#cultureshift

One less great company with a value proposition and an amazing corporate culture to be bought out….

Humana is falling apart! What is going on?

I thought the Innovation without disruption strategy made a lot of sense and was confident it going to work, especially with the hybrid connect strategy (allowing legacy systems to connect into new cloud services/analytics seamlessly). When PD came on as CEO, that seemed to quickly change, and any legacy seemed to become a bad word to be thrown away like garbage. I investigated what PD did at previous CEO role at Aspect, and it seemed to be a complete distain for anything legacy there as well. Only now, I see that company (Alvaria) seems to recognize the mistake and trying to restore Aspect legacy as a business after it was decimated by PD. AM seemed like a pretty smart guy and the team under him as well. They all came up with this Innovation without disruption strategy (after actually talking to customers) and I thought it was going to work. I am disappointed that the company is being flushed down the toilet now by PD.

Destroyed our great Company !

It looks that only numbers matters. It's now a CFO driven company.
I've been told that no-one wants to join Oracle now, as can be fired in 1month, 1year. Or low paid jobs for intern/early guys.
Even Gartner magic quadrant won't support, people hate this culture, and are not productive at all.

For decades Nike was about growth, optimism and building greatness which drove culture and results. Now it is a place where people are fighting to survive and make decisions out of fear. Much different, and won't work ever.

Ive read the post here and they are damning. Makes me fear for my career.

Edward Jones culture is long gone. Please reference what made this place special and how they ki-led it.

I’ll go first: Our customer is the branch team and we should move Heaven and Earth to help them achieve what they are asking for. Next!

Our Journey these past 6 years…

For those who started in 2019 and after, the firm was not this way. It ranked highly on Best Places to Work, JD Power for both client and associate satisfaction, etc. It was a place where qualifications, education, experience, and success mattered. Not your makeup at birth. It was a place where our MP didn’t get lost in creating grandiose corporate speak or buzzwords where she thinks eloquence means leadership - it doesn’t. You may not be responsible for this situation, you are not to blame but without you knowing it - you helped create it. It was a firm who took pride in the strong workforce it created.

A timeline of a cultural crisis:

2019:
January 1 - Penny becomes the 6 managing partner.
T1 - Ambitious goal setting starts on corporate and field representation on various societal, political, and cultural ideology important to her agenda. The word smithing goes into hyperdrive. The field become disenchanted with her verbiage on “our clients”. This becomes a lightening rod of contention with those who create the revenue versus those who decide to split it.
T2 - Same as above
T3 - Same as above
Penny earned $11.5 million in 2018. Her first year in 2019 as MD she received a modest increase in pay to $11.67 million.

2020: COVID

March 14th - home office associates are sent home.
March 20th - STL Business Journal publishes an article on Penny’s pick as Chief of Human Resources, Kristin Johnson. Titled “Life in Balance: Kristin Johnson runs hard at work and play”. This article lauds her zero experience in HR and how Kristin feels being an entry level c-suite executive to a new role adds confidence with those she leads and builds trust around the policy of the firm. This is a watershed mark in Penny placing mandates on hiring quotas for people unqualified for roles. Across the firm hiring requisitions are left open longer than 365 days to hit certain quotas.
March/April - Penny takes a page from 2009 and freezes wages. Only to repeal her decision a few weeks later as her public pay increase is published. Her pay raise is 25.7% to $14.7 million.
April - we have 473 general partners.
T3 - Penny, sensing continued dissatisfaction with field leadership and in line with her belief that a merit based decision process is cumbersome, invites all RLs into the GP population ballooning the number to over 700.
October an associate sends the following to Penny’s Page:
“Never have I felt so disconnected from the firm and where it seems to be headed. It's not COVID and working remotely. That part doesn't help to be sure, but it's more a divergence in mindset and philosophy. I've grown up feeling extremely aligned with the firm. The business was relatively simple, leadership was transparent, trustworthy and directional. It's not any one thing that's changed. It's all of it. And I think it's as you have described it - slowly and then suddenly. I would guess that as someone reads this, they will probably take it as affirmation that the firm is making the needed changes and that losing someone like me along the way is a necessary by-product. Might be true. But it's also precisely what I mean by what is changing at the firm. The firm I knew would have cared and truly wanted to bring everyone along. I feel like now, this might merely be an afterthought and the unfortunate but necessary exhaust fumes of a firm accelerating away from who it was.”

