Episode 35: How to Fix the Mess You Didn’t Make

Ever find yourself cleaning up chaos you didn’t create? Perhaps you're considering a job or a promotion that will require you to clean up someone else's mess in a department or a company. Or maybe you own your own company and you hired someone who made a royal mess and now you have to clean it up. 

In this episode, we'll examine:

• Five things to do when you're handed a disaster
• Five things NOT to do when you're handed a disaster 

Because leadership isn’t just about vision and ambition — it’s also about knowing how to mop up with grace.

Sara's award-winning biography of Dag can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

Her forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will release globally on July 29, 2026. 

#Leadership #WorkplaceWisdom #DecodingTheUnicorn #CareerGrowth #LeadershipTips #CrisisManagement #EmotionalIntelligence #ProfessionalDevelopment #WorkplaceRecovery #FixTheMess #CalmLeadership #MindfulManagement #BusinessStrategy #DagHammarskjöld 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

In Episode 35 of the Decoding the Unicorn podcast, host Sara Causey discusses strategies for cleaning up a mess at work, whether inheriting a dysfunctional department or taking over a troubled organization. Key points include stabilizing before strategizing, listening without defensiveness, setting a new emotional tone, celebrating small victories, and documenting fixes to prevent future issues. Sara emphasizes the importance of understanding the political landscape, potential loyalists, and the need for honest leadership. She also advises against being fake, scapegoating, rushing trust, overcorrecting, and forgetting to reflect on past mistakes.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Cleaning up mess, dysfunctional department, C-suite level, loyalists, gossip mill, emotional tone, small victories, documenting fixes, toxic positivity, scapegoating, trust, overcorrecting, reflection, mental health.

Welcome to the Decoding the Unicorn podcast. Here's your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, Hello and thanks for tuning in. Welcome to Episode 35 of decoding the unicorn the podcast, I appreciate you joining me today. In this episode, I want to talk about what to do when you have to clean up a mess at work. This could be you've been promoted and you need to clean up a dysfunctional department that you've inherited. It could be that you've been hired from the outside to come in and be a cleanup artist for someone else's mess. Maybe you're at a high level. Perhaps you're coming in at the C suite level to try to clean up an entirely dysfunctional organization. Or maybe you own and operate your own company, and you've made a mishire, and that person has turned your organization into a dumpster fire. So how do you do it? What should you do and what should you not do? Stay tuned.

In the shadow of the Cold War, one man stood alone, Dag Hammarskjold was the world's most unusual diplomat, introspective but unflinching, poetic yet pragmatic. As Secretary General of the United Nations during one of the most volatile eras in modern history, he navigated emergencies like the Suez Canal and the Congo crisis with moral clarity and an iron spine. He made powerful enemies who preferred their wars profitable and their peace keepers obedient. But that wasn't Dag. Ready to go deeper. Pick up your copy of Decoding the Unicorn: A New Look at Dag Hammarskjold today.

