Chris Stansbury's day in the park quickly turned into two hours of meetings.

The Lumen Technologies president and CFO was wrestling with a procurement problem and wanted input from the company's chief revenue, technology and marketing officers.

"It was a beautiful day, and I decided I'm going to walk in the park, and I spent two hours on the phone" fielding back-to-back-to-back phone calls.

His decision that day to pull in other team members offers insight into both how Lumen's C-suite dynamics work and Stansbury's leadership style.

"One of my jobs as CFO and also wearing my president hat is I've got to make sure that the connectivity is being driven. I have to make sure that we're all aligned and rowing in the same direction," he told me.

Stansbury sees partnerships with those C-suite leaders as the key ones for the finance team, noting that when he joined the company toward the end of the Covid crisis, changing the company's work culture, managing change and getting the company's balance sheet in order-most notably Lumen's $20 billion of debt-were his priorities.

One early goal was to clearly identify and articulate their mission and north star, which is to "connect people, data and applications quickly, securely and effortlessly," he noted.

Stansbury visited the WSJ Leadership Institute's office recently to talk about why he and CEO Kate Johnson decided to focus on work culture and also to talk about his key challenges since joining the company. The following is a condensed, edited version of our conversation.

Walk me through the transformation you helped lead at Lumen.

I'm going to give you a non-CFO answer and that's truly the most important part of our transformation. It's culture. Culture is everything. Kate's primary focus was transforming Lumen's culture. In an enterprise telecom landscape that had long been characterized by a 'playing not to lose' mindset, she set out to create a culture of innovation, accountability and playing to win. And so if you're a sports fan, you sometimes have that sinking feeling when you're watching your team get too defensive, and they stop taking chances. They stop being aggressive. They're sitting back trying to protect the lead.

And what did that mean for your company? What were your biggest challenges?

For Lumen in particular, AI was a big unlock. So if we go back to the transformation journey. I arrive. Kate arrives, and we're looking at a business that's in rapid decline with no innovation, with enormous debt, $20 billion of debt, and $10 billion of it was due in 2027. So that was a really problematic maturity curve.

Who do you see as your key partners and internal stakeholders?

It's really the entire management team if you think about it, but it moves in phases. Today, I would say that center stage is CTO, CMO, chief revenue officer, so marketing, revenue, technology.

What were your next steps to build the right team?

First of all, it's about having the right management team that will lead with, for lack of a better term, vulnerability.

Second, I had to build trust with the organization so that they knew I had their best interest and the company's best interest in mind and that the team I was leading was doing everything it could to put this behind us. So to build trust, to have a clear mission statement, right, and then it really is about the third most important thing, which is what we call "The Rumble," what author Brene Brown would call the rumble, which is the ability in a very respectful way to challenge each other. It's making sure there's accountability and just the freedom to have an open, honest, fact-based discussion that challenges norms. That's the work culture you need to create to have the right environment.

-Walden Siew

The Day Ahead

📆 Earnings

Estee Lauder

Lowe's

Nordson

Target

TJX Cos.

Viking Holdings

📈 Economic Indicators

The Federal Open Market Committee releases the minutes from its late-July monetary-policy meeting.

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What Else I'm Watching

Walt Disney's lawsuit with FCC. Disney is embroiled in a legal battle with the Federal Communications Commission alleging the agency's efforts to challenge its broadcast licenses and regulate its talk show "The View" are illegal.

See How the Disney-FCC Fight Has Unfolded

Corporate earnings still in focus:

OpenAI told investors its revenue grew by 18% from the first to the second quarter, while its losses deepened, results that disappointed some shareholders who had hoped the startup would show more progress catching up to rival Anthropic.

The payments company Klarna cut its outlook for a key metric as it expects softness in consumer spending to continue. The company also said it is searching for a new CFO, with Niclas Neglén planning to step down from the role early next year.

Toll Brothers Records Lower Sales as Home Deliveries Decline

La-Z-Boy Swings to Loss From Declining Sales

For more earnings news, click here.

What Else Matters to CFOs

American Airlines has a plan to woo more flyers and boost premium revenue, which involves adding more first-class rows, extra-legroom seating and more seat-back screens as part of a cabin overhaul, our colleague Alison Sider reports.

Impact on bottom line: The new interiors are part of American's plan to catch up to Delta and United, its more profitable rivals. Major airlines have invested heavily in onboard experiences in recent years as they vie for passengers' loyalty.

American's 140 long-haul jets already have seat-back screens. Adding them to more than 800 single-aisle jets that operate most domestic flights will be an expensive undertaking. American hasn't disclosed how much it plans to spend.

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Big Food Is Fighting to Tempt Taste Buds in the Era of Weight-Loss Drugs

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New Housing Law Boosts Prospects for Factory-Built Homes

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The Big Number

Approximate takeover offer from KKR for natural-gas and electricity distributor UGI Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. The private-equity firm offered to buy UGI for $42.50 a share, the people said.

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CFO Moves

GE HealthCare, the Chicago-based medical imaging and diagnostic company, has hired William Grogan as its new chief financial officer, plucking the executive from water solutions company Xylem. Grogan, who has been Xylem's finance chief since October 2023, will join on Sept. 14. George Newcomb, GE HealthCare's controller and chief accounting officer, stepped in as interim CFO last week after James Saccaro left to join Zoetis as chief financial and operating officer. Grogan, 48 years old, will receive an annual base salary of $900,000, a $550,000 sign-on payment and an annual bonus with a target of 100% of his base pay. He also will receive a sign-on equity award with a grant date value of $4 million in consideration of compensation left on the table at Xylem, the company said.

-Colin Kellaher contributed to today's Ledger.

About Us

The WSJ Leadership Institute's CFO Journal offers corporate leaders and professionals CFO analysis, advice and commentary to make informed decisions. We cover topics including corporate tax, accounting, regulation, capital markets, management and strategy.

Follow us on X @WSJCFO. The WSJ CFO Journal Team comprises reporters Kristin Broughton, Jennifer Williams and Bureau Chief Walden Siew.

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