#leadership

I have 2 serious questions.

1. Did that Wyclef Jean song ever gain any traction? LMAO
2. Is that Diddy guy still an executive at the company?
   I can’t believe I’m asking this of our once semi-respectable company.

Does anyone else find the latest LinkedIn posts by MSD endorsing some expensive gadget to combat High Blood pressure to be in poor taste ?? Dells Leadership team are probably responsible for the highest BP and anxiety levels in the industry with the toxic culture and daily threat of losing your livelihood ! Over 50,000 former Dell employees have had their lives turned upside them with no income and healthcare coverage over the past few years while Mr Dell and his narcissistic leaders continue to rake in multi million dollar paychecks !!!!

When is the board of directors and everyone else going to wake up and realize that John Stank has provided no value to the company for a long time! He is no longer relevant and if he doesn’t like the truth he can retire or find another company willing to take on an aging dinosaur. The culture under John is toxic and has been for too long.

Over the last 5 years PEP stock is down 14%.

KO stock up 43% over the same period.

That is an astounding failure. That is 100% on Ramon. The global "headwinds" were the same for both. That utterly incompetent fool of a CEO has got to go. I don't understand how Elliott Management kept him. How the PEP BoD kept him. What is going on?

I thought their reputation preceded them. I thought they cared. I thought they’d respect me and the quality of work I do day in day out with much overtime. I thought they offered respect
So far I’m finding I was duped by this persons.
I feel like they don't give a rats behind about me, my qualifications, my skills I’m just a number.
Something shifted maybe HR co-opted Abby with their lies and divisive mentality of the dei legion. But they aren’t looking to promote or help or encourage solid employees. Very disappointed.

I see the market was up again today, and the OpenText price ... oh, crud ... down again.

This company's outlook is bleak as long as Jenkins, his pupppet CEO, the so-called Board of Directors, Bell, Muhi, Rai, Berry, Cione, Acedo, and all the other Jenkins minions are in charge.

As a stockholder I demand change!

Why, as a leader in the field, am I now having to do the work of this team? The math is strange - I generate revenue, the firm allocates my revenue for this home office work yet I’m the one doing their work. From what I hear - the GP running it is inadequate and the directors are incompetent and have created a toxic environment where their staff left their area leaving us to do their roles. How are they still employed?

Gotta love the fact they are so worried about reducing costs other than top executives pay and advertising. They are main advertisers on the World Cup .. the Super Bowl … ALL THE BIG EVENTS .
It’s just an attack on the workforce to fatten that axxhats pockets

In the past 6 months many people have been laid off, including some of our best leaders. We’re seriously understaffed now. Also, there is NO investment in this business and our IT portfolio has been cut to the bone. I never hear Sean C. even talk about Dental and he doesn’t seem to meet with Dental team members. I’m not even sure who’s really in charge now. There are no signs of real leadership anymore and the communication is terrible.

This used to be a great, highly profitable business with great employees. But it’s a pathetic shell of that now. This all makes me wonder if it is being stripped down in preparation for being sold, like IFP, Medicare and (soon) EviCore. Am I missing something?

Joel didn't say anything meaniful, I had looked forward so much to that townhall like it was the Oscar's, it was just a waste if 1hr, couldn't answer any question straightforward or plainly

That means a huge LR

“An apologist is someone who writes or speaks to defend and justify a specific belief, cause, or institution, especially one that faces criticism.”

Managers need to STOP being apologists for U.S. Bank and defending bad behavior. While you’re not expected to speak ill of the company publicly , you will gain more respect of direct reports if you’re in line with reality. We can spot fakeness. Those that see U.S. Bank with rose tinted glasses are looked at with disdain. Whatever corporate carrot 🥕 you’re chasing here isn’t worth it if no one respects you at the end of the day.

Long article on FB in terms of his past at JPM and FD/Fiserv
I tend to believe the accusations and love the fact he’s the lead story that brings up his past selfish and unprofessional activities. Spying, clawing his way up the ladder, seems like a real tool

Hope in one hand and relieve yourself in the other and see which one fills up first.

