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Break chaos into small problems
A company in chaos
That was the approach at Uber, which was in chaos when the new CEO arrived. Its earlier leader, Travis, had not led the company for some time, and a committee of executives had run it for a few months. The board was fighting over who would control the company instead of what its future would be, so a new chairman, Ron Sugar, was brought in to focus the board on the fate of the company.
Listening and trust
The company had also lost the trust of stakeholders, regulators, and the public. A listening tour came first, to learn what the issues were. Action based on what was heard came next, along with communication inside and outside the company, where outside concerns counted as much as internal ones.
People
The third area was people. Uber had plenty of talent, including Andrew McDonald, now its president and COO, but some people were stuck in the old world and had to go. New managers such as Tony West came in. Each area got its own initiatives, and over a period of time things got better.
Why does splitting a problem make it easier?
Rene Descartes gave this advice in his 1637 Discourse on Method, where his second rule was to divide each difficulty into as many parts as possible. Computer science turned the habit into algorithms that split a task, solve the pieces, and merge the answers. John von Neumann wrote the first version of merge sort in 1945 on this principle. In math, any vector in three dimensions is the sum of three independent components.
How does a new leader learn a company?
Michael Watkins published The First 90 Days in 2003, laying out the opening months of a new leader's job. His framework puts learning ahead of acting: new leaders talk to many people before committing to a plan. The aim is early progress on a few priorities that colleagues actually value. It grew out of his research at Harvard Business School.
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