#leadership

Let’s get real peeps.

FIS bought, absorbed, renamed, reorganized, and stacked business on top of business without ever turning the whole thing into something coherent. Too many layers, too many handoffs, too many teams protecting their little kingdoms, and too many people paid to attend meetings about work instead of doing work.

That kind of structure can survive for a while, especially when revenue hides the rot. But eventually the bill comes due. And when it does, headcount is where leadership goes first.

Your impending layoff is the natural consequence of FIS getting big without getting better. The smart move is to stop treating this like a personal betrayal and start treating it like a warning. Update your resume. Call people. Look outside. Move before the axe swings.

And if you have spent years coasting inside FIS, this is the moment of truth. The market will tell you very quickly whether you were building a career or just collecting a paycheck inside a system that made underperformance easy to hide.

Get over it.

If you didn’t know, the NY Mets su-k this year and fired their manager today. The mascot, Mr. Met, seemed pretty pleased with the decision based on this video.

https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/s/9Dr6O1UYgH

We’ll all be Mr. Met when Stankey finally exits stage right.

Topgolf recently laid off hundreds of employees nationwide. The company also lost nearly $1 billion in value under previous ownership. New CEO David McKillips aims to revitalize the brand. His plan includes upgrading golf ba--s and introducing simulator leagues. McKillips also intends to expand locations and diversify entertainment options.

https://www.dmagazine.com/business-economy/2026/06/topgolf-ceo-david-mckillips-plan/

Ugh eyes roll… late joiner comes in and takes credit for “engineering 2.0” and now gets appointed head of applied AI with zero qualifications. This place runs on PowerPoint decks apparently

How is everyone doing?
Another week done and it feels like we are hamsters on wheels. Same s*** different day. We get a message from
Our Chief Revenue Officer about finishing the Q strong - with 2 days to go that’s kinda late. Where he been hanging out the last few months? Maybe if he checked integration that was supposed to help like move to D365 now even more late than the 7th version of timeline we’ll all get to a more stable position?

New CEO: "Core is a disaster, Government Programs is underwater, and our Leaders aren't accountable" ELT: "We launched an App! and it's almost WEA!" pretty much sums up life here

Since when does a company have almost every single person in the building make a decision on even the littlest things? The higher ups, like ML and that whole lot, have better things to worry about than half of the stuff they have to “approve” before anyone can actually move forward with their jobs.

Have a little faith in the people you employ, and maybe focus more on idk maybe a cohesive brand????? We’ve lost the plot entirely

You can Google it I'm not posting a link.

I got a crack out of the article. CEOs should tell us more about how they're moving jobs overseas, decimating the workforce with AI, while accepting larger and larger bonuses.

• A significant shift in sentiment has made the job of running a company tougher, with CEOs complaining they are overworked, overstressed and subjected to endless scrutiny.
  The rise of political populism and volatile shifts in trade policy have contributed to the decline in admiration for CEOs, with polls showing they are no longer as admired as they once were.*

Ed Whitacre handed over a Golden Goose to his replacements and they ki-led it. We lost our Dow status, drowning in debt, stock price declines and tarnished by failed mergers and other miscellaneous tangents!

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/oracle-layoffs-company-confirms-how-many-employees-received-email-from-oracle-leadership-at-6am-saying-that-we-have-made-the-decision-to-eliminate-your-role-as/articleshow/131930070.cms

Glad the Times of India confirmed this from the annual report. So many people. SVP’s and above who ruthlessly cut people off will be in the next rounds of RIF’s.

Larry and that C-Suite do not care who you are.

I have come to have a disdain for RIF’s and the immortality of it all. Lesson. Take your PTO. Work your posted hours. Trust no one at this company. Career growth will only come from moving out not up here.

At some point the true character of leadership is what they tell us it is. They stop being people and “act” on behalf of “the company” and that is why no one at these big companies should care beyond the minimum.

If we make the product just a little worse, profits will increase by 3.9%.

Rinse and repeat, every time a new exec takes reigns.

With time, all your products are sh-t.

