I lead turnarounds in behavioral health — and I think in systems.

For twenty-five years I ran community behavioral-health systems through insolvency, compliance failure, and the kind of trouble that gets a board's attention. I don't do it as a permanent CEO anymore. I come in as a fractional or interim leader, diagnose what's actually wrong, and either lead the turnaround or tell you honestly that it can't be built on the structure you have.

This site is how I think, what I've built, and what the losses taught me as much as the wins.

How I think

I read a system through four co-equal lenses — financial health, compliance, quality of care, and stakeholder trust — and I treat them as faces of one cube: move a single face and the others shift, so no fix in one comes free. Before I commit to a turnaround, I diagnose one thing first — whether the system can unify around a single plan, and whether the board has the authority to own it. That read tells me whether what's in front of me is a turnaround or a holding action.

You don't have to take my word for how I work. You can think alongside it.

The work, and what it cost

The long version of the method — across three systems, two won and one lost — is in Rubik's Cubes and Community Health.

Turnarounds are not gentle work. I've made calls that closed programs, cut costs, and left people angry — and some of that is findable, with my name on it. I don't relitigate any of it. I won most of those fights and I lost one, and the loss taught me more about my own method than the wins did. I'd rather a board hear the hard truth early than pay to discover it late.

Work with me

If your board or your system is facing the hard version of this, here's how I work and how to start.