A year and a half into the Myers-Smith turnaround, board members, executives, employees, Wall Street analysts, previously peeved shareholders and the turnaround team itself are optimistic. Waste Management's stock, which was teetering around US$16 when Myers and Smith came aboard in late 1999, had jumped to US$30 by the end of June 2001. And the company, which lost a total of US$2.1 billion from 1997 to 1999, posted profits of US$124 million in the first quarter of 2001.

"Customer satisfaction is up, the stock price has doubled, and the company has created over US$6 billion in shareholder value in the last year," says Pastora San Juan Caf-ferty, a professor at the University of Chi-cago and a Waste board member since 1994.

Bottom-line benefits of the new IT systems should become evident in the second half of 2001, according to analysts. "But long-term productivity potential in terms of profit enhancement and cost-cutting, which is tied to these new systems, will take some time to see," says Tom Ford, senior analyst at Lehman Brothers in New York City.

"The management team is doing a great job of turning this company around," says Jaimi Goodfriend, an analyst at First Analysis Securities in Chicago. "They're taking their time in doing so, but we'd prefer that time be taken for a company this size."

As for the future of the turnaround team, it appears that Waste Management will be the last stop on the magical turnaround tour.

"I'm an old guy. I'll be here as long as I'm needed," says Myers.

"I'm not young anymore," echoes Smith, who plans to retire in three years to dust off the plan he put on hold when Myers called about Waste: play a little golf, do some traveling. "What we've told people here is we're trying to build a foundation rather than build the ultimate system." Smith says. But that foundation has already made a difference.

"A year ago I went to this bankers meeting," says Smith, "and they were all anxious because they knew that the systems were broken and wanted to know what we were doing to fix them. I told them what we were going to do. But it was like sitting on the edge of the bed telling them how great it's going to be. There's not much credibility there. This year I went to the same meeting and said here's what we've done, and we blew them away."

Senior Writer Stephanie Overby writes frequently on IT leadership. She can be reached via e-mail at soverby@ cio.com.

THE 7-POINT PATH TO TURNAROUND ENLIGHTENMENT.

1. Get out of the office.

2. Stop the bleeding.

3. Find your biggest problem and fix it pronto.

4. Conduct customer surveys.

5. Find out where the profits are.

6. Talk the talk.

7. Base IT investments on ROI.