
What I do
- Land one visible early win to prove the programme can move again.
- Re-sync the teams — SAFe cadence where multiple workstreams have drifted apart.
- Reconnect governance to delivery so it stops being theatre.
- Report honestly, on cadence, in front of the people who’d rather it stayed vague.
The political read
- The one thing the politics can’t argue with is a delivered result and an honest number.
- A visible win converts the fence-sitters faster than any status deck.
- Transparent reporting quietly removes the cover that failure was hiding under.
Bending a red programme back to green.
Illustrative — the shape of a turnaround, not figures from any engagement. The decline halts in Control, the line lifts through Stabilise, and Correct carries it into delivery.
A programme that was heading for the Rigsrevisionen shelf, restructured and delivered instead — governance rebuilt, timeline recovered, and a board that trusts the reporting again. That’s the signature: not a rescue plan, a rescue.
Not your situation? Try another.
Got a programme that’s gone quiet at the top?
If it’s red, stalled, or a compliance date has already slipped, I can help. Interim or freelance, via broker or direct. References from previous clients available on request.
Discuss an assignment →