When organizations face declining performance, the instinct is often to focus on cuts, restructures, and cost controls. William Sullivan, President of Iothic Ltd. and a technology executive who has led business units at companies including IBM, Oracle, SAP, Amazon Web Services, and Infor, sees the challenge differently. For Sullivan, successful division turnaround begins with something less tangible but far more important: credibility. “It all starts with a clear understanding of who are you, why you’re there, and what you’re hoping to accomplish,” he says. Without that foundation, employees lose faith in leadership, strategy, and ultimately the possibility of recovery itself.
That perspective has shaped Sullivan’s approach to leadership transformation across organizations ranging from early-stage companies to global enterprises. Sustainable performance acceleration, he says, comes from building confidence, diagnosing root causes, and executing a disciplined plan that aligns people, processes, and market strategy.
Why Most Turnarounds Misdiagnose the Problem
One of the biggest obstacles to a successful division turnaround is the tendency to focus on symptoms rather than causes. Poor sales performance, for example, is often treated as the primary problem. Sullivan argues it is usually the result of deeper operational issues.
“Sales is a lagging indicator on the performance of an organization,” he says. When a business unit underperforms, the causes frequently extend beyond the sales team. That is why Sullivan’s first priority is building organizational confidence. When teams believe a turnaround is possible, internal politics begin to fade. Departments stop protecting themselves and start collaborating around shared goals. The result is greater transparency, which makes operational restructuring far more effective.
Building Confidence Before Driving Change
“The first thing I seek to build is confidence in the fact that a turnaround is possible,” he says. That confidence becomes the foundation for execution discipline. Once teams align around a common objective, leaders can evaluate organizational performance more accurately and determine where intervention will generate the greatest impact.
Sullivan relies heavily on empirical analysis rather than assumptions. Instead of evaluating leaders based solely on recent results, he examines performance over a two-year period. “There are people that are probably in the organization that have been there a while, that have contributed, that have lost the faith,” he says.
This broader perspective helps distinguish disengagement caused by organizational dysfunction from genuine underperformance. It also prevents companies from losing high-potential contributors who may have become discouraged by years of stagnation. The process extends beyond individual evaluations. Departments themselves must be assessed and prioritized. Understanding which functions are creating bottlenecks allows leaders to sequence interventions effectively, increasing team velocity and accelerating results.
The Consultative Selling Model That Drives Revenue Recovery
A critical component of Sullivan’s turnaround framework involves redefining how organizations engage customers. He describes four levels of sales methodology, ranging from transactional selling to strategic business partnerships. The highest level, and the one most capable of driving revenue acceleration through operational redesign, focuses on helping two organizations achieve outcomes neither could accomplish independently.
“How do I bring the strengths of these two companies together to accomplish something neither could do by themselves?” For organizations pursuing government and corporate market expansion strategies, this shift can be transformative. Rather than selling technology based on specifications, teams engage customers around business outcomes such as increasing growth, reducing supply chain costs, or improving operational efficiency.
Applying AI Without Losing Control
As leaders pursue a 90-day turnaround for struggling business units, many are looking to artificial intelligence (AI) as a catalyst for change. “The first thing is to understand what AI is and what it is not,” he says, advocating a targeted approach that identifies specific areas where AI can improve performance, whether in logistics, enterprise resource planning, personnel management, or operational workflows.
Equally important is maintaining human oversight. Even experienced developers and business leaders can overlook errors generated through AI-assisted processes. At scale, those mistakes can become costly. Building high-performance operations fast requires balancing innovation with accountability. AI can accelerate execution, but leaders must ensure knowledgeable teams remain responsible for validating outputs and managing risk.
Turning Performance Around in 90 Days
Transforming division performance in quarters requires more than decisive action. It demands clarity of purpose, disciplined execution, and a willingness to challenge assumptions about what is actually causing underperformance. Sullivan’s approach combines operational restructuring, leadership transformation, consultative selling, and careful technology adoption into a framework designed for measurable results.
The goal is to create momentum that restores confidence, accelerates growth, and positions organizations for long-term success. From stalled programs to rapid results, the leaders who succeed are often those who spend less time searching for someone to blame and more time building the conditions that allow performance to improve.
Follow William Sullivan on LinkedIn or visit his website. Readers can also gain deeper insights from his book, “It Used to Be Fun: A Software Executive’s Experience as a Federal Whistleblower.“
