#leadership

It’s honestly wild, good for them buddying up with M.L. from the start and getting in his ear on who to cut, that’s worked out well so far! (For them) ….But hey smart move by HR, they all get promoted and never laid off. I’m not saying they don’t provide value overall, but I find it odd/maybe the reason that they are the kingpins of this failing company…

I love this company. I came here from a completely different industry 5 years ago. I was drawn by the owner’s story in a Harvard Business Review article. I still think it’s a great company, on the balance. What I wish the leaders would understand is that AI is an amplifier. If you feed it noise (e.g. “bad” data, unclear business logic / rules), it will amplify chaos. If you feed it good stuff like a piece of beautifully crafted music (e.g. well designed process with “good” data and clear rules), it can turn it into concert. How do you get the “good” stuff? Through your SMEs, through SMEs working closely together, TRUSTING each other, by respectfully challenging each other. It’s hard work. There’s no switch, no buttons you can press. You won’t get there by trusting outsiders, trusting people who agree with you at all times, trusting copilot AI slop, that’s how organizations walk off a cliff. It’s the same old boring things. Cleaner diet, exercise, good habits that determine good health outcomes. Don’t be tempted by the weight loss pills (eg GLP1), because not only are you NOT going to get what you want sustainably. There are a TON of unknown side effects that you will pay a hefty price for. Excellent output requires excellent inputs and excellent process. Right now, the market is up, and we have tolerance for trying out GLP1. What happens when the market is down? Still, I love this firm and its people, and I focus on the little I have control over. There is hope yet

The SIU townhall, which was already reduced from monthly to quarterly, was just canceled today for the 8/31/2026 scheduled date. The last SIU town hall was in May and the next one is not until November. Sabrina continues to demonstrate that she refuses to face us and take accountability!!

new CIO starts today, was CIO at Fannie Mae

Seeing another Chief executive hire this week and more VP hires. Can someone explain the logic?

Very excellent engineers have been laid off……
Businessmen like Sassine only know about profits and keep reducing his holdings of the company's stocks at low levels, which shows that he has no intention of bringing the company towards normal profitability and only has his own interests in mind.
As a CEO, such a person will cause the company to collapse

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.

There is an old leadership principle: A leader's competence is measured by what they build, but their accountability is measured by what they ignore.

For nearly a decade at Centene, General Counsel Chris Koster has held primary responsibility for legal and regulatory oversight. Yet under his watch, the company has paid millions of dollars in state and federal settlements while the compliance infrastructure scrambled to contain the fallout.

To understand how a health plan incurs ten-figure regulatory penalties, one need only examine the appointment of Ashlee Knuckey as Chief Compliance Officer.

When Koster tapped Knuckey for the CCO seat, he elevated an individual directly from a law firm background, a litigator with no operational tenure in corporate compliance programs, no track record in managed care execution, and no prior experience as a Chief Compliance Officer.

What followed was four years of organizational turbulence disguised as a "compliance transformation."

Repeated internal escalations warned that the program lacked basic execution standards, structural clarity, and the foundational knowledge required to build an effective managed care compliance framework. These warnings were brushed aside. For four years, the enterprise operated in a state of compliance compromise, a persistent vulnerability that no amount of settlement checks can permanently ensure against.

Now, following Knuckey's exit, Koster has embarked on a series of "listening sessions" across the department. The timing invites obvious skepticism: where was he for the last four years?

Centene cannot pay its way out of fundamental governance failures indefinitely. Listening after the damage is done is not oversight, it is reputation management. If leadership failed to act on internal warnings when the compliance program was being dismantled, these listening tours are not a course correction. They are optics management.

Real protection requires leadership that understands what compliance actually entails on the ground. As Centene searches for a new Chief Compliance Officer, one directive must remain non-negotiable: do not hire another law firm attorney without operational compliance managed care experience. The next CCO must be a proven industry veteran who has successfully built and led compliance programs inside complex healthcare payers.

If Koster wants to demonstrate actual accountability now, he should step back from isolated decision-making and bring frontline Compliance team members directly into the interview process for the next CCO.

