#changemanagement

The floodgates opened a month or two ago after a year+ of absolutely no guidance. It’s like someone flipped a switch and all of a sudden, employee growth is important to CVX again. Seems like there is an email or engagement every week on this. I’m not upset by the change - it’s refreshing to see, frankly.

What led to this change in attitude from the corporation, and what’s the underlying motivation? Is attrition that bad? Call me skeptical but I don’t believe they read the CES and created this program solely in response to it.

Was it a good call? I was surprised. Not sure what this means for re-orgs.

Just update for everyone, from today's industries townhall:

No news confirming focal, hikes or promotions, but it is being reviewed.
This was asked multiple times in the Q&A with the same response.

No clear "no" on future restructuring. Oracle will aggressively keep up with the changing landscape of AI and how they are structured to delivery efficiently will continually be evaluated.
This was asked multiple times in the Q&A.

Anyone hear anything about a digital product or broader product reorg? Theories on the entire product org moving under tech

Never assume Medtronic asking you to move means they plan to keep you around. I've seen people make a huge life change and uproot their entire families for an offer that came with a move and then lose that same job soon afterward.

I was recently re-allocated to a new (for me) department. I've been with the bank for 20 years and have been shuffled around before but it was usually due to old team being absorbed for another project. This time feels different. My boss and his boss pulled up to inform me that I was being moved to another department as they have an urgent need in GFC for investigations/research. I’m curious if anyone knows how/why it’s determined who gets moved off the team/department they’ve been in for 10+ years to a new department. My old team is still active and together, but I’m the one moved. For reference, Meets/Meets, B5, salaried.

Based on the town hall discussion, there appears to be considerable uncertainty regarding the company’s strategic direction and the implementation of the new operating model. The analogy that the “aircraft is being built while being flown by Captains JS and SS” may have been intended to acknowledge the complexity of the transition; however, for an organization with a market capitalization exceeding $30 billion, it could also reinforce employee concerns that the restructuring is proceeding without a sufficiently defined plan. The messaging did not provide the level of clarity, transparency, or reassurance employees reasonably expect from senior leadership during a period of significant organizational change. Some of the analogies used also seemed disconnected from the practical concerns facing employees, particularly regarding accountability, organizational stability, and the future structure of the business. This risks undermining trust and does not appear fully aligned with Pembina’s stated values of respect, transparency, and collaboration.

It would be helpful for senior leadership to provide a more direct update on the maintenance restructuring, including the intended organizational model, decision-making timelines, potential impacts on technical and engineering roles, and whether any further workforce reductions or layoffs are anticipated. The place is in a mess at the moment.

There is something almost comforting about mid-September at Honeywell.

Everything is business as usual. Forecasts. Customer calls. Q4 plans. Strategy decks. People talking about 2027 priorities as if every box on the org chart is permanent.

And anyone who has been around large companies long enough knows the rule: it is business as usual right up until the exact moment it isn’t.

One day you’re debating a KPI. The next day the KPI, the team, the reporting line and half the PowerPoint have changed.

That is what makes these periods so strange. Big organizational change rarely feels dramatic while it is approaching. Most of the time, Tuesday still feels exactly like Tuesday.

Until an email lands.

I have absolutely no inside information, which makes me about as qualified as everyone else to read the corporate tea leaves.

But this particular September has a very strong “enjoy the current org chart while supplies last” energy.

For the Honeywell veterans: what was the biggest “business as usual… until it wasn’t” moment you’ve seen here?

I suspect the comments on this one could be educational.

With losing more states and maybe more to come, has anyone heard if they will adjust VSP staggered dates?

A couple of the leaders that “retired” have been near the top of the wireless organization pyramid for a long time. Does anyone know whether this is the just the usual game of leadership musical chairs or whether effective change is coming?

Heard that they are thinking of playing around with the WFH policy. Sales maybe in office 4 days a week and the rest of company stay 3 days. To be decided, they are not sure based on seating availability.

This is apparently my next “article,” because someone needs to do it. The starting point is Centene’s announcement of Bradley Bolivar as its new CIO.

For those who slept through history class, Simón Bolívar was “El Libertador,” the guy who helped lead multiple South American countries to independence from Spanish rule and had a habit of overthrowing the existing order. And now the new CIO is Bradley Bolivar, not Simón, and as far as I know they’re not related. But given what Bradley is walking into at Centene, the name is almost too good. So I’m calling my completely unlicensed prediction of what happens next The Bolivar Revolution.