Before taking the company public, Robert Wood Johnson II worried that shareholder pressure might eventually overwhelm the company's values. To prevent this, he created the famous Johnson & Johnson Credo, which established the company's priorities:

• Patients, doctors, and nurses
• Employees
• Communities
• Shareholders

He believed these priorities were so important that he had the Credo carved into massive limestone monuments placed at company headquarters.

For decades, this philosophy helped guide the company.

Eventually, however, later generations of leadership abandoned it.

He expects a cut, notes that it will be sizable but 'reasonable' (whatever that means). When I pressed with numbers did not want to share anything. I said 20K, he said unlikely, I said 10K he said maybe. Take it for what it's worth. I typically trust him as he's a good person and we have a close relationship (long story) but wanted to share that.

Watch and learn

https://youtu.be/5nbeGkLRSa8

Famous Wharton organizational psychologist argues that business leaders’ overinflated, insatiable egos—not productivity—are the real driving force behind their hatred of remote work.

https://www.inc.com/bruce-crumley/rto-isnt-about-productivity-wharton-psychologist-reveals-the-dark-truth-behind-in-office-pushes/91364877

I’ve been with Kroger for over a decade, and I have a solid understanding of the systems and the code I’m working on. I’ve collaborated with multiple 84.51° teams, and I’ve noticed that some individuals are quick to escalate what they believe are issues, even when they aren’t actual problems. It often feels like they’re trying to prove themselves rather than first understanding the context. Unfortunately, we don’t always have strong leadership support from the Kroger side to help provide that context or resolve these situations effectively.

If leadership is reading this, I encourage you to take an honest look at P. Di-kerson's track record since she joined. Consider the number of people who have left the team, the overall level of dissatisfaction, and the noticeable decline in morale.

I would challenge leadership to run a truly anonymous team survey. I believe the results would highlight concerns that many people are currently reluctant to raise openly.

Her management style creates an environment of fear rather than trust. Public criticism is common, feedback is often delivered in front of others, and people become more focused on avoiding blame than on doing their best work. Instead of encouraging ownership and collaboration, it drives people to protect themselves.

There is also very little visible self-reflection or willingness to acknowledge when her own approach may be contributing to problems. Accountability appears to be expected from everyone else, but rarely from herself.

I hope leadership takes these concerns seriously, as I believe the current environment is having a significant negative impact on employee wellbeing, engagement, and retention.

Fiserv has an opportunity to modernize how it thinks about work, productivity, and employee accountability.

The return-to-office model is being sold as “collaboration,” but for many employees, the actual workday does not support that claim. A large amount of the work still happens through Teams calls, emails, shared documents, workflow systems, and digital handoffs with colleagues, subject matter experts, developers, reviewers, and leaders who are spread across different states and locations.

That is not true in-person collaboration. That is remote work being performed from an office cubicle.

The issue is not whether employees should be accountable. They absolutely should be. The issue is whether physical presence is being mistaken for productivity.

Fiserv is a technology and financial services company. If the company wants to lead in innovation, artificial intelligence, automation, client service, and operational excellence, then it should manage employees by measurable outcomes, not outdated assumptions about “butts in seats.”

A better model would be simple:

Set clear productivity benchmarks.Set clear quality expectations.Set clear deadlines.Track cycle time, accuracy, responsiveness, client impact, rework, missed handoffs, stakeholder satisfaction, and risk reduction.Hold underperformers accountable.Reward employees who produce excellent work.Require office presence only when there is a legitimate business reason for people to be physically together.

That is a more mature operating model than blanket attendance rules.

Many employees were more willing to give extra time and discretionary effort when working from home because commuting was not draining hours and energy out of the day. When people are forced to commute to an office just to sit on virtual meetings with people in other locations, they become more protective of their time. That is not a lack of commitment. That is a rational response to an inefficient work design.

The company should ask itself a direct question:

What business outcome improves when an employee drives to an office, sits at a desk, and collaborates with remote colleagues through the same digital tools they would have used from home?

If there is a real answer, define it. Measure it. Apply it only where it makes sense.

But if the answer is vague language about culture, collaboration, or visibility, then the policy is not really about productivity. It is about control, optics, and habit.

