(FORTUNE Magazine) – One day soon you may have to work radical change in an organization -- but how? Four CEOs who have turned companies upside down recently told what they've learned at the FORTUNE 500 Forum in San Antonio. Their reports:

NO ONE EXCLUDED STANLEY GAULT CEO, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Stanley Gault, 66, took charge at Goodyear 18 months ago, drafted by the board to revive the battered tiremaker after spectacular careers at General Electric and Rubbermaid. Since then he has turned loss to profit, paid off $1.7 billion in debt, recaptured market share, and lifted depressed morale. The stock price has risen threefold.

''People would say, 'Why would you undertake this challenge?' Well, frankly, the decision was 98% emotional because Goodyear is the last major American- owned tire company. All the other brands, with the exception of a much smaller Cooper, are now owned by foreign companies, and they will never return to this country. Therefore, I decided that I was willing to change my life for three years if there was any way I could lead the charge to rebuild Goodyear. It was mentioned to me more than once that I was a prime candidate for the Maalox moment. We needed a tremendous cultural change involving everyone in the organization. You have to do many things simultaneously. When you're in this kind of jam, time is not on your side. After I was there about 30 days, I thought I owed it to our people to develop the future objectives for the corporation. For lack of a better title, I wrote 'The 12 Objectives for Managing Goodyear Successfully in the '90s.' They include having a leadership position in costs, quality, customer service, and innovation. We used film and television around the world. I presented and explained the objectives to all our people. I wanted everyone in the organization to know why these were our objectives, what they meant to each individual position, and how everyone fit into the picture -- with no one excluded. At the same time we discontinued using the word 'employee,' and we instituted the word 'associate' because that was a leveling action. Regardless of your station in the organization, you are an associate. It is particularly important to women and minorities because they feel that the word 'employee' means you work for someone. Well, we don't work for each other, we work with each other. To show you how deeply this word 'associate' touches, let me tell you what happened at a meeting of our people. Three or four black associates came up to me -- they happened to be all males -- and one of them, quite embarrassed, said hesitantly, 'Does the word ''associate'' apply to me?' Well, I tell you, that really grabs you, doesn't it, when this guy with 35 years of service -- and that's how long he had -- comes up and says that. He wanted to know, because he was black and worked down in the mill, if the word 'associate' applied to him. Well, I told him very quickly where we stood on this word 'associate' applying to everybody, his job and my job alike. I made it a point within the next month to go down in the area where he was working to see my new associate down there. With a grapevine like Goodyear has, that was around the world in the next 60 seconds with electronic mail. The same spirit applies to union relationships. Just before I went to Goodyear, a three-year contract had been formalized by the entire industry. I met with the president of the union and his staff. I respect him. He's a capable, intelligent gentleman. I told him I wanted him to know exactly where I stood, that the settlement they made was unaffordable and we couldn't live with it as such. Therefore, I needed his involvement and support to see if we couldn't work together to bring about productivity improvements to offset the wage increases. We appreciate that we do have our individual responsibilities, but we have a collective responsibility, and that is to his members and to our associates. We have people whose jobs we want to protect in this country and in this company. Back at Rubbermaid we had a union at our Wooster, Ohio, headquarters. One day an associate, a union member who drove one of our big over-the-road trucks, said he had heard that my door was never closed and asked if that applied to him. I said, 'Sure, when are you going to be around?' He said, 'Well, I'm coming into town next Thursday morning. I'll be there at seven.' I said, 'What time do you really get in?' He said, 'Well, I ought to roll in about 5:30.' I said, 'I'll meet you here at six and I'll make the coffee. I'll be waiting for you.' So he came in. He must have run that rig wide open all night because he was freshly shaved and his hair was still damp. He had been home and showered and had changed clothes. I think he was surprised to see me there. We had a good chat, and he told me some things that were bothering him. One item dealt with backing up trailers at night. We usually had 300 or 400 trailers on a lot. Backing up these rigs at two or three in the morning without proper lighting could possibly pin someone against a trailer or a building. Obviously, I was very interested in that. Another point was that some of the cabs were too old. That following Sunday I went out early in the morning, and I went in every cab we had. Some had 500,000 or 600,000 miles on them, and some had rusty floorboards. I don't want any driver in those kinds of cabs. So I raised hell with our people the following morning. I want those cabs traded, and I want the guys who drive them involved in selecting the vendor. Boy, did that go through the system like wildfire. After listening to him review his list of topics, I said 'Now, I want to share something with you. Together, we have this golden goose here at Rubbermaid, and we don't want anything to screw it up. That means the Rubbermaid family comes first.' And did I ever strike a nerve. He looked at me somewhat startled, and I said, 'It has to be that way, and you know it. You don't have to acknowledge it to me, but we all have to understand it.' Well, he went back over to the motor pool where all his buddies were waiting because they knew damn well I wouldn't see him that morning. He went over with his list. He said, 'I sat down with him in his office. He served me coffee. He took the time for me to go through everything on my list.' Well, talk about relationships. We got to be such buddies that I had to be careful when I walked out of the office at night, because I worked long hours and many times I'd be going out to get in my car in the dark, and one of those big rigs would be arriving. The driver could see me, but I couldn't see the driver. I'll tell you, when they get within 50 feet and let that air horn go, it will lift you off the ground. That was their way of saying to you, 'He's our friend, and we're all in this together.' And we were.''