I went digging because executive press releases tell you approximately nothing. Bolivar comes from Fannie Mae with a legitimately serious résumé in cloud, architecture, data, AI, automation, security, and enterprise transformation. And unlike some executive bios where “AI” magically appeared around November 2022, this guy appears to have actually done some of this sh-t.

The timing is also hilarious. Bolivar isn’t the only senior person leaving Fannie Mae. They’ve been going through major workforce and leadership upheaval, including roughly 1,200 departures in 2025 (8200 in 2024, 7000 now) and another recent purge of senior officials. Some of the latest eliminations were even attributed partly to increasing AI capabilities. So naturally Bradley likely looked around at that widespread organizational hellfire and apparently thought, ”You know where I’d like to go next? Centene.” 😉
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/articles/trump-administration-dismisses-dozen-officials-194058657.html

Here’s my prediction. There are four ways this could go:

A: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Bolivar inherits Brian LeClaire’s organization, Susan Moon and DXE keep rolling, Accenture keeps collecting checks, “AI” gets stapled onto a few more PowerPoints, somebody invents six new acronyms, and eventually we declare the transformation transformed. (least likely)

B: The new sheriff starts asking questions. Why does this organization exist? Who owns this capability? Why is this outsourced? What exactly does this SOW produce? Where’s the data? How are we measuring value? And my personal favorite: why can’t Centene do this ourselves? Accenture probably isn’t going anywhere, but having to prove your value to the new CIO is a little different from being embedded by the old one, given this is basically the playbook they’ve used a few times before.

C: Fannie Mae South. This is the one to watch. Fannie is shedding experienced senior people at exactly the moment Bolivar takes over Centene technology. If one or two trusted Bolivar lieutenants suddenly change their LinkedIn employer to Centene, grab popcorn. Architecture, data, AI, engineering, security, and digital could start getting redrawn around his operating model rather than the one he inherited. As previously discussed by many, Moon and several others came from Brian LeClaire’s previous orbit. That’s how executive networks work. The interesting question is what happens when the new CIO shows up with a network of his own.

D: The plot twist. Bolivar eventually discovers that eliminating internal expertise, institutional knowledge, measurement, governance, and the annoying people who knew how all the pieces actually worked together wasn’t quite the efficiency play somebody thought it was. Centene quietly rebuilds the same connective tissue under exciting new names, adds three layers of management to it, and probably pays somebody $8-20 million to explain why it’s necessary.

My completely unlicensed crystal ball says B + C eventually produces D. Bolivar didn’t build his reputation maintaining somebody else’s org chart, and Sarah London didn’t say data, technology, and AI will “shape how we operate” because she wanted a caretaker CIO. The first real signal won’t be whatever shiny AI announcement comes next. Watch who follows him from Fannie, which boxes start moving at Centene, and which consulting SOWs suddenly have to explain why they exist.

There is at least one qualification we can probably remove from Bradley’s onboarding checklist: “Ability to navigate highly matrixed organizations.” The guy is leaving Fannie Mae amid leadership turnover, workforce reductions, political intervention, AI-driven job elimination, and general organizational hellfire, and walking directly into Centene.

He doesn’t need matrix training. He needs a helmet and directions to the bathroom.

Welcome to ”OneCenteam,” Bradley. You’ll be fine. 😂🍿

Another TRM casualty. Just heard the new ED is gone. I am surprised she stayed so long. I was starting to wonder if she had good sense or was just desperate. When I heard what she was working on, I was shocked then I was not. She had a good poker face but it broke after a while. That Harvard and Cornell training didn’t stop her from being relegated to “the sunny committee” leader was almost too shameful to laugh at.

At the risk of sounding like I’m “whining” to my opps… yeah, I’m talking to you. 😂

Lemme get this right… Centene just hired the former Fannie Mae CIO to lead technology, data, and AI.

Sarah London: ”We are entering a new era where data, technology and AI are not just business enablers, but strategic capabilities that shape how we operate, innovate and create value.”

Meanwhile they’ve been cutting internal technology capabilities, pushing a ton of work to Accenture and Cognizant, reorganizing everything that isn’t nailed down, and shedding institutional knowledge along the way.

And the new CIO says: “I look forward to building on the strong foundation already in place…”

😂

So… cut, outsource, reorganize, shed institutional knowledge, then announce that technology, data, and AI are strategic capabilities and hire someone to “build on the strong foundation.”

They are effin brilliant. 🙃

Source: https://investors.centene.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1169/centene-appoints-bradley-bolivar-as-chief-information-officer

The company is fundamentally misunderstanding what needs to happen to the structure of the organization - they are busy pushing out people who do things instead of people who manage things. It's the management layers that wont be needed in the future - they can be replaced by AI. The loss of knowledge and expertise provided by the doers will impact the corporation not the removal of management layers which are just there to polish KPIs and powerpoints. The top heavy organization will crash in on itself. It's time to cut the exec layers.

