About This Case Study
This is a retrospective strategic analysis of a real communications challenge, not actual Comms Threader output. It illustrates how strategic scaffolding structures thinking from problem to narrative.
Real Threader outputs depend on your context, uploads, and decisions. See actual tool usage in the Boeing case study or explore best practices.
Uber Technologies
Culture Change and the New Leadership Playbook
The Golden Thread
Problem: This is not a PR problem. It is a founder-identity problem. Uber’s aggression was not a bug in the culture. It was the culture. Fixing the brand meant removing the founder and convincing stakeholders that a company built on rule-breaking could learn to play by the rules.
Tension: The public, drivers, and regulators wanted to punish Uber for its toxic culture but also depended on its service. They needed to believe the company could change without giving up the product they relied on.
Message: For stakeholders who depended on Uber but despised what it stood for, Uber’s challenge was demonstrating that a new leader could transform the company’s character without destroying the convenience that made it indispensable.
Platform: Make the leadership transition visible and irreversible. Let the new CEO’s behaviour be the communications strategy.
Story
The Brief: By 2017, Uber was the most valuable private company in the world and one of the most hated. Sexual harassment revelations, the #DeleteUber movement, executive departures, driver exploitation allegations, regulatory battles in dozens of cities, and a CEO who told a driver to “take responsibility for your own shit” had made Uber synonymous with toxic tech culture. Travis Kalanick was forced out as CEO in June 2017.
Challenge Reframe: This is not a PR problem. It is a founder-identity problem. Uber’s aggression was not a bug in the culture. It was the culture. Fixing the brand meant removing the founder and convincing stakeholders that a company built on rule-breaking could learn to play by the rules.
Sector Convention: Technology companies respond to culture crises by hiring diversity officers, publishing values statements, commissioning independent reviews, and promising to do better while preserving the leadership that created the problems.
Audience
Priority Stakeholder: Urban Riders Who Use Uber Reluctantly
Stakeholder Tension: They know the company has treated drivers poorly, evaded regulation, and fostered a toxic workplace. But the alternative is worse: unreliable taxis, no late-night transport, and giving up a service that genuinely improves their lives.
Message
Message Hierarchy: For riders who use Uber despite disliking what it represents, the company must demonstrate that under new leadership, the service they depend on comes from a company they do not need to feel guilty about using.
What We Won't Say: We are disrupting transport for good. We move cities forward. Our platform empowers drivers.
Plan
Comms Direction: Make the CEO transition the narrative. Let Dara Khosrowshahi’s personal conduct, regulatory approach, and public statements be the proof that Uber’s culture has changed.
Frame: Narrative Territories
The New Voice
Let the new CEO’s behaviour contrast visibly with the predecessor’s. Calm where Kalanick was combative. Regulatory engagement where there was evasion. Humility where there was aggression.
Feel: Personal, contrasting, authentic
The Rule-Follower
Proactively engage with regulators in the cities where Uber had fought hardest. Turn compliance into news. Make working within the system the story.
Feel: Institutional, mature, surprising
The Driver’s Deal
Announce and implement tangible improvements for drivers: better pay transparency, tipping, insurance. Let operational changes speak for cultural ones.
Feel: Structural, worker-facing, concrete
What Actually Happened
Dara Khosrowshahi was appointed CEO in August 2017. He immediately set a different tone: apologising publicly for past behaviour, engaging constructively with regulators, and publishing an internal cultural framework (“Great minds don’t think alike”). Uber regained its London operating licence after extended negotiations. The company went public in 2019. #DeleteUber faded. While Uber still faces criticism over driver classification and labour practices, the existential brand crisis of 2017 was effectively resolved through the leadership transition.
Why It Worked
- The CEO transition provided a clear, visible break point that allowed stakeholders to separate old Uber from new Uber
- Khosrowshahi’s personal conduct was the communications strategy: his behaviour contrasted so visibly with Kalanick’s that words were almost unnecessary
- Engaging constructively with regulators (particularly in London) turned a hostile relationship into a narrative of corporate maturity
- The fact that the product continued to work well meant riders needed only a reason to stop feeling guilty, not a reason to start using the service
- The case demonstrates that when the problem is the founder’s identity, the solution is a new identity at the top, backed by structural and behavioural proof