Lessons from Rebuilding a Legacy Business

After my six months at Pepsi, I was offered a permanent role but it was experimental and I didn’t think that it was the right fit for me. Before I left, I was offered five jobs and I didn’t apply for one. You never know who is paying attention, when you operate in excellence, people will notice.

 The next role I chose was a legacy business, well known, widely used, but in need of modernization. I was responsible for restructuring the distribution model, managing all partnerships, from customers to major events and rebranding the business to reflect where it was going, not just where it had been.

This role required commercial rigor, operational clarity, and the courage to disrupt “the way things had always been done.”

I believed the role would focus primarily on sales growth, customer relationships and brand refresh. I believed this role would be primarily about commercial strategy, operational efficiency, relationship management and driving growth through structure. I underestimated how much it would have stretched me.

I was responsible for restructuring the distribution model, managing all partnerships—from key customers to major events—and rebranding the business to support long-term growth. This was a legacy organization that needed modernization, discipline, and clarity.

What I didn’t expect was that some of my most defining leadership lessons would come not from the market, but from internal leadership dysfunction. I assumed alignment at the executive level was a given. It wasn’t. What I learned, quickly and painfully, is that title does not equal leadership maturity.

During my tenure, another senior executive, on the same level as me, fired one of my direct subordinates without consulting me. She repeatedly tried to undermine my authority with my team and was publicly disrespectful in ways that eroded trust and morale.

The issue wasn’t disagreement. It was disregard.

This experience taught me that disrespect at the top destabilizes entire organizations, public undermining creates private confusion, authority without accountability breeds fear, not performance and silence in the face of disrespect is costly—but so is reaction without wisdom.

I learned that leadership is tested most when power is misused, not when things are easy.

This season stretched me beyond strategy into self-leadership at the highest level. I had to learn:

• Boundary leadership – knowing when to address, escalate, or disengage

• Emotional regulation – staying composed under provocation

• Values-based leadership – choosing integrity over ego

• Discernment – understanding when systems cannot fix character

I learned that protecting your team sometimes means protecting your own authority. For me it was calmly, clearly, and without apology.

This experience deeply informs how I now coach leaders to recognize disrespect early and not normalize it, teach that psychological safety is a leadership responsibility, help executives lead through conflict without losing themselves and remind high-capacity women that being professional does not mean being silent.

Most importantly, it taught me that you can rebuild systems, restructure businesses, and rebrand organizations, but you cannot outwork poor leadership behavior above you.

Where are you being asked to tolerate behavior that quietly contradicts the values you are responsible for upholding?