This is certainly applicable to dag's life. If you've read decoding the unicorn, then you remember what it was like when dag came into the UN taking over for tryggve Lee, the first Secretary General for the UN was quite different in temperament from DAG. Tree was a member of the tennis club and the country club, and he had a manor house, a mansion on Long Island. He liked to talk to the press. He liked to schmooze. And dag found that indiscreet, he felt like a diplomat shouldn't always broadcast every conversation that they're having. You go to the public when you have some kind of result to report, but you don't talk about every little thing, especially if the other party told you something in confidence. You don't take a secret and then put it on blast to the world's media. Whenever you are coming into an organization after somebody else, you just always want to remember that there exists the possibility of loyalists remaining in place. Anybody can get in a staff meeting and tell you anything that they think you want to hear, especially if they think their job is on the line, they may not say, Well, I don't really like you and your plan. I liked the other guy. I want to go back to the status quo. I want to go back to the way that things were. Fortunately, in DAGs case, most people got on board with what he wanted to do, and they saw his vision. They understood that dag was trying to take things to the next level, but there was still pockets here and there of loyalists who really supported trigvi, and trigvi had gone around before dag ever even showed up and spread rumors and told lies and got the gossip mill churning. So there was this environment of if he's going to take over for me, and I'm going to get bullied out by the Soviets and forced out of this position against my will, then I'm not exactly going to leave a hospitable environment for the next person. This is something else that you want to factor in. So if you're a job seeker and somebody is telling you, we want you to come in from the outside and clean up a dysfunctional team or clean up a dysfunctional organization. That's something else to think about. What kind of seeds of dissent, what kind of gossip mill could be going before you ever even take the job. Because, as I said, people that are loyal to the old way, people that are loyal to the old manager, they're not going to tell you, most likely they're going to paste a fake smile on and act like everything's great, and then they could be doing something to subvert you behind your back. So these are things that you want to go in with a clear head. And if it's something that you decide to do in your career, you want to have as much information, as much realism about the situation as possible. Don't go in like Pollyanna. Don't go in with rose colored glasses, you need to understand exactly what kind of a storm you're walking into. This happened to me in my own career. I was negotiating with some people that owned a business, and they had told me that they had gotten to a certain point in their revenue. And they just got stuck there. Whatever they did, it was like they couldn't level up. They wanted to break through. They wanted to double and then triple and quadruple and so forth their revenue. But they were just stuck. And it was clear to me some, sometimes it's like the old cliche, you can't see the forest for the trees. Sometimes, when you're in the thick of a situation, you just don't see it. In terms of writing and editing. That's one reason why we need good editors and proofreaders, because as a writer, I know what I meant to say, I know the idea that I was trying to convey, but a reader might not, or I might have become blind, essentially, to a particular error. There may be a comma splice on page eight and I just don't see it, or there may be a typo on page 12 and I'm just not aware of it because my brain fills in the gaps that can also happen in the business world. People may say, Well, I just feel stuck, and I don't know why we can't level up. And then you may look at it as an outside party with a more neutral perspective and say, Well, it's a, b, c and d is what's going on, and that's essentially what happened. So I was brought in as a person on the outside to come in in either a general manager or an operations manager role and whip things into shape, clean it up, wake it up, shake it up, and get their revenue moving in the right direction. And the thing of it is, I really and truly believe that the people were sincere. And I think that at the time of the interview, when they were telling me their vision for the future, I think they were serious. I think in their conscious mind, they really meant what they were saying. I think unconsciously or subconsciously, they didn't. I think that part of their mind wanted to fight against change like crazy, and that's what it became, a fight tooth and nail. No matter what I did, they didn't want to implement it. I was a manager in name only. I was a manager in theory, but not in practice. They didn't really want me to do any hiring or firing. They didn't want me to do any kind of disciplinary action or put anybody on a an improvement plan and say, if you don't start hitting your metrics, here's what's going to happen. They didn't want any of that. So they had allowed, in my opinion, a number of poor performers to stay on staff, people that would just hang out and talk. They were using the office as a place to gossip and hang out. They weren't working most of the time, in my observation, but ownership didn't want to make any changes, so I was like at odds with them for about four and a half months before I resigned and moved on to another position in another company, because it was an exercise in futility. So that's another thing that I will add. In the same way that you want to consider exactly, what are you walking into? Will there be loyalists, loyalists to the old system, loyalists to the old manager left behind? Are there people that will smile to your face and stab you in the back? Is ownership really bought in to what you're doing? Are they really willing to change the status quo? Are you going to be the lone voice in the desert? Are you going to be Noah trying to build the ark while everybody else around you is mocking you and being rude and crazy and weird. Is that worth it? Some people would say yes, but this is something that you have to consider, because your mental health and well being may say no, maybe my pocketbook says it might be worth it if I'm paid enough, but my mental health may tell me no, it's not worth it to do this. It's all well and good to think about all of the changes that you're going to implement. I had plenty of great ideas, and I didn't get to put any of them into real fruition. And that can be so maddening, so incredibly maddening. So I want to talk first about five things to do, or to at least consider when you're tasked with cleaning up a mess at work. Now I always say, Here's my standard disclaimer on any of my podcasts, I don't give you advice and I don't tell you what to do. I sit here and I opine for your entertainment only, and that's it. You know what your career is like. You know what your temperament is like, what you're willing to put up with and what you're not willing to put up with. So consider this information to potentially use for your decision making. Number one, look at stability before you start in with your grandiose plans and your strategies. Stabilize. If we want to make it a little bit rhyming, we could say stabilize before you strategize. So the biggest thing that you're going to do at the very beginning is not to launch your grand plan. That that is the main temptation. Because when we are fixers, when we're doers, we want to start doing. Hmm, but the the first thing walking through the door is not to start launching your grand master plan. You have to look at triage, assess what's broken, who's hurting, what's urgent, get your bearings about you before you start making big moves. You can't rebuild a house. If the house is on fire, you have to put the fire out first.

Number two, cultivate the ability to listen without getting defensive. This is something that dag was a master at. He was really able to put his ego in second place and say, whatever I'm doing in this negotiation, whatever I'm doing in the name of diplomacy or peace is more important than whatever somebody is jibber jabbering about me, if somebody's gossiping, if somebody's being a back biter, I'm just going to let that go. It's not that he wasn't human and it didn't affect him. Of course it did. It was a matter of, I'm not going to get down in the gutter with somebody because I have a job to do. So figure out a way for you to listen without hopping to the defense. And if you've inherited dysfunction from somebody else, you may have team members or employees beneath you that are frustrated, cynical, mad, etc, let them vent. Listen more than you speak, and start looking at patterns of behavior and pain points, because it may very well be that even though it sounds like somebody is in your office kvetching to you, it may be that they're giving you good information that you need to solve a problem or to remove a bottleneck. Number three set a new emotional tone. Whether you're coming in to lead a department or whether you are the founder of the company and you've hired the wrong person at a high level, people will mirror your energy. So if you're steady, calm, respectful and clear, they too, can start to recalibrate. Now, I'm not going to tell you that's a magic wand, as I said earlier in this episode. It could be that you're inheriting some loyalists and some people that want the status quo. They want the way that the last person did it, and they're not willing to recalibrate. And at that point, you have to decide who belongs here, and who doesn't if you have the authority to do so. We also talked about that earlier in the episode. If you are a manager in name only, and you cannot hire and fire, you're going to be in for a bumpy ride.