''DO IT NOW'' LINDA J. WACHNER CEO, Warnaco The only woman to head a FORTUNE 500 industrial company, Linda Wachner, 46, seized control of Warnaco, a maker of intimate apparel and men's wear, in a hostile takeover in 1986. She hasn't rested since. Having gone private, she took the company public again 14 months ago, and the shares are up 72.5%.

''When we took over, I had worked in the company 22 years earlier in a much lower position, and a lot of the same people were still there. So I had to get the people comfortable with me in the first 90 seconds. At the same time I had to change things radically. The company very badly needed new direction, and it needed new thinking and enthusiasm. What we did was impose a philosophy we call 'Do it now.' If we didn't make our people understand that the consumers are our bosses and make them look where the consumers are going and what they will want to buy in five years and ten years, we would not have been able to set the new direction. So we changed. And that started at the top. The corporate office used to be 200 people -- now it's seven. We invited 100 people of the existing management group to buy equity in the new Warnaco. We gave them the chance to buy stock and helped them finance their investment. You know, pay a penny and we'll loan you the rest. Then we got them to focus on four key things. In a public company, everybody's looking at earnings per share. But in a private company, a leveraged buyout like ours, you're driven by cash. You've got to get your people to think about cash. Our focus was on cash flow, EBIT ((earnings before interest and taxes)), innovative ideas, and distribution. Each level of management had to make objectives geared to those four goals. I didn't try to reach consensus, because that's not really my way. I gave people the direction. We had a huge, huge debt to pay down. And I'm proud that in six years we've paid down over $700 million in interest and debt amortization, and we've never missed an interest payment, and we've never missed a covenant. The biggest obstacle to change we encounter is keeping people's energy up. I have enormous energy. I'm a morning person and an afternoon person and an evening person. And I will stay up for two or three days in a row to get it done. I don't ask others to keep my work schedule but I want to keep them focused on the same goal. When they are falling down saying, 'Gee, I can't do it anymore,' you've got to pick them up and say, 'Yes, you can, and here's why.' It's getting them to dream the dream.

Once they're dreaming the dream and they see it in return on their own equity, how do you continue keeping the energy up? Success is a positive reinforcement. Every time we have a little success, we bring people together and we say, 'Look, this is what we've done.' So we've been able to build energy and momentum in people. This attitude has been especially important during this recession. Every Friday night each of eight division presidents prepares a report on critical issues. We review these by Monday. If there's a problem, we fix it. We know where the product is going. We have clear goals for the people. We have a 'do it now' mentality. With those things in mind, we've increased production in bras from two million dozen in 1986 to 10.5 million dozen projected for next year, increased market share, and still have come up with an increase of 30% in sales and 140% in EBIT from 1986 to the present. Don't get me wrong, getting these successes hasn't been easy. And some people felt that the pressure to succeed was too great. Some people left. So we said, 'Okay, if you can't meet the goal or if you can't get under the limbo rack, goodbye, and we don't hold it against you.' But of the 100 people we put in equity almost seven years ago, 86 are still here and have a major financial stake in the company. One other interesting observation came out of this experience: A lot of people want to be led. There are very few leaders in life. If everybody was a leader, we'd have 22 more choices for President of the United States. We'd have 22 more choices for the job of each chief executive. When people have a good leader who instills team spirit, and they live in an environment that demands excellence, energy, and the keeping up of momentum in order to achieve a goal, then they want to stay or, if they leave, they want to come back. While I'm pleased to say that we are building a first-rate company, it's even more exciting that we've built a world-class team.''