Otherwise, Sarah London needs to ask the hard question: after ten years and a billion dollars in regulatory costs, what, exactly, has Chris Koster been doing?!

September’s layoffs will be fu--ing brutal but don’t worry, Nike’s galaxy-brained leadership will graciously ‘support’ you all the way to the exit, then congratulate themselves for showing empathy.

One of the most toxic IT leaders recently departed. This is, in my view, a direct consequence of the weak CIO hired by the previous CFO shortly before her own departure. The CIO subsequently pushed out most of the organization’s senior IT talent, leaving the team disproportionately reliant on the remaining toxic leadership. I would not be surprised if the broader IT organization were to unravel by year-end.

Detroit Employment Solutions Corp. is implementing significant cost-cutting measures, including laying off a third of its staff, to address a substantial budget deficit. The agency's financial troubles stem partly from the expiration of COVID-19 recovery funds and accounting errors. Key leadership positions, including CEO and CFO, are also being replaced. Despite these internal challenges, the agency asserts that direct services to Detroiters seeking employment remain unaffected. Efforts are underway to secure funding for vital programs like Grow Detroit's Young Talent.

Detroit, Michigan

https://outliermedia.org/detroit-at-work-job-training-unemployment/

Whatever the reasons behind his departure, from where I sit Dallas was one of the few senior leaders who seemed to genuinely understand how sales at NetApp needs to function — how the field, partners, customers and internal teams actually need to work together to win.

At a time when the organisation already feels like it is going through constant change, losing someone with that level of commercial understanding raises even more questions about the direction we are heading in.

People keep talking about transformation, high achievement and driving results, but you also have to ask why experienced people who understand the business are leaving.

Who is actually listening to the people on the ground?

Anyone else seeing what’s happening in the UK?

Good people are leaving, particularly women, and others seem completely burnt out. Yet we still hear all the usual talk about diversity, inclusion and people being our biggest asset.

Since the leadership change, the culture feels completely different. There seems to be a leadership style being imposed that just doesn’t translate well to the UK market or the way teams here have historically operated.

More pressure, more workload, questionable appointments and everything coming back to the numbers. People can deliver what’s asked of them and still somehow be told they need to improve.

And it’s not just employees noticing the change. Some partners and customers are starting to see the disconnect too, which should be a much bigger concern for the business.

NetApp UK used to have a great reputation and culture. It’s sad watching that disappear.

Did EH fix us yet?

Pathetic

How much longer is it going to take? Apparently HP has an inflated view of who should take the job than who is actually interested in it.

Anyone notice the trends last 2 years?

Tim Cook steps down as Apple, $AAPL, CEO on August 31 after taking the company from ~$350 billion to over $4 trillion.

John Stankey steps down as AT&T, $T, CEO after taking the company from ~$215 billion to ~$178 billion.

Apple increased its market cap by roughly $3.65 trillion and AT&T lost roughly $37 billion.

Six years. Two CEOs. Completely different outcomes. I wonder why?

One led through massive innovation and growth. The other spent years making questionable strategic decisions resulting in failures of epic proportions, while simultaneously alienating the workforce with policies like 5x RTO, cutting costs and talent, and destroying culture and morale.

But I’m sure Stankey will find a way to explain how all of this is somehow the employees’ fault.

Get this l0ser Stankey out!

We do not need a stay of execution; we need certainty and security.
Leadership has lost its humanity in what was once a great company, where people genuinely came first. PayPal is no longer a company I’m proud to work for.

I would welcome the opportunity, if given the appropriate platform, to publicly and constructively critique the decisions and leadership approach that have brought us to this point. People deserve transparency, accountability, and to be treated with dignity—not uncertainty and fear.

The traditional five-day office week was sold to us for decades as some kind of sacred law of business. Executives insisted that without people physically sitting in a cubicle, collaboration would fall apart, productivity would tank, and "culture" (whatever that means) would just evaporate.

