Uber welcomed a new CEO in Dara Khosrowshahi this week, but appointing a new top executive is but one step for the troubled ride-hailing firm in the necessary journey to restore the brand’s trust and reputation—and the hold it once had on the industry it invented.
Khosrowshahi, a Barry Diller protege who’s taking a pay cut as he leaves the top job at Expedia for the “once in a lifetime opportunity” to turn around Uber, was introduced at an all-hands meeting of Uber employees in Silicon Valley on Wednesday, as board member Arianna Huffington, tweeted.
Delighted to welcome @dkhos as @Uber's new CEO. Here is the note the Board just sent to Uber employees: pic.twitter.com/NacuisvyO6
— Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) August 30, 2017
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The low-key (but driven) exec has struck a humble but optimistic note. He will have his work cut out (and will take a pay cut) in order to transform a toxic culture that landed Uber in hot water with regulators, customers, drivers and employees at various times. Just in the last year, it has compiled $3 billion in losses.
“This company has to change,” Khosrowshahi said of Uber’s challenge, according to the Wall Street Journal. “What got us here is not what’s going to get us to the next level.”
One thing that will take it to the next level—an IPO, which Khosrowshahi plans for 18 to 36 months from now. He took Expedia public in 2005 and has seen its stock rise ever since, despite missing at least one big opportunity in passing up on acquiring Booking.com.
#mynewbadge. I checked it and it works! Does @karaswisher have one of these? pic.twitter.com/SfXDjWeJYP
— dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) August 30, 2017
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The former investment banker turned TV and digital exec, including a stint as CFO at Diller’s USA Network, has won the trust of Uber’s investors and board, who were fed up with CEO Travis Kalanick’s personal and corporate excesses that fostered an aggressive work culture that allegedly ignored or sidestepped troubles such as sexual harassment.
The new CEO was an unexpected but smart choice for Uber. Clearly accomplished in the tech sector, he was once the highest-paid executive in the S&P 500 and will remain on Expedia’s board. To the Uber board’s credit, he wasn’t the kind of high-profile choice that some expected, such as a post-GE Jeffrey Immelt or a post-politics Meg Whitman.
Khosrowshahi, according to the WSJ, told Uber employees that he wanted them to help create a new culture from the “bottoms up” to replace the one formed by Kalanick, who remains on Uber’s board. “If culture is pushed top down, then people don’t believe in it.”
Uber needs more than a new culture. It’s also facing challenges in the form of proliferating competition in the ride-hailing industry, and especially from the rise of arch-rival Lyft, now expanding to 40 US states from its current 32.
One challenge they share is the need to attract more customers and expand brand awareness. A 2016 survey by Pew Research that found that only 15 percent of respondents in the US had used a ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft, and about one-third of respondents had not heard of either company.
The post Uber’s New CEO Aims to Fix Brand and Culture Before IPO appeared first on brandchannel:.
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