A CRISIS HELPS MIKE H. WALSH CEO, Tenneco Boards of directors have twice brought in Walsh to revolutionize a company, and he has obliged, with salutary results -- at Union Pacific from 1986 to 1991, and for the past 15 months at Tenneco, a giant Houston conglomerate that he has restructured with blitzkrieg swiftness.

''In my judgment this whole thing comes down to one word, and that's leadership. I've been exposed to three companies: Cummins Engine, where I wasn't in charge, and Union Pacific and Tenneco, where I have been. And while you can talk about tools and techniques -- and they're terribly important, whether they are quality processes or reducing the levels of organization or communication techniques -- those are only tools and techniques. At the end of the day what it comes down to is relentless leadership from the top, in which the CEO makes himself or herself personally vulnerable at more points than you can keep track of. When you come in from the outside you've got to keep in mind you don't know anybody and they don't know you. You become the human bridge to absolutely everybody -- to the board, the employees, the banks, the security analyst community, the customers, the political world. And you have to be able, frankly, to sell yourself and the logic of your approach to all those constituencies. In my experience it's very political, in the nonpejorative sense of that word. You literally are reaching out and persuading everybody of everything. If you weren't, you couldn't in a relatively short time like 90 days persuade a bunch of people who didn't want to sell businesses to sell them, persuade a bunch of people who didn't want to cut a quarter of a billion dollars out of the capital budget to do it, persuade a bunch of people who felt they were earning as much as their businesses could produce to double their net operating income in the subsequent year. So it is a very, very, very highly focused, leadership-oriented job. I don't think you need a crisis to work a revolution -- but it helps. When I came to Union Pacific in 1986 they were celebrating a record year. They had just earned $322 million, which was the highest earnings in company history. They didn't recognize there was a problem, frankly. The problem was that they had $8 billion of assets invested to earn that amount. From the board of directors' point of view the business was not good enough to reinvest in. So I had to get out with all the unions and especially with the management and persuade them they had a crisis. As a result of not being reinvestable, we were on the track of slowly going out of business. We tried to keep that message fairly simple and consistent: Look, there's a crisis here, and you don't realize it. For the employees the crisis is that the capital will not be there to reinvest. If the capital isn't there to reinvest, you know these jobs are going away because technology will continue to substitute for people. And in the absence of that capital, you can't grow, therefore you can't absorb people who are made available by technology. That message had to be relentlessly and repetitiously presented. But we were able to see that there was an unrecognized crisis. We set a goal of doubling earnings and productivity in five years so we could make the business reinvestable. And we were able to do that. If you ask me whether it is easier from the leadership point of view to wait until you're in extremis, you know the answer. But that's irresponsible. I mean, that's the American political system. Does all this change make employees feel insecure? Of course. But anybody who recognizes what is going on in this world and isn't somewhat insecure, I would argue, is not awake. And I think the biggest enemy of progress is happy talk. You need to tell your people that if we do not change, and change fundamentally, we are going out of business. And that will create insecurity. The trick is to turn that insecurity into constructive tension. My experience is that people in companies can deal with reality and facts much better than their management gives them credit for. If you talk straight to them, tell them what's required, and tie it together with the rewards, there is an enormous capability well beyond what any of us traditionally believe. If you don't deal with that reality and you paper it over in the name of undue apprehension about creating insecurity, I do not believe you can cause a revolution or major change or any of these 50-cent words we're talking about. I believe there is a shortage of people who realize that a CEO's job is to lead. This is one of the things that I've learned: We have to get people in positions of leadership in companies to understand what their job is. It is fundamentally leadership. It is not doing somebody else's job. If you look at people in leadership positions and do a time analysis of what they do, I submit you'll find a great deal of the time they're doing somebody else's job rather than shaping the concept and the structure by which the concept will be implemented across the board in a large, complex organization. That's a very time-consuming task -- and frankly, what I've found is, it's sufficiently exhausting that a lot of people don't want to take it on.''

