First, you never announce that you're launching a change agenda. From my perspective, U S West was standing on a burning platform. Unfortunately, a lot of people didn't see it that way. So I had a 30-day agenda to create a buzz in the organization, to demonstrate that something's very different. A lot of change programs involve changing people.
Most lethargic organizations study things and study things and study things.
It's the proverbial aim, aim, aim, aim. And never pull the trigger. But it's not that hard to form an assessment of people within 30 days . . . And I immediately got a good sense of each person's work ethic. I could see who was strong in terms of leadership and direction.