2021:
March - field attrition is spiking. Divisive rhetoric and policies are challenging the FA ethos “We’ll leave you alone as long as you run a sound, profitable, and ethical office”
March - industry news shares her pay is now $22.6 million and that Penny will start the $1.5 billion tech spend and buy a RIA.
Mid Year - her plans to buy an industrial bank starts to unravel.
Mid Year - yearly home office local events like Six Flags and Grants Farm are cancelled since HBAs are unable to attend.
T3- in addition to increased field attrition, home office veteran departures start to increase. Trimester bonuses start to decrease across the home office. A trend that is present today.

2022:
Billions in assets are hemorrhaging. FAs dissatisfied at the slowness of adoption is preventing them from evolving leave for other firms.
The uptick in GP departures increases. The political and DEI measures creates the liability and discrimination lawsuits that snowballs into 2025.
July 2 - Jennifer Marcontell leaves for Ameriprise
Penny makes certain FAs a partner to prevent their exodus.
Since 2022 to present the outflow of level 10s has never been this high.
Former partners go into competition with Edward Jones in creating their own firm.
2022 is the year that Penny decides internal talent are not suitable to her agenda. She hires David Chubak and others from outside of the industry and a few BDs.
The amount of capital balloons which, in turn, su-ks profit and preventing further investment back into the business.

2023:
The home office hiring spree with bloated salaries and sign on bonuses creates an overspend of the hiring budget by $20 million.

November 29 - An email is sent to all home office associates titled, “The Home Office Colleague Experience”. A 9 minute video where Penny wanted to give “timely updates around our work to improve the home office’s colleague experience”. A Mea Culpa was issued regarding the past few years and that Jennifer Kingston will prioritize both Total Rewards and morale while combating the dark cloud that became the climate. An extra vacation day was provided to all associates as the first step. Penny states that since July 2020, the firm had hired 2,700 new associates due to the past few years of attrition and new leaders trying to restructure their teams and departments because they did not understand the model they inherited. The loss of years of a culture and the brain trust of experience has created a vacuum especially with new leaders and associates trying to understand the Edward Jones ecosystem.

2024:
T1 - Penny says her husband is “afraid we’re going to run out of money during retirement”. Her 2024 total earnings get a 15.7% bump to $29 million.
T2 - The SFA feedback on the ELT is the lowest ever recorded. Weather then address it, and realizing the need to build out the UHNW area and over capitalized with GP capital. The plan for Enterprise Reimagined is hatched.
T3 - Offsourcing increases rapidly to India. Roughly 400 associates in service and operations are let go with the first set of severance packages. This marks the first time for EJ to offer severances other than to GPs.

2025:
T1 - Enterprise Reimagined is formally announced.
Attrition in the field increased to 6.4 from 5.3 one year prior.
New households drop 55% when compared to a year prior.
New assets slipped by 10% year over year.
Retirement plans and aging clients to blame. The collapse of various training departments among other areas of the firm has led to a decrease in coaching on business outcomes. Asset flows to competitors increases not due to aging but increase in fees, subpar FA service, lack of cross generational planning, and FA losses.
T2 - Enterprise Reimagine is formally launched. The next timeline begins for 2026 in sourcing and shoring and 2027 will wrap up ER with AI and automation. In 2028 the next MP will not be a MP but a CEO.

Penny’s Yearly Earnings Recap:
2019 = $11.7 million.
2020 = $14.7 million.
2021 = $22.6 million.
2022 = $21.4 million.
2023 = $25 million.
2024 = $29 million.
Total = $124,400,000.

what culture changes have you noticed over the last 5 years?

For those who survived Wave 1, is this seriously the boss we all reported to now? Wow just wow. Looks gonna be toxic.

"CEO MW is overhauling the oil giant’s ‘nice’ corporate culture, getting tougher not just on his employees but also on rivals and the politicians standing in his way".

WSJ article:
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/chevron-leadership-mean-strategy-598f5c84

20 years with company I've always felt my ideas would be heard at any level...As a result I've made incredible impacts and generated value while leveraging cross functional teams.

Last few weeks I've noticed where basically I was told to "stay in my lane" and things are feeling very top down.

Is this the new chevron?