How Verizon’s CEO is rolling out his ‘play-to-win’ playbook—and fending off Elon Musk
He walked me through his playbook, including how he’s using AI to boost performance marketing and raise customer satisfaction, his views on AI-driven cybersecurity threats, and how he’s setting clear KPIs across 10 workstreams.
Key points
- For the past few years, he watched from his seat on Verizon’s board as the telecom giant lost market share, hobbled by internal bureaucracy and risk aversion.
- In today’s CEO Daily: Verizon CEO Dan Schulman on his company’s on-going transformation.
- “We had processes where you needed something like 35 signatures before you could move forward.” Fortune Schulman, who had been the board’s “hit-by-a-bus” successor, was named CEO in October 2025.
We’re going to be two or three generations better than we are today.” For Schulman’s full Verizon transformation playbook, listen to the episode of Fortune 500 Titans and Disruptors on Spotify.
One year in, Verizon is beginning to see results, and it’s facing new challenges like Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Additional details
- At his first all-hands, he spoke candidly, without slides or notes: Verizon was losing.
- But he’s preparing for Musk to follow through and become a direct Verizon competitor.
- “We were a big, lumbering giant that had fallen behind,” Schulman told me on the most recent episode of the Fortune 500 Titans and Disruptors podcast, admitting the board should have moved faster to make a leadership change.
- (Schulman estimates there will be 100 billion AI agents in the next few years, driving an explosion in data traffic and network demand.) “Culture is the single most important thing in any transformation.
- (Schulman would cut more than 13,000 roles, the largest layoff in Verizon’s history.) The culture had to be redefined.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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