During a period of corporate ownership that prioritized cost-cutting, CPK's culture eroded. The turning point was realizing employees no longer believed in the brand. The recovery strategy prioritized restoring internal credibility, believing a committed team was the foundation for the entire customer experience.

At a crisis-ridden Reddit, investors wanted Katelin Holloway to “add process.” She realized the core issue was a broken social contract among employees. Her first priority was restoring trust and a shared identity, which then enabled high-leverage process and systems work.

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.

Dan Schulman prioritized fixing Verizon's risk-averse, hierarchical, and inwardly-focused culture as the first step in its turnaround. He believed that fostering a "play to win" mindset was the necessary foundation before any strategic or operational changes could succeed, moving the focus from the network to the customer.

Legacy companies often rely on vanity metrics that mask real problems like declining customer satisfaction. The first step in a turnaround is to force leaders to confront external truths and collectively build a new, customer-centric vision.

When hypergrowth causes you to fail internal stakeholders (like Operations), apologies are insufficient. Rebuild trust by going to the CEO and board *together* with the slighted team to advocate for a drastic roadmap pivot that prioritizes their needs, demonstrating true commitment to their success.

During Ørsted's crisis, the new CEO focused on four key areas: establishing a new strategic direction, forming a new team, ensuring the biggest capital allocation decisions were correct, and resetting communication both internally and externally to rebuild trust.

To fix a struggling brand, don't immediately jump to new channels. Start by auditing the brand's core DNA: its proposition, audience, and the key consumer insight it leverages. Most problems stem from a lack of clarity in these foundational areas, not poor execution.

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.