Then 2020 happened. In a matter of weeks, half the working world moved to their kitchen tables, and it turned out the whole thing was less about performance and more about control.

Here's how the forced remote work experiment kind of blew up the core myths of office culture.

1. The Productivity Mirage

The big scary warning was always: unsupervised employees will slack off. Turns out that was backwards. Multiple studies during the pandemic showed productivity held steady or even went up when people worked from home. No more open-floor-plan noise, no more soul-crushing commutes — people actually got hours of real, focused work done. Turns out showing up isn't the same thing as producing anything. Output matters, not butt-in-seat time.

2. The Collaboration Cult

Leadership loves to say innovation needs "watercooler moments" and everyone breathing the same recycled office air. And sure, in-person brainstorming has its place. But the pandemic proved you don't need five days a week of shared oxygen to collaborate well. Teams got good at async work fast — people had time to actually think before responding instead of just performing enthusiasm in a meeting room. Real connection comes from intentional communication, not a shared zip code.

3. The Real Estate Sunk-Cost Problem

When companies push hard for a full return-to-office despite everyone hating it, the stated reasons rarely add up. A lot of these orgs are locked into 10-15 year commercial leases, and an empty building is just a giant unrecoverable cost sitting on the balance sheet. So forcing people back to their desks is often less about "performance" and more about justifying an expensive real estate bet nobody wants to admit was a mistake.

4. The Illusion of Culture

"Culture" got used as a guilt trip to drag people back to their desks — like camaraderie only exists within four walls. But most people figured out pretty quick that real culture isn't free snacks and a ping pong table. It's psychological safety, respect for your time outside of work, fair pay, and people actually communicating clearly. Once the office perks got stripped away, you could see they were just distractions from bad work-life boundaries the whole time.

The Bottom Line: Outcomes Over Attendance

The whole remote work experiment showed that the five-day office mandate was more of a leftover habit than an actual business requirement. Hybrid setups are a fine middle ground for teams that need occasional in-person time, but the idea that full-time office attendance is non-negotiable just doesn't hold up anymore.

Work isn't a place anymore — it's a thing you do. Companies that don't get that are gonna keep losing their best people to competitors who actually care about results instead of just watching who's in their seat at 9am.

Our leader just hides while our company is attacked daily. This guy has no control over any situation or any type of plan. You just get 10 minutes of him reading off a script every three months on an earnings call. You can hear him flip the pages it’s so embarrassing.

NIke really needs to address its hiring and assess talent and performance culture. Business is in the sh*tier and leaders can no longer get by with keeping their friends and inner circle safe. Right now, way too many people are getting by purely on favoritism and nepotism while others carry the actual workload.

Also, trying to reach a younger demographic shouldn't mean handing senior titles to former athletes who lack business experience and corporate work ethic. We need a realistic balance of proven experience and institutional knowledge if we want the company to succeed.

Does anyone know how many VPs were let go this week in NA? I heard a U.S. West Sales VP, a Central based PUB Sales VP, and a West-Central SVP were cut. One was very good at her job.
Any other news?

Are there any real leaders that you admire in XOM?

Alert went off this morning. Good times for another executive. From publicly available information…

Chris Koster, Centene’s General Counsel:

2023: $4.84M
2024: $5.06M
2025: $6.51M

On August 18, 2026, Koster sold 47,603 Centene shares for roughly $3.11 million. $16.4M in three years. Cha-Ching sir! Here are the stock trades:

https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/insiders/koster-christopher-1108982

Not bad for the top lawyer at a company whose business is largely administering taxpayer-funded healthcare.

Koster went from county prosecutor → Missouri Senator → Missouri Attorney General → Centene executive.

So basically, decades in Missouri government followed by millions a year at one of the country’s largest Medicaid contractors.

At least someone figured out how to make Medicaid profitable. But sure, keep cutting the people doing the actual work. That ought to fix the margins. And congrats, Chris. Don’t spend it all in one place.

