When Kaz Nejatian took over as CEO of Opendoor in early 2026, the company was months from bankruptcy. The former Shopify executive didn’t do change management; he changed every default violently. In the first week, he ended remote work, fired two PR firms by accident, killed two profitable but non‑core business lines, and told the entire company that being offended by facts was not part of the job description. This conversation with Shane Parrish is a compressed masterclass in corporate resuscitation for the 2020s—a toolkit of mental models, decisive doctrine, and cultural ruthlessness that applies as much to a failing company as to a stalled career.
The central argument: turnarounds require reversing the slow drift from reality…