AI Dunlap had no patience for company cultures in which initiative was stifled and employees were not encouraged to be aggressive and innovative in their efforts to wring higher performance from the company’s business assets. He believed taking aggressive actions to quickly stamp out a bad culture was one of the first orders of business in launching a successful turnaround:
If you have a great culture, nourish it, sustain it, grow it. If you have a bad culture, don’t just put it in remission; kill it… A culture reflects the way things are; you have to change it to be the way you want it to be.
Change how you conduct the business. Have people challenge everything you do. Change the product mix… sell those businesses that don’t fit.
I have moved many corporate headquarters, in a new city, means a new way of doing business.
One senior executive who became part of Dunlap’s inner circle at Scott Paper observed that Dunlap’s culture-changing approach was “to pee all over the old culture and point out the issues and the reasons it was not successful.”