I get it, they will not be promoted. We don’t want them over us. But that doesn't mean they have to leave. Just take the paycheck, be quiet, and don’t ask for a career. That’s not too much to ask. Like promotes like, we only promote what looks like us, sorry…

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/accenture-ceo-julie-sweet-makes-a-vacation-request-to-employees-for-this-august/articleshow/133284654.cms

What is behind that Smile?

More layoffs are set to roll out in America on Monday. I'm numb. 2.48 billion dollar revenue but they still decide to layoff the people making it happen. This is beyond parody. SHAPE survey comes out and says people are unhappy and Synopsys leadership decides to keep beating the dead horse. Unbelievable

Source: Dr. Mullen

I once hired someone smarter than me. I hated how it made me feel.

→ They were sharper in meetings.
→ Faster with decisions.
→ More technically capable than I was.

Instead of feeling proud, I felt exposed.

I started wondering:

If they're better than me, what exactly am I bringing to the table?

Then it hit me.

I was competing with talent I was supposed to be leading. So I changed how I led.

1️⃣ I asked more questions than I answered.
↳ My job wasn't to have every answer. It was to get the best thinking into the room.

2️⃣ I gave credit publicly.
↳ If someone was better than me at something, I wanted everyone to know it.

3️⃣ I shared decisions earlier.
↳ People take more ownership when they help shape the answer.

4️⃣ I made disagreement safe.
↳ If your smartest people are afraid to challenge you, you're wasting their talent.

5️⃣ I admitted when I didn't know.
↳ Pretending to know everything wasn't leadership. It was insecurity.

6️⃣ I measured myself differently.
↳ Their growth became a better measure of my leadership than being the smartest person in the room.

That changed how I thought about talented people. I didn't need to outperform them.
I needed to create the conditions for them to outperform me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IBM_Employees/s/LypsgKSMZg

Reporting to Lesher in what they are calling a strategic advisory role as a vice chair of wholesale banking. Interesting to say the least!

Stephen Farquhar has been named the new CEO of Publicis Health Media, replacing Andrea Palmer. Farquhar previously led Publicis Health's U.S. operations. Palmer had been with Publicis for 19 years and was instrumental in PHM's growth. The reason for Palmer's departure was not officially stated. Farquhar's extensive experience includes leadership roles across various markets and industries.

https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/stephen-farquhar-takes-over-ceo-publicis-health-media

WBAL NewsRadio has undergone significant layoffs, impacting local employees and leading to the replacement of several locally hosted programs. The station has transitioned to airing nationally syndicated shows, a move that has reportedly surprised those affected. Hosts T.J. Smith and Angelette Aviles are among those who lost their positions. Leadership from WBAL NewsRadio and its owner, Hearst, have not yet commented on the situation. These changes signal a shift in the station's programming strategy, moving away from local content.

Baltimore, Maryland

https://www.thebanner.com/community/local-news/wbal-news-radio-layoffs-HXYEFMHFEJF7RKVT4XOMEVUEBA/

Since nothing else works and they are more worried about what’s on this website? Will someone please let the leaders of P66 know that the supervisors in the control center or never at work and if they do show up it’s only for a couple hours at a time it’s been like this for past year.

The new CEO is going to be amazing! There will not be any more layoffs, the 401k match will go to 12%, everyone can work remote 5 days a week, all salaries will be increased 20%, annual increases will be 10% minimum, and every teammate will get their very own unicorn!!

Or nothing will change for us grunts in the trenches and the new faces sitting in the same executive offices will still get rich off of us just like the ones currently in those offices. It really su-ks to be us.

Ramon still going after adding $10 to our price

Let’s continue to hire multiple million salaried leadership people that need to be trained, cut Nike engineering experts and have a fake ITC office where nothing gets done yet we pay millions for.
Surely that will fix our issues. Bravo, brilliant.

Please note that none of the surveys in Synopsys are anonymous.

In last yearst Shape survey, there was a question whether you believe in CEO Gh@zi leadership. All L6/M6 and above who rated 3/2/1 have either been laid off or are in the layoff pipeline.

So, play safe and give 5 ratings to such questions, basically lick the @ss in surveys unless you are in notice period.