In this article, we provide a grounded narrative of capacity building in the turnaround equation by exploring the turnaround literature outside of education and applying it to troubled schools. Our analysis is based upon reviews of: (1) 14 comprehensive, historical volumes that examine the turnaround phenomenon; (2) 16 book-length analyses of turnaround in a single organization or a specific industry; (3) articles attending to theory building in this emerging area of scholarship; and (4) a plethora of empirical studies examining turnaround in a variety of different (non-educational) contexts. We organize findings on capacity building in turnarounds into the following broad categories: (1) rallying and mobilizing people (motivating people, building, morale, and communicating openly); (2) growing people (empowering people, building teams, and developing people); and (3) creating a productive culture. We close by teasing out important lessons from the turnaround literature in the non-education sector to capacity building in troubled schools.
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