Fiserv should not confuse visibility with value.

The future of work should not be built around where a person is sitting. It should be built around what they produce, how well they produce it, how reliably they deliver, and how much value they create for clients, teams, and shareholders.

The new CEO has a chance to reset this conversation. Not by eliminating accountability, but by making accountability smarter.

Measure the work.Measure the quality.Measure the outcomes.Measure the impact.

Then let high-performing employees do their jobs in the environment where they produce the best results, within legal, ethical, client, security, and compliance requirements.

That would be a real innovation culture.

Companies poured billions into AI with sky-high expectations. It was supposed to be the ultimate productivity hack — slashing costs, supercharging innovation, and delivering effortless competitive advantage. Executives bet big that generative AI and automation would be the simple solution to margin pressure, talent shortages, and sluggish growth.

Now the reckoning is here.

Early pilots looked magical. Chatbots answered queries, code assistants sped up development, and analytics tools promised smarter decisions. But scaling those wins across the enterprise is proving far more expensive and complicated than the headlines suggested.

The costs are piling up: massive compute infrastructure, eye-watering energy consumption, specialized talent that commands premium salaries, constant model retraining, and the hidden expense of integrating brittle AI systems into legacy workflows. Many organizations are discovering that AI doesn’t magically replace headcount — it often requires more people to manage, monitor, and refine outputs. Hallucinations, bias issues, and compliance risks add further friction and potential liability.

The result? A growing number of leaders are quietly coming to terms with a harder truth: AI is a powerful tool, not a plug-and-play savior. ROI timelines are stretching. Some projects are being quietly deprioritized or rightsized. The hype cycle is colliding with balance-sheet reality.

That doesn’t mean AI is a bust. Far from it. The companies that will win are the ones treating it as a long-term capability build rather than a quick-fix expense. They’re focusing on narrow, high-value use cases, investing in data quality, building human-AI collaboration models, and being honest about both the upside and the total cost of ownership.

The era of “just add AI” is ending. The era of thoughtful, disciplined AI adoption is beginning.
What are you seeing in your organization — genuine transformation or mounting costs? Curious to hear real experiences.

#AI #Leadership #BusinessStrategy #TechAdoption

He is here to do a job (merge this company with Deutsch Telekom) and that has nothing to do with your best interests.

I joined Tech going on a year now, and I have been working to improve accountability and address long-standing performance issues. Not to be punitive, but because it’s better to deal with low performance directly than end up laying off good employees later.

My biggest frustration has been HR and specifically, employee relations supporting Tech. It’s hard to get a clear answer on what action to take, harder to get a response, and when you do, the guidance often contradicts what leaders in other departments are being told.

I know they’re under pressure too, and I’ve tried to give them the benefit of the doubt. But when managers can’t get consistent support, it makes leading my teams a lot harder. At some point, that becomes an HR leadership issue. I hope their senior leadership is paying attention.

My first move as pretend AT&T CEO would be pretty simple:

Stop chasing “transformational” nonsense and run the company like a telecom company. Wireless. Fiber. Business services. Network reliability. Customer service. Debt reduction. That’s it.

No media empire. No satellite TV fantasy. No “synergy” PowerPoint garbage. No paying billions for assets and then selling/spinning them off later at a loss.

The basic plan would be:

1. Aggressively pay down debt instead of trying to look clever.
2. Keep investing in fiber, because that actually fits AT&T’s core strengths.
3. Protect the network craft workforce, because contractors and outsourcing can save money short term but can wreck service quality.
4. Simplify management layers, because AT&T has always seemed ridiculously top-heavy.
5. Stop abusing loyal customers with confusing promotions that reward switchers more than longtime customers.
6. Make executive compensation depend on long-term debt reduction, free cash flow, network quality, and employee retention, not just stock-price optics.

And yeah, I’d probably cancel half the consultant contracts in the first week.

But the hostile takeover part might be tough. AT&T’s market cap is massive, and I’m currently a little light on the tens of billions needed to pull that off. Also, I suspect the board would object to my official turnaround slogan: “Stop Doing D-mb Sh*t.”