BOOM! STRIKE! CRASH! DAVID W. JOHNSON CEO, Campbell Soup Like Walsh, Johnson is almost a professional revolutionary. After years with Colgate-Palmolive and Warner-Lambert he took over as CEO of Gerber in 1987 and in 27 months doubled the stock price. In his 35 months at Campbell, Johnson has focused on ERC -- earnings growth, return on equity, and cash return on assets. His mantra is 20-20-20: He sets a goal of 20% for each.

''Leading a revolution is easy only if you have a proven record of being a business hell-fighter in many parts of the world. You've cleaned up other towns like a U.S. marshal. You're totally confident, right? Except that when it happens . . . At Gerber the board decided they would go out and recruit from outside for the first time in history. The company was drifting, shares were falling, there was tremendous uncertainty as to what would happen. Campbell Soup had been underperforming the food industry, and around that time there were plenty of raiders very interested in jewel-like, underutilized Campbell. And for the first time they said, 'It looks like we better go outside and bring in this alien,' and they did. Under those circumstances, when you come in, it's not the pretties of 'Here is my vision. Let me explain the principles from the book.' When you move in, you've got to do it in an exciting fashion, lay down the challenge -- boom! strike! crash! I REMEMBER after about six or seven months in the company I'm with some wonderful intellectuals, and they're researching me. They said, 'David, have you got a little ''vision'' card in your pocket?' I said, 'What do you mean?' They said, 'Haven't you got a little card that all your employees are taking around that is your vision and the principles you believe in, and everyone has it inculcated into them?' And I said, 'No, nobody has a card. All they know is 20-20-20.' They said, 'You're mad -- how could that be?' I said, 'Because we're fighting for our life right now.' It's short-term focus. You know that dirty word we're all accused of? 'Short term.' Isn't it terrible? Except under circumstances that I've experienced, if you don't win the first year, if you don't win in the short term, you're dead. I used to say, if perfect human vision is 20-20, then perfect business vision is 20-20-20, which was shorthand for earnings, returns, and cash. With that total focus, at the first meeting with employees I swept in with trumpets playing and lots of throbbing and emotion -- talk about standing room only! You couldn't breathe, it was so filled. And why were they there? Because this was their future coming in possibly, good or bad. Remember, they are proud people who are associated with an organization in need, in crisis, in trouble. They want to do well, just like the CEO. They are driven to want to do things differently, but they need the leadership. They need somebody coming in and saying, 'Right, here's where we're going to go and why.' I don't bring anybody with me because I maintain that in each top company that I've been associated with, the MBAs and research Ph.D.s and engineers and other talents want to be released and have so much to give me. They know the organization backwards. They've been there. They know what's good and bad. So I ask, 'What's nonstrategic, what's diseased, what's underperforming? How would you go about achieving 20-20-20?' I need recommendations and answers based on analysis and reasoning. And guess what? They rally and work and burn the midnight oil. There's a lot of heart beating that says, 'Wow, maybe we can do it. Maybe this is something that we can be associated with that is truly exciting, that will take us forward to a new future of fulfillment, giving meaning in our lives.' At the same time as I get all that stretch and focus looking at 20-20-20, I say, 'Now I'm going to make it worth your while with incentives.' I say, 'If . we deliver the 20-20-20, you're going to have the jingle jangle jingle in your pockets.' Of course, it's structured over three years and further so you've got the long term overlaying the short term. And now it's not just ERC -- earnings, returns, and cash. The V is in front because now we're into the long term and we're building volume -- and I say to them, 'You've got to VERC to win.' A LOT OF A COMPANY'S success has to do with the sort of people you've got in the company. I go around each company and I ask them, 'Look, did you ever want to get an A when you were going through high school or college? Were you ever on a marching band and you really wanted to win the championship?' I say to the people, 'If you don't want to compete, if you don't like stretching, if you won't confront change and competition, I really don't think you're right for the company. And what's more, we'll get the best people in our human resources area to work with you over time to help you relocate or find something that will really turn you on.' My point is, let's not run away from the fact that we're a performance- orient ed organization. And that does create uncertainty and challenge and hyperventilation in a lot of people, but we've got to address it. So we give them development, we explain what we're doing, we try to train them to a greater degree of readiness. And when we win, when we're delivering top-flight results, we celebrate. We have wingding get-togethers. We clap, cheer, we get our officers to put on aprons to serve coffee and cake, hand out balloons. Whatever it takes to be a team.