The abrupt change of leadership at the top of Windstream appears to be a response to the recent financial struggles of a company that seemed determined to innovate its way out of its traditional staid telecom role. Jeff Gardner, who resigned this week, has headed Windstream Communications Inc. since its creation in 2006 and was leading the company through a transition to more of a business services play with a broader -- if not quite national -- footprint of cloud services and interconnected data centers.