I had recently joined a new company as a manager, stepping into a role left by a predecessor with whom the client was highly dissatisfied. The client's targets were consistently being missed, and they were threatening to withdraw their business entirely. Such a loss would have triggered mass layoffs, including my own position.
I had left a relaxed work environment at my previous company solely for a higher salary, and now I deeply regretted that decision. To make matters worse, the team included several tenured engineers who had been passed over for promotion, and they were disappointed that an external manager had been brought in over them. Their body language made their unhappiness immediately clear. It was an incredibly difficult situation: the client was angry, the team was hostile, and all of our jobs were on the line.
The Change
I knew I had to save my job along with my team members' jobs, so I made an action plan for myself. The first priority was improving my relationship with my team, so that they could share their problems with me and we could work together to save our jobs.
"When trust is broken, listen first — the fixes become clear once people feel heard."
I started having one-on-ones with my team to understand their problems, and I took them for a team dinner after our shift so they could open up and feel comfortable with me. Alongside this, I closely reviewed the client's targets, which seemed quite achievable if we paid attention and everyone worked together.
I made a scorecard to measure everyone's performance so we could understand who was underperforming and what their areas of improvement were, and I started working with them on those grey areas. I also had a call with the client. He turned out to be a genuine person, and all his concerns were valid. He told me how he had been patient but hadn't seen any improvement, and that his company was suffering business losses because of it. I assured him that all his concerns would be addressed and informed him that I had made an action plan and had already started working on it.
From there, I started having daily calls with the team. We discussed the client targets every single day, going over which targets were missed that day and what we could have done to prevent it.
After implementing the action plan, we saw improvements in the very first month, and after three months, all the client-given targets were achieved. The client sent an appreciation note for me to my manager, and I was given a bonus for achieving operational excellence in just three months.
