Every Failing Program Has a Recovery Window

Every failing program has a recovery window. Most executives wait until it’s closed.

▪️March: Something feels off. Not wrong exactly. Just off. You make a mental note.

▪️May: Same three risks have been amber for 12 weeks. The PMO says they’re “being managed.” You tell yourself you’ll circle back after the board paper.

▪️July: You finally commission the diagnostic.

💲September: The report lands. It confirms what you already suspected. The fix will now cost multiples of what it would have in March.

The recovery window isn’t six months.

It’s the first eight weeks.

That’s when you can still fix it with course correction. When the team still believes. When the vendor will actually negotiate. When the benefits case is still achievable.

After that, you’re not correcting. You’re containing.

Here’s what compounds when you wait:

The technical debt gets baked into three more releases.

Your delivery lead quietly starts interviewing elsewhere.

The CFO stops believing your forecast updates.

The business case assumptions drift further from reality every sprint.

The benefits you promised are now physically impossible to deliver on the original timeline.

And the board starts asking different questions.

I ran a diagnostic last year on a $40M program. The CEO said “I should have called you in February.”

It was August.

In February it was a course correction. By August it was a sponsor change and a six month pause.

Every executive tells me the same thing: “I wish we’d done this three months ago.”

They knew something was wrong.

They just kept hoping the next steering committee would show improvement.

Your gut isn’t giving you intuition. It’s giving you data.

It’s reading signals from missed commitments, vague updates, and questions that don’t get straight answers.

The question isn’t whether you need a diagnostic.

The question is whether you’re still inside the window.

How long have you been thinking “we should probably look at this”?

If it’s more than four weeks, you’re burning time you can’t buy back.