Dan Schulman on Punching Back: How Verizon's New CEO Plans to Win

Dan Schulman didn't want the job. When Verizon's board asked him twice to replace Hans Vestberg as CEO, the recently retired PayPal veteran—who had just undergone emergency appendix surgery and was settling into ranch life in Montana—turned them down both times. But the former head of AT&T's consumer division and Virgin Mobile US ultimately couldn't ignore the call. He signed a 27-month contract to lead the $200 billion telecom giant, and he's wasting no time reshaping the company's culture and trajectory.

Schulman found a Verizon in crisis: ceding market share for five years, hemorrhaging customer satisfaction, rising churn, and lagging valuations against AT&T and T-Mobile. The culture was bureaucratic, hierarchical, risk-averse, and obsessed with process over outcomes. His diagnosis was unambiguous. He told his team: "We're going to win in the marketplace. And we're going to do that in a fiscally responsible manner. But we're not going to be a punching bag anymore." A practitioner of Krav Maga—the Israeli martial art where fighters use "whatever it takes to win"—Schulman is applying that same combat philosophy to business: "If somebody is going to punch me, I'm going to punch back."

His turnaround strategy centers on 10 transformation "work streams" (developed by having AI sift through 8,000 employee suggestions), aggressive cost-cutting including the largest layoff in company history affecting 13,000 of roughly 100,000 employees, and a shift in focus from network to customers. The results are already moving markets: Verizon delivered its second strong earnings report under Schulman this week, raising full-year guidance after unexpected wireless subscriber gains. The stock—which had fallen 30% over five years—has rallied 16% since October, outpacing rivals and the broader market.

But Schulman's philosophy extends beyond quarterly gains. He argues that great leadership requires simultaneously defining reality (companies in crisis need CEOs who acknowledge hard truths) and inspiring hope (articulating why the vision is achievable). On the thorniest issue facing his tenure—the 13,000 layoffs—he's reframing this as a necessary evil in a world where external change is now moving faster than most companies can internally adapt. "When the pace of change external to a company is greater than the pace of change internally, you're falling behind," he warns. His answer: a $20 million "reskilling and career transition fund" for laid-off employees, which he's pitched to Fortune 100 CEOs as a moral and capitalist imperative. "If we don't," he says, unemployment could hit 20-30% within two to five years as AI reshapes work. "People will be left behind. And that is not good for our democracy. It's not good for our economy. It's not good for capitalism."

Schulman's endgame is audacious: rebuild Verizon's "swagger" with a culture that moves faster, accepts uncertainty, makes quick decisions over perfect ones, and rallies employees around reclaiming market leadership. Year one is about getting people into this mode, he predicts. Year two, solidifying it. Year three, "we kind of have a different company in place."