Every year, employees are asked to be honest and say how they really feel. We take the time to fill out the survey, the results are reviewed, presentations are made, and action plans are discussed.

And then… what actually changes?

AI is positioned to be removing many jobs in the name of OBD.

over all the culture around pretty much in all teams is deteriorating. old guard still in team resistance to changes & creating negative environment. don't know how to deal with these people.

Ever wondered why this question always scores the lowest?

I think that's because leaders don't give a flying f to people who can understand and fix the process. Process teams are either working on spi maintenance with low value, paid very low or buried under change managers who have no clue about the process. A handful of leaders in the organisation give importance to process and until process ideas move out of change teams, there's little hope for improvement here. AI is no help to a bad process. What do you think?

Read the HO QA questions and the ELT answers and seems to me like they will now be masking ISPs and layoffs with a term titled Future Ways of Working… I am all for the future and the tech we can invest in but my issue is we are nowhere ready for all that and I feel still years away from what they are wanting to do.

Now that Mike Lipps is running Coupa, I’m curious what former/current Qlik employees can share about his operating style there.

How did he approach layoffs, reorganizations, replacing C-level executives, acquisitions/integration, and cost cutting? Was he generally a “steady the ship” CEO, or did he make pretty significant changes when he came in?

I’m particularly interested in what actually happened on the ground versus the official company messaging.

Re-org after re-org. New processes that are more complicated than the old ones. We can't move forward because we're too busy moving sideways. Nothing ever gets better, nothing gets simpler. Just endless sideways shuffling.

With all the recent reports my manager now reports to India and there is a written public goal that our job is to build capability in Bangalore. How long until they fire my group? Anyone else experiencing similar changes?

Thoughts? They’re in the transition, why not? Shift a bit of sakes sales.
Less risk and guaranteed a cut for Senior Leadership.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about Centene over the weekend. I’ve talked about most of this in pieces before, but when you put it all together, the picture doesn’t look good.

Well-run companies are building their own technology, automation and AI skills because those things will run the business in the future. UnitedHealthcare said on its July 16 earnings call that AI is already used across its administrative work and in nearly every provider and member interaction. It is even automating complex claims that once required people to review them. UnitedHealth is investing about $1.5 billion in AI and wants 80% of prior authorizations processed in real time by the end of 2027. Like them or not, they built much of that capability through Optum and they own it.

Centene is going the other way. It is pushing out thousands of people who understand its systems, data, business rules, and history. Then it is reportedly paying Cognizant between $500 million and $1 billion to use TriZetto for claims, billing, and customer service. At the same time, cut-rate SOW tech jobs are showing up for work that looks a lot like what former Centene employees were doing. The jobs didn’t disappear. They were moved somewhere cheaper, with less ownership and less accountability.

Centene’s Q2 filing says it expects to spend $355–$405 million on severance and contract exits, plus another $85–$115 million on outside companies helping with “enterprise optimization.” That doesn’t include the full reported Cognizant deal. This isn’t cutting costs as much as moving them from employees to vendors.

Here’s the scary part. Centene already has the highest ACA prior-authorization denial rate among major insurers at 25%. In Medicare Advantage, 93% of its appealed denials were overturned. Those numbers suggest the decisions already need work. Now Centene wants to automate more of them through a system run by someone else.

What happens when that system is wrong thousands of times? Who checks the rules? Who stops it? Who can reverse the decisions? Who inside Centene will know enough to push back when Cognizant says everything is working as designed?

UnitedHealthcare has publicly said doctors will still be involved when care is denied and that its call centers will never be fully automated. What has Centene promised? Who will make sure it happens after so many of the people who understand the work are gone?

A Cognizant TriZetto business also had a data breach affecting roughly 3.4 million people. It was not necessarily the same TriZetto platform Centene may use, but it is still a fair reason to ask hard questions about security and giving one vendor this much control.

The board and leadership changes add another piece. Lauren Tyler, who has experience in audit, investor relations, HR and private equity, joined the board in June. Paul Diaz, a healthcare private-equity leader and former CEO of Kindred and Myriad, joined in July. That same day, former WellCare CEO and Centene executive Ken Burdick left the board. Now Drew Asher is leaving the CFO job. Maybe none of this is connected. But add the buyouts, layoffs, new leadership structure, board changes, Cognizant deal, and replacement SOW jobs, and it sure looks connected.

