From a 1975 county home rule charter to the Veno Plan in Scranton to the Harrisburg school recovery: five decades of lessons on moving organizations from impasse to action.
Since 1975, organizations facing impasse have turned to me to forge a new path forward. School districts near bankruptcy. County governments built for another century. Professions fractured by infighting. Industries without safety standards. Different crises, but the same underlying question: how do you move people who are stuck?
Here is what five decades of turnaround work has taught me.
1. Structure first, personalities second
In 1975, I was elected chairman of the Lackawanna County Home Rule Government Study Commission. Our charge was not to fix the people in county government — it was to examine the structure itself and recommend something better. We delivered a final report with a recommended home rule charter, a new framework for how the county would govern itself. That experience taught me a lesson I have carried
ever since: when an organization is stuck, the problem is rarely just the people. It is the structure they are trapped in. Change the structure, and the people can change with it.
2. The first turnaround: the Veno Plan
From 1977 to 1983, I served on the Scranton School District board, and I authored what became known as the Veno Plan — an early effort to put a struggling district’s finances and governance back on solid ground. It was the same work I would do decades later in Harrisburg: diagnose the real problem, build a coalition around an honest plan, and hold the line until the numbers told a new story. The Veno Plan taught me that turnaround principles do not change with the decade — only the size of the spreadsheet does.
3. Diagnose before you prescribe
Every struggling organization arrives with a story about what’s wrong — and the story is usually incomplete. When I was named Chief Recovery Officer of the Harrisburg School District, the narrative was simple: no money. The reality was more complex: structural deficits, eroding confidence, and a governance culture that couldn’t make hard decisions. Until you understand the real disease, every treatment is a guess.
4. Build the coalition before you need it
Turnarounds fail when they’re imposed; they succeed when they’re owned. My recovery plan for Harrisburg passed 9–0 — unanimous — because the board, the administration, and the community were brought into the process early. That vote wasn’t luck. It was the product of months of listening, explaining, and giving stakeholders a genuine stake in the outcome. Unanimity is a lagging indicator of trust.
5. Legitimacy is a strategy
When I led the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress, the profession was fighting for recognition it deserved but couldn’t command. Legitimacy doesn’t come from asserting it — it comes from demonstrating it: credible research, professional standards, consistent public communication. The same principle applied to public insurance adjusters, where establishing nationwide safety measures gave the profession standing it had never had. If people don’t take you seriously, figure out why before demanding that they do.
6. Numbers tell the story, but people write the ending
Financial reorganization is arithmetic — cut here, restructure there, project forward. But the arithmetic only works if people believe in it. The Harrisburg district earned an S&P “A” rating not just because the math improved, but because the rating agencies, the state, and the community believed the turnaround was real and durable. Credibility is the multiplier on every spreadsheet.
7. Know when the mission is done
The hardest part of turnaround work is leaving. An outside catalyst who stays too long becomes part of the furniture — or part of the problem. My job has always been to make myself unnecessary: to leave behind systems, leadership, and confidence that outlast my engagement.
The common thread
Whether it’s a school district, a county government, a profession, or an industry, impasse is never really about the surface problem. It’s about trust that broke down, decisions that got deferred, and stories people told themselves about why change was impossible. The work is always the same: rebuild trust, make the hard decisions, and prove — with results — that a new path was there all along.