In a turnaround, a leader's most critical first step is restructuring their direct reports. McLaren's CEO replaced every key leader—CFO, HR, commercial, etc.—to create a unified group that could then drive cultural change down through their own departments.

Verizon's CEO Dan Schulman rejects sugarcoating bad news. He believes employees are adults who already sense problems and are waiting for leadership to acknowledge reality. His approach is to state the unvarnished truth—for example, "we are losing"—to build the credibility needed to lead a difficult transformation.

Successful culture change doesn't start with an announcement or a new mission statement. It begins when a leader takes a decisive action that is inconsistent with the old culture. These actions organically generate authentic stories that employees share, which in turn shifts the organization's narrative and values.

A high-intensity, disruptive turnaround environment isn't for everyone, and leaders shouldn't pretend it is. Verizon's CEO embraces this polarization, stating that the intense focus on winning is "heaven" for some but "hell" for others. This clarity attracts the right talent and naturally filters out those who won't thrive.

To make customer-centricity tangible, Verizon's CEO implemented a simple, humanizing internal initiative. This framing shifts the employee mindset from abstract accounts to individual people, prompting actions like simplifying plans and treating customers with the care one would give a family member, making the abstract goal concrete.

AT&T's CEO argues that shifting strategy is straightforward: communicate the rationale, set objectives, and align incentives. True cultural change is far slower and harder, requiring new values to be constantly reinforced in every single talent process—from recruiting and promotions to performance feedback. It's a "drip of water every day."

Zak Brown's first move at the struggling McLaren F1 team was to overhaul the leadership team, bringing in fresh blood to create alignment before tackling technical or commercial issues. This established a new, winning culture from the top down.

For a culture shift to be successful, the leader must be the protagonist of the initial stories. They must personally take actions that break with the past and model the new desired behaviors. The research showed zero examples of successful, large-scale culture change that started from the bottom up.

To fix a failing company's broken defaults, changes must be abrupt and aggressive. Gradual 'change management' fails because it doesn't create the necessary shock to the system or repel misaligned employees who are part of the problem.