Reporters and analysts have plenty to cover with earnings, membership and medical costs. But somebody should also be asking what the full Cognizant deal includes, how many Centene jobs are being replaced by vendor jobs, who will own the rules and data, what all of this will really cost, and how Centene gets out if TriZetto doesn’t work.

There are still missing pieces. If you’re seeing public SOW postings, job titles, rates, vendor names, work moving offshore or teams being replaced, share what you know. No names or confidential information. Just help fill in the picture.

• This isn’t simplification. Centene may be handing over its ability to run itself, one SOW at a time.*

After careful consideration, extensive feedback, and realizing that nobody actually wants to commute five days a week, we’re pleased to announce that AT&T has decided to stop pretending 5x RTO makes any sense.

Effective immediately:

• Badge swipes are no longer a measure of productivity.
• Your commute is no longer considered part of your workday.
• Managers may once again manage people based on results.
• Teams may work remotely when the work can be done remotely.
• “Presence” reports will be repurposed for something useful.
• And most importantly, you are no longer required to sit in a building for eight hours to prove you have a job.

Thank you for your patience while we spent several billion dollars and a couple years figuring out what everyone already knew.

The way we work has changed. We should probably change with it.

RMSU is gone Nor Cal and PNW still online heard certain teams in mechanical came close to being shut down, territory got expanded here. Sounds like more TCIs will be in the works as they want everyone mobile.

Why so many executives and team members from Network moved under Vivek?
What’s the end goal ? There is Network SVP reporting to Vivek. They used to be peers.

I've seen good people try to make things better repeatedly. They proposed ideas, challenged bad processes, and tried to push change, and all they got for that was being put on the next layoff list. The only way to survive this place is to keep your head down and do what you're told. The new Dell way.

Arizona employees — we see what’s happening.

Arizonans, we want to hear from you.

Leadership keeps telling us they “don’t know” what’s happening, but then how do they explain all the background changes?

You don’t make major structural changes unless you’re preparing for something.

And it’s starting to feel like leadership genuinely believes employees are too stupid to notice.

Hey, we have a new president Paul T – who has a background as an asset manager. Must be here to replace Rawool?, In the failing DXC, do we think he is here to prepare a turnaround, sale, refinancing, or orderly wind-down?

