#businesstransformation

Confirmed massive layoffs happening after the new year. Up to 40% of collab, 25% of sales, 50% of security and 20% of data center will be notified between January 7th - 10th.
G2 quote from All hands meeting: "We must capitalize on growth areas going into Q1 and Q2 26, unfortunately radical measures must be taken to accomplish our business goals with the emerging use of AI. It is not easy to make this decision, but we must let people go"

Managers have warned us to start looking for other positions.
Hardest hit will be engineers on Webex & Contact centre

The decision-makers at Mattel are stuck thinking one quarter at a time. There is no long-range vision, just constant reaction. It’s like they’re having trouble realizing that popular trends can last anywhere from a month to years and you can’t base a whole business strategy on just that. That lack of foresight is painful to watch.

Starbucks hired Laxman Narasimhan, a former McKinsey & Company senior partner, as CEO in 2023, but his tenure was marked by declining market value (around $30 billion lost) due to a perceived disconnect between strategic advising and operational execution, leading to his replacement by an "operator" from Chipotle, Brian Niccol, which immediately boosted the stock, highlighting a shift from pure strategy to hands-on management at the company.

Key Details:
The Hire: Narasimhan, with deep consulting and PepsiCo experience, was seen as bringing strategic discipline to Starbucks.

The Problem: His focus on efficiency and process, influenced by McKinsey frameworks, alienated customers and staff, leading to poor store experiences and falling sales, despite strategic logic.

The Pivot: In late 2024/early 2025, Starbucks replaced him with Brian Niccol (ex-Chipotle CEO), known for actual operational scaling.

The Result: Niccol's appointment reversed the stock decline, showing the market's preference for real-world operators over strategic advisors for hands-on retail challenges.

The Lesson: The situation became a case study on the difference between consulting/advising (strategy) and building/running (operations), with Starbucks learning that its brand needed experience, not just frameworks, according to various business commentators.

Starbucks didn’t fail in its execution.. it just forgot what it is selling.. is chevron heading down the same path?

OpenAI won’t deliver $100B to Oracle, struggling itself. So no backlog no pay off of data center nor Stargate. The apps are being replaced by smaller SaaS solutions much cheaper. The AWS and Google connection ki-ls the rest multi cloud. AI theme is not financially valid and AI agents in Apps are just another feature. Nobody new buys apps because AI agents… that’s true.
Time will tell.

Country specific as each European countries have different layoff laws.
A lot of field sales will go.
Accounts will be managed centrally in a lot of cases. Enterprise contracts won’t be renewed as they come up on term.
This is what happens when you run a company into the ground.
The international VBG backbone network will massively shrink in size, countries will be exited..
the on again off again BT global JV or merger seems to at least being discussed again.. And or rumours of VBG enterprise going to HCL.. that I doubt though as when MNS went to HCL they let HCL RIF everyone who transitioned over.
Can count on 1 hand the amount of large clients left… cost base is approx double actual revenue has been like this for a decade and year on year getting worse.
Basically looking at a VBG exit strategy internationally.. This is what Dan meant in Q3 analyst call - we have parts of the business that are costing us Billions in margin.

BP has said it will ramp up efforts to hive off parts of the business, as the energy company reported a drop in profits in its latest quarter.

The company reported an underlying profit of $2.2bn (£1.7bn) in the three months ended in September. It marked a slowdown against its previous quarter, when it made a profit of $2.4bn, but beat analyst expectations of $1.98bn.

Its chief executive, Murray Auchincloss, who is under pressure from shareholders to reverse years of underperformance by moving away from renewable projects and increasing investments in oil and gas, said BP would push to sell off parts of the business faster.

“We are looking to accelerate delivery of our plans, including undertaking a thorough review of our portfolio to drive simplification and targeting further improvements in cost performance and efficiency,” he said.

Auchincloss, who has vowed to sell off $20bn of assets by the end of 2027, added that he expected the company would have sold or announced the sale of $5bn worth by the end of the year.

BP’s new chair, Albert Manifold, told staff on his first day in the job last month that the company needed to accelerate a plan to cut costs and sell assets.

BP has already managed to agree to sell its US onshore wind business to LS Power, as well as a deal to offload its Dutch retail fuel sites and its electric vehicle charging hubs.