Number four, celebrate and communicate the small victories when morale is low, a big win, a huge contract, something coming in that's like a Hail Mary pass that can feel abstract or distant. So don't forget to keep yourself motivated and to keep those around you motivated, celebrate small things that show progress, even if it feels like the progress is happening in inches, that's better than nothing. A customer gave a great report. We got an awesome review on Google reviews. Somebody shared our post on Facebook and said how much our product changed their life. I mean anything, basically anything at that point that you can cling to that shows positivity is worth celebrating. It's worth mentioning to the team or to the company number five, document and institutionalize the fix. And what I mean by this is, once you have some kind of crisis containment, make some guard rails so that it doesn't happen again. Do you have standard operating procedures, checklists, clear job descriptions, clear hiring protocols? You in the future will thank you in the present for doing this paperwork, for putting the structure together. And here's the way that I would really drive that point home. More coming in as the cleanup person or the fixer is a noble job, but preventing the need for that in the future, that's where the real genius lies. Now, I want to think about five things to avoid if you're coming in from the outside, or if you own and operate the company and you realize that somebody at a high level has turned things into a train wreck inside your own company. What should you not do? Or what should you consider not doing? Number one, don't be fake. Don't pretend that everything's fine. It's like that meme of the dog sitting in a room and he's like, this is fine. Everything's fine, but everything is on fire. Toxic positivity will alienate people. You need to acknowledge reality honestly, but don't become Chicken Little about it, either. Problems are solvable. To say we have problems, we've had some dysfunction. Hmm, is just being honest. That's that's honest leadership. Whereas saying everything's fine, we're fine. Don't worry about it. Go sit down. That's delusional, and it's also dismissive. Number two, don't scapegoat, even if there was one singular person that caused all the problems. You don't have to get into the public blame game, especially on social media and being tacky online, it keeps your energy and your focus stuck in the past. If you do that, plus, it's just not a good look. Focus on systems, focus on the job at hand and the business, not on trying to make villains. Accountability doesn't require humiliating other people or pointing the finger. Number three, don't rush people into trusting you. You can't force people to get over something. You can't force people to embrace you as the new guy or the new gal. Trust is earned and it's also returned to you in a more quiet manner, usually be consistent. Let people see who you really are and that you're worthy of their trust. Number four, don't over correct sometimes after a crisis, leaders go way too far in the opposite direction. So if, for example, a team was in a loosey, goosey structure. Maybe they had an absentee landlord, type of manager who never paid attention to them, didn't care what they did. Then typically, the next person that comes in is a micro manager. They want a helicopter over everybody, and then that repels people as well. You're going to have the opposite set of problems if you do that, so you don't want to over manage overspend or over promise, take a deep breath and figure out what is a sensible middle ground here. A pendulum can't heal a wound. So if you're going way too far to the left, way too far to the right, I'm not supervising people at all, and it's a free for all, or I'm a micro manager who's a complete authoritarian tyrant. You're going to you ruin the environment. Good people will leave. They're not going to put up with either of those scenarios. Number five, don't forget to reflect, because every cleanup job reveals something about your own boundaries, your instincts, your blind spots. Whenever you're looking at what happened, where things went wrong before, even if you weren't there, you're coming in from the outside, and it had nothing to do with you, you still want to do a sort of autopsy on it and figure out where things went wrong, not to try to punish or villainize somebody or gossip about them, but just to figure out where did the train leave the tracks, so that I don't duplicate those mistakes when I'm coming in. If you are in this type of situation where you're thinking about taking a job or you're thinking about taking a promotion that will involve cleaning up a dysfunctional company, dysfunctional team, dysfunctional department, etc. You just want to have your eyes clear. You want to have your mind sharp. It's like in sales, when people talk about having happy ears, they're on the phone with somebody and they're only hearing what they want to hear. You want to be really careful with that. Whether you're talking to HR, a third party recruiter or people within the company, typically, in the interview process, people are not always going to show you all of the warts. They're just not. So think about whether it's something you really want to do, where you it's like a vocation, almost, where you feel called. You feel like this is something that I was meant to do to help these people. Because if it's not, you may find yourself burned out. You may find yourself fighting a massive uphill battle where you feel like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill, only to have it roll right back over you night after night. Just some food for thought. Take good care of yourself, and I will see you in the next episode.

Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others. We'll see you next time you.