Forward-looking leadership: How this telecom giant puts AI into action

https://www.morningbrew.com/stories/ai-into-action

Too many managers got promoted for being good workers, not for knowing how to lead. At least teach them some people skills before putting them in charge of actual people.

Nobody's hearing the top performers gripe about how bad things are, and that's not because they're fine with it. They're just quietly working their networks, sending out applications, and planning their escape without making a scene. By the time leadership realizes they're gone, it'll be too late because all the people who actually carried the weight will have already found their way out.

I will be 3 steps removed from her? Is she a beligerent bulldog or sharp and savy?

It's wild how disconnected senior leadership is from the actual day to day. They sit in their meetings looking at spreadsheets and making decisions that have nothing to do with how things operate on the floor. Meanwhile, the people who actually know what's going on are put on ignore, and then they wonder why their grand plans never work out.

I cannot believe the direction our company has been going in. It is like the people in charge have lost their minds ! First the horrible change with our forklifts.. now we had to take all of our back end caps down . All this wasted space .. where do they think all the extra stuff they buy is going to go.. especially with the holidays coming soon. They over buy clothing … ugly clothing .. then we have to give it all away to a liquidator.. we have special events with mattresses .. which they over buy and we had to pull those to give to the backroom for the liquidator .. seems like we are in business to make them money instead of us

AI fraud salesmen have c-suites thinking that people managers are redundant and everyone will need to be at least half focused as an individual contributor. With the growth of complexity across business and the number of tools, regulations, policies, and the turnover/attrition environment, people managers have never been a more critical role. They own the direction/vision of their segment, keep workers focused (by reducing friction and distractions) and ensure the appropriate people are where they need to be and enthusiastic to be there. They are supposed to make sure everyone below them knows their purpose and can see a clear line of sight to get there. How many people at Fiserv today feel like they have a clear understanding of their role and their specific purpose AND feels like they will be appropriately recognized for meeting it.

Exactly what @b3+1kvwscm9b said.

We've undermined the trust you have that your specific expertise and contribution will be valued, that you will grow and advance your career, and that this will be a place where you can actually have an impact. -- Andrew Bosworth of Meta

Here we go again! You love to hear it, let's celebrate y'all. Even contractors are not safe, it's like they haven't learned from Chevron, P66 on MSP's. You gotta love these leaders who be flying on PJ's drinking champagne while the common folk get shagged.

We’re all adults here with careers, families, mortgages, and kids.

Yet we’re being treated like toddlers who need constant supervision, or maybe Stink just thinks we’re his prisoners.

Presence reports. Badge tracking. Attendance monitoring. Endless RTO enforcement. Isn’t it a bit much?.. All of it sends the same message, leadership doesn’t trust its employees, and once trust is gone, disengagement follows.

Seriously, why would anyone want to work in an environment like this?

The company talks endlessly about “culture” while implementing policies that actively destroy it.

The result is exactly what you’d expect, lower morale, higher turnover, and employees spending more time worrying about presence reports, FTW letters, and layoffs than innovation or growth.

When professionals are treated like they’re one badge swipe away from detention, it’s hard to feel respected or motivated. Especially when they’re blaming the masses for the faults of 1% who are no longer here.

You can mandate attendance, but you can’t mandate trust, engagement, or hard work & dedication. Loyalty and trust go hand in hand, and this CEO said “loyalty is dead”.

I keep hearing news that the useless "SVPs" are now getting hit. Let's keep up that momentum until they are all ou of there!

Layoffs are nothing new at Cisco. I often joke that there are three unavoidable things in life: taxes, death, and Cisco layoffs. But this latest round feels different. I've noticed a significant shift in attitude from the executive leadership team, and it's unsettling.

On one hand, I'm glad the "#WeAreFamily" and "#WeAreCisco" messaging has largely disappeared. Those slogans always felt difficult to reconcile with the reality of recurring layoffs. On the other hand, what has replaced them may be even more troubling. The message now seems to be that layoffs are simply part of life and should be expected. Fran has openly stated that Cisco does not offer job security. Mark's focus appears to be relentless cost-cutting. And Chuck seems willing to support whatever is necessary to keep the stock price moving upward.