This week, BP also agreed to sell its stakes in US shale assets for $1.5bn, including four Permian central processing facilities: Gand Slam, Bingo, Checkmate and Crossroads.

However, BP did not provide an update on the sale of its multibillion-dollar Castrol lubricants unit, which will be a central part of its plan to raise at least $20bn by 2027.

The company is under pressure from Elliott Management, the activist New York hedge fund that is known for its attempts to shake up listed companies. It has built up a stake in BP and has been pushing the company to cut costs.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/04/bp-asset-sales-fall-in-profits-oil-gas

Per internal docs it appears that the entire mid market channel (from VP down) will be eliminated due to poor business practices. SMB directors and their teams will be assuming mid market roles and territories. Retail store GMs will be dissolved and stores with low door swings will be closed. This is expected to be announced 11/17-11/21.

Multiple layers of leadership are going to be trimmed and consolidation of Director and Senior Director roles with larger districts and less Directors and Senior Directors. Small non performing stores switched to indirect. Say good bye to retail business reps. Verizon is no longer the industry leader. Verizon will become T-Mobile Jr. New CEO plans on following T-Mobile’s business model. Welcome to the beginning of the new Bed Bath and Beyond fire sale of the wireless industry!

https://www.irishnews.com/news/business/multimillion-skills-investment-sees-allstate-ni-lead-us-corporations-global-transformation-programme-7N3RQGDXGFDAZIWWXDF4MG42WY/

For the last 3 years Phillips 66 has been undergoing what Go Go calls Business Transformation. "Transformation" has basically consisted of laying off a few employees at a time once or twice a year and vague promise that things are going to improve in some future year.
The objective of this transformation was to unlock value in the stock price to bring it more in line with our 2 main peers. It has failed miserably at this goal, as of today our stock price is $30 dollars and $50 dollars lower than our 2 main peers stock price.

FIS Professional Services is looking for Management Consultants to be a part of the Business Transformation team.

$140,890 - $236,690 a year - Full-time

Apply today
https://www.indeed.com/q-FIS-jobs.html?vjk=98da935136789c86

It’s really amazing that we’re going to create another org filled with external executives that are not from telecom. She signed a lot of bad deals in supply chain.

IDM 1.0 Product groups benefited from having access to lead nodes (ahead of what other companies could access), to the point that the fabs were run as a loss-leader, with max emphasis on output and yield over cost.

This led Finance to grind their teeth but no one cares about that.

It seems clear that external customers want Floundry to be a separate company from Products, because of the concern over IP sharing and wafer start conflicts.

But that leaves Product groups with low margins when they rely on lead nodes from TSMC. This is because they no longer have pricing power and that will only worsen over time as x86 is supplanted by ARM.

So Product groups NOW need Floundry to be a more cost effective supplier TSMC (and close to leading node). This was the point of IDM 2.0.

MJ tried to mumble something about this in a more positive light, but the reality seems clear enough.

What this likely means is deep cuts in Floundry spending, as that group gets real about the capacity needed for the pace of customer onboarding which is possible.

The pushout of Ohio and halting of other projects shows the effort is underway to rationalize capacity to demand.

Pat was pushing to do a full buildout, which only made sense if he was able to bring high volume customers onboard.
A smarter approach would have been to do no greenfield projects.
Just add a few mods and wait for customer growth to justify Ohio and Germany.
This is what appears to be the current plan (much to Pats deep chagrin)

Next is to slow down the ramp, and stop building speculative capacity.
The company has being driven into the ground by reckless expansion and it must stop.

So at the existing facilities, that means fewer tools, which means less headcount. Attrition may be sufficient.

It seems possible that a few HVM fabs could be spun off into an independent company, to satisfy external customer concerns.
Considering how few customers there are, that could just be at one site, like Ireland or something.

For Product groups, it is way past time to stop projects and groups that have no roadmap to profitability.
Because that x86 market share, it ain't coming back.

If Product groups need the combined margins then they will have to retain some fabs in the same company, and likely TD as well, in order for it to be funded.

So the big surprise of 2025 may be that the company is not particularly broken up, but that the fabs are broken up, in order to sustainably serve the needs of internal and external customers.