T-Mobile is making leadership changes, including the departure of Mike Katz and the
rebuilding of the Un carrier spirit. The company is seeing progress in enterprise and
small-sized businesses, but the success of T-Mobile for Business is unclear. The
speakers discuss the potential for growth in the mobile business and the importance
of maintaining a fixed cost versus variable cost decision.The potential for disruptive companies to move into themobile space, with T-Mobile and Charter expected to see strong growth. TheSo we got some leadership changes taking place across the industry. Most recently, T Mobile where Mike Katz is stepping away after two decades. Coming on board at T Mobile as their new chief enterprise officer is Chris Sambar, who will be leadingthe SMB enterprises and government businesses. What we are observing here at T Mobile is with Srini Gopalan, a rebuilding, and we talked about thiswhen Srini came on board, a rebuilding of the Un carrier into a company that is even more focused
now on execution than it was ever before.With Greenie now being deeper in the saddle, and we saw like half a dozen of senior execs already leaving, the senior leadership team is like three quarters new.We see that Sriniis putting his team in place. You know, Andre Almeida, who came from Europe, oneof his close lieutenants of Srini's lieutenants, he ran the expanded enterprise group that not only hasbusiness init, but also like key ads and the Al efforts. He is now moving over as the president of marketing.It will be very interesting of how Andre will do that.They hired Chris Sambar, who, up until about two years ago, was at AT&T, a highly respected executive, a terrific leader, straight sho-ter, great executor, one of the architects and implementers of AT&T's FirstNet success story. For the last two years, he was like the COO of a storage company, and
now he's coming back to telecom. With Chris, T Mobile is getting a terrific executive. When we look at T Mobile for Business, they're making progress. They're growing. For somebody like Chris to come in, there's only upside,you know? In comparison, it's a huge number as a multiple. In absolute numbers, we always knew it was like.modest, but you have to start somewhere. And so, Andre is handing over that portfolio, and | think Chris will execute very well here. Yes. It will. Yeah. Well, let's see exactly where Chris takes this. On his farewell LinkedIn post or his goodbye to T Mobile LinkedIn post, Katz mentioned that he startedas ajunior in college as anin store sales rep. And with him, T Mobile and you have to give TMobile a lot of credit for rewriting telecom and, as they like to say, changing wireless for the better.He has a big role in this. He was also instrumental in forging the MVNO between the cable companiesand T Mobile for the business side. He never got enough credit for this. He was kind of the unsunghero here. | watched this over like five years happening, and how this slowly progressed forward.And without him, T Mobile would not have closed that MVNO agreement. You know, the cable companies just recently, and | don't think there was a big announcement about it,
they fully launched on T Mobile. | would say that the cable guys the cable guys are coming for small and mid.Now that
they have an offer where they can address up to a thousand lines, | would expect that the cable companies will get a lot, lot stronger in business on the mobile side.So, it will be an increasingly crowded space where three very disruptive companies, T Mobile witha new leader, Charter and Comcast, especially a Charter that will have absorbed Cox soon, play the.business market You know, we mentioned it before, T Mobile made about six monthsago the opposite decision of adding more company owned stores. For me, more company owned stores means you're more bullish that you have pretty consistent traffic where you put them.Whereas the variable decision, you don't know if it goes up or down, and you only want tocompensate for performance is when you move towards mobile.And from the T Mobile front, a branding perspective, you own the overall experience. So youyou are making sure that your employees are giving those customers exactly what they want.Obviously, you need the foot traffic to make that happen first and foremost. But, yeah, it's an.interesting divergence.At AT&T, about a month ago, Pascal Desroches announced he'll be retiring from a CFO position at the end of the year, and he will be replaced by Jennifer Beery. She's an AT&T alum,most recently CFO and COO at McAfee. Thoughts on Pascal stepping down?
Well, Pascal was the right man at the right time. He came in with John Stankey taking over as CEO,and he established a different tone than John Stevens had. Pascal really established faith and trust
and transparency back into the AT&T numbers. Under John Stevens, they changed how they reportedthe number almost every quarter. And it was so difficult to reconcile of what's actually going on in the
company and what the numbers said.
And as a result, none of the analysts trusted really AT&T's numbers. And a result, the stock traded ata discount of where it should trade. Pascal, who is a great person, really simplified how the company
was reporting, made it a lot more transparent, which also helped the company then to fully
demonstrate the success it has made over time, and how the company has focused on thefundamentals that has made AT&T an American icon. John Stankey refocused the company's strategyonconvergence. And Pascal told the story very successfully to Wall Street and investors.We did some work around investor relations. And one of the things that's also very interesting is
about half of AT&T's shareholders are retail shareholders. And what came out of that work that we did is that PASCAL restored the trust of small investors in the company. Investor Relations typically only deal with the massive investors, which is only half of the universe. And so, you know, Jennifer is coming in.She worked for John Stankey also before. When you go back when Jennifer worked for John the first
time around, John was very effusive about the qualifications of Jennifer. And I'm sure it hurt him when she stepped away. And what you need inthe relationship between the CEO and the CFO is a trusting relationship, you know, next to the COO. It's the most critical relationship you have.| always like to say the CEO is the brain of the company. The COO is the heart in Jeff McAlfresh. Hemoves the blood through the organization. The CFO is the lungs. They supply the oxygen that the
heart needs to push the blood through and to supply also the brain with oxygen.John gets back somebody he knows, he trusts, and based on what he said inthe past, admires and really gets along with.

Large number of them can be replaced with AI far easier than your lower level SMEs.

Honeywell Aerospace is pushing hard to adopt direct charge billing across every business unit. I am on a team (I won’t say which one) that is going from indirect to direct, and it’s going to be a huge mess. We’ve been assured by our management that it’s only going to be a small change with how we do business, but the devil is in the details. We now have a work-to-time-off ratio we need to keep in balance and our overhead billing is expected to be very tiny.

Thank you Eliot for messing with a formula that worked just fine before.

We are hearing Tara has been tasked to further reduce heads and after voluntary the target will be to consolidate duplication especially in teams that have merged eg MEA AND EUROPE. There can be some major changes at lower levels. This could re shape the whole thinking and way forward for this group. Profitable areas getting hit!

Wish the IGS boys and girls luck at AIP .. hopefully Trew can get the company back in shape after the big H destroyed it.

I can only imagine the horror in the new leadership's faces when they finally get an unfiltered view underneath the hood-- Chad and Girish were probably smart to stay behind.

He says he's learning and no immediate changes are coming but lets be for real

Does anyone have any insight on how they have handled previous reorgs? Do they assign you to a new role? Are you given options? Do you have to reapply? Is it simply this is your new position starting this date or you can leave?

Just my opinion, but after the last organizational shake-up, I wouldn’t be surprised if history repeats itself.

One question I keep coming back to: A.C. championed the “ways of working” in the previous CXO organization. Has anyone objectively looked at whether those same approaches may have contributed to some of the challenges the organization faced?

Hopefully the new organization has a different outcome—but time will tell. 🍿