I got brought into a firm once as a senior director to start a new services department (I had co-founded and run as a global director of a TAM services team prior), then shortly thereafter, got promoted to C-staff running all of the post-sales services (CX) for a few years.

There was a fair amount of trepidation from some quarters as to what I might do, and I tried to make it pretty clear I wasn't going to *do* anything until I understood how things actually ran, because as someone who in the past got caught up in the ambitions of exactly the kind of execs you described, was not going to repeat that error of hubris.

We're all of my decisions liked across the board? Nope. But most were taken well, given we were in the middle of being acquired, and we needed to fulfill regulatory compliance on one side, and improve certain trailing metrics on the other. I found it a lot easier to accomplish the former, as it was detailed in its requirements and the parameters well understood. The latter required investigation and understanding of underlying processes, and what should be changed, and then what the dependencies to make those changes (e.g. plot milestones, and build out delivery plans).

I avoided a lot of pageantry, which ended up probably being something I should have done more to get folks excited about the improvements we did make, but we (the team I had were actively involved in their own future) definitely left things in a measurable and vastly improved state than when I arrived (and left).

Basically I believe don't change things just to change them (and take some weird credit for them). Have a plan, deliver on it, and make sure the value prop is clear, understandable, and measurable so that all affected parties/stakeholders 'get it'.