What does that create? A company that grows through acquisitions, cuts headcount quickly, and offers fewer opportunities for long-term career development.

Why do I say that? If your skills happen to align with current business priorities, you're probably safe for the moment. But if your expertise is no longer considered strategic, you may find yourself included in the next round of layoffs.

I know Fran often highlights internal mobility as a strength, but in more than ten years at Cisco, I have never personally seen someone targeted for a layoff successfully secure a new role through the standard internal hiring process. I have seen people land other positions, but typically because they had strong networks and someone actively advocated for them. Once your name appears on a layoff list, hiring you can be seen as challenging a decision already made by management and approved by HR. Few people are willing to do that.

Meanwhile, only a limited number of roles seem to be available internally, while acquisitions continually bring in new talent and headcount. Combined with the lack of meaningful internal redeployment, it creates the impression that Cisco would rather acquire or hire externally than invest in helping existing employees develop the skills the company says it needs for the future.

So what are we left with?

For me, it no longer feels like a career. It feels like a gig, just a paycheck until something better comes along.

I haven't seen any true metrics shared from the CES. Just high level messages from leaders saying "we are good at safety" or "there is no trust for senior leaders". Anyone in the know, what were the true results? I have to imagine they were awful!

Although I’m no longer with Centene, I still care deeply about its mission and the people working to achieve it. That’s why I’m taking the time to write this.

One pattern I’ve seen across large organizations is the belief that the next framework, consulting engagement, or AI initiative will unlock better execution. Those things all have value. They bring fresh ideas, experience, and structure. But none of them can replace organizational clarity.

When priorities change faster than results can be measured, it becomes difficult to know what actually worked. Strategies get replaced before they can be fairly evaluated, and organizations end up changing multiple variables at the same time. At that point, you’re no longer learning from the strategy. You’re learning from the interruption.

From the individual contributor’s perspective, people stop asking, “Is this the right direction?” and start asking, ”How long until this changes again?” Eventually they stop optimizing for outcomes and start optimizing for adaptability. That’s not resistance to change. It’s a rational response to uncertainty.

The same challenge applies to outside consultants. They can bring experience, structure, and proven approaches, but they can’t create clarity where it doesn’t already exist. If priorities, success measures, and strategic direction continue to shift, even great recommendations struggle because the organization is still redefining the problem they were brought in to solve.

Landing the plane…

If I could offer one piece of advice, it would be this.

Create the conditions for success before looking for the next solution.

Define what success looks like.

Decide how you’ll measure it.

Give your managers and teams enough stability to execute.

Give the strategy enough time to produce meaningful results.

Then let the data, not the calendar, tell you what needs to change next.

Frameworks matter.

Technology matters.

Consultants matter.

• Employees matter most.*

Every reorganization, every strategy shift, and every new operating model is experienced by people who care deeply about the mission and genuinely want to do great work. When people lose confidence that today’s priority will still matter tomorrow, the organization loses something much harder to rebuild than a process. It loses trust.

To everyone still there, don’t lose sight of why you chose this work in the first place. Your knowledge, your compassion, and your commitment to members still matter. Those things don’t disappear because the organization is going through change.

I sincerely hope Centene succeeds. The mission is too important, and there are too many good people working every day to make a difference. My hope for leadership is simple: create the clarity, stability, and trust that allows those people to do what they’ve always wanted to do…serve members, support one another, and do their best work.

✌️

• AI helped me tighten the writing. The observations, opinions, and experiences are my own.*

Being with Canon for so many years, I believe and feel we still have some inspiring leaders, maybe not enough of them, but we have hope with the ones that still hopefully remain in place. I know the site is filled with negativity right now, and I understand, but maybe one post that offers some positive light at the end of the tunnel will help? Who's your favorite leader by initial only and group?

I am trying to do my best to finish the month of June strong productivity wise. Will leadership look at our first half of the year performance in determining who they keep in the involuntary layoffs? Any insight would be helpful. Thank you.