On being left for dead

When I became CEO of Lumen in November 2022, we weren't an underdog.

Underdogs still have a chance. People root for them.

Lumen had already been written off. One industry publication described us as "a company seemingly on its deathbed." That had become the prevailing narrative on Wall Street, among industry analysts, and throughout much of the media.

The business question was obvious: could we stabilize the company and create value again?

But every turnaround is a people story before it’s a business story.

How do you breathe life into a workforce that feels destined to lose? When they’re not even sure they deserve to win?

There’s an upside to being left for dead.

Space.

Critics stop caring. Low expectations give you room to think, plan, and begin recreating value.

But the downside of being left for dead is what happens to the people inside the company.

Talented people leave. Meetings lose energy. Determination gives way to resignation. Not everywhere. Not all at once. But over time, losing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s not because people stop caring, but because they stop believing they can change the outcome.

I thought we could turn the company around with our fiber network. I knew we could be an industry powerhouse by becoming critical infrastructure for AI.

But the team had to believe it. And the first step was just shooting to become an underdog again.

To start, we needed a north star to give us a clear, shared purpose. We asked a group of high-performing vice presidents from across the company one deceptively simple question:

Why are we here?

After two weeks – and a lot of late nights and pizza – the group found a straight line between our fiber network and the value we wanted to create for customers.

"To connect people, data, and applications – quickly, securely, and effortlessly."

I loved it immediately because it was anchored in our truth. Lumen had spent decades building fiber routes, customer relationships, and network capabilities that are hard to replicate.

But the second part was deeply aspirational.

Quickly. Securely. Effortlessly.

To stay relevant in an AI-driven world, we had to reinvent our “how.” We had to make our network quick, secure, and effortless.

Doable. But hard.

Next up? Focus.

When revenue declines and purpose blurs, people don’t stop working. In fact, they often work harder. But without a clear center, energy scatters. Projects multiply. Priorities compete. Motion is mistaken for progress.

Our north star became the great clarifier. We used it to focus our strategy, inspire innovation, allocate capital, even simplify the product portfolio.

Something remarkable happened.

A group of talented, courageous people decided to believe when there was little reason they should. They went first. Their results became the evidence everyone else needed.

More teams wanted in. We gave them room to experiment, celebrated progress, and shared their stories across the company.

Soon, momentum spread. We called it our "Little Fires Everywhere" approach.

Then, we intentionally built community. Change stopped feeling so fragile. Belief returned faster because people saw other people choosing to care, build, and behave like the future was still worth fighting for.

We gave our workforce what they needed: Light. Support. Connection. Gratitude.

The culture started shifting. Inside the company, it started to become cool to dream about winning, to talk about it. Winning is inspiring. And inspiration can go viral if you let it.

So, we did.

When the world left Lumen for dead, we used the space to launch a digital Network-as-a-Service platform that made our fiber network quick, secure, and effortless. As AI took off, that's exactly what customers needed.

Which probably explains why the platform is outperforming the market. And why Gartner recently named Lumen “the company to beat” in enterprise networking for AI.

From “on our deathbed” to “the company to beat.”  I was hoping for underdog. The team went full top dog.

Strategies don’t drive transformation. People do. A north star gives them clear direction. Community gives them courage. Progress gives them proof.

And when people believe the future is worth building, they build it.