And repeat the mantra "I am a close personal friend of John Donovan".

I am a relatively new Director and was recently talking to someone quite high up in STS who has been here more than a decade. He said that the good leaders use Schwab as a stepping stone to get their next big external gig. His view was that they quickly realize its hard to get anything done and the folks entrenched at the top are low on real tech competency and hence have no incentive to allow new ideas to shine. His view was that the best days of Schwab are over and the decline has started. He said its equally bad in business and has got worse. He said no hope until Dennis and Tim move on but the next level is also very bad. Does Rick see this and why does let the rot perpetuate?

I was dejected after that chat, wonder for those in STS Director and above what your thoughts are?

Don Hendricks, Leah Bangs, Tom Harvey, Thomas Ghea

if these four people left Belk or better yet, were removed and replaced with new compitent executives, Belk may actually start to thrive.

It looks like Schwab is only hiring PMs close to retirement. Younger PMs are forced into becoming RTEs or Scrum Masters, and/or not being promoted.

What's up? Leadership continues to say here will always be a need for PMs, but that the actions do not support this.

With replacement of many senior leadership across Illumina (many millenia of experience lost), it seems that Illumina is focussed on management rather than leadership. I am worried about the future, so many new hires have no market experience and they are making poor decisions because of it. Being finance led has only diminished Illumina, what growth opportunities are there now? Increasing pricing isn’t a strategy but with no experience it seems this is the only lever left to pull. If Jacob was a good leader he would have a plan, but instead he is hoping the market delivers one to illumina because all of the market building staff are now gone, and the replacements don’t care about illumina, just see it as a short stop on a career journey. From a revenue perspective Illumina will decline from here or at best stay flat. Good luck.

When a corporation keeps missing the mark, the groups responsible for independent challenge should not escape scrutiny. Their job is not to protect relationships, preserve invitations, or stay in the good graces of senior executives. Their job is to raise uncomfortable truths.

If an oversight organization has become known more for executive access and polished diplomacy than for confronting weak results, it may no longer be serving a useful purpose. At that point, reducing or rebuilding the function is a legitimate business decision.

Responsibility starts with the person leading it and continues through the executives who report directly to them. They set the tone, chose what to challenge, and decided how forcefully to communicate the company’s failures. If that leadership structure prioritized proximity to power over accountability, it should be replaced—not rewarded with continued headcount and influence.

Rumors are buzzing all around the company. Unfortunately since leadership hasn’t communicated much people are making things up. I suggest you don’t spread rumors until we have facts in official communications.

This is just a general question for retail workers, especially Sams Club workers. As a long time associate, I have never entertained the idea of leaving until the last few years. However being there for as long as I have, with established vacations, and PTO, and of course insurance, it feels as if my hands are tied and I should just su-k it up. I am not happy as to the way the direction of this company has gone, or the leadership within the walls of my store. I don't want to sound like a je-k, but I feel as if I so much better then where I am currently stuck at. That I am wasting possible untapped potential. I know that many of you probably know the feeling or may be struggling with the same internal fight. To take a leap into the unknown feels a bit scary, since I am unsure of what to go into next? But I also know that I am suffocating where I am at. And don't want my life to pass me by, knowing I could have been more. Has anyone here successfully navigated away from Sams Club? To put into context, I am a 22 year associate.

So called analytics “leaders” at Nike who took us down the gutters are congregating at Amgen. Glossy footwear is trivial but meds O-o

I was let go after more than 20 years. I have to ask, why are you still at FIS? It is a tough market and the longer you are there without spending adequate time searching for a new job will hurt you. You already know it is a POS company. C Suite is filled with liars, and broken monetary promises. Are you too scared to try and consider something else or are you hoping to be let go for severance? Either way, neither will make you happy. You are losing out on potential other jobs that will be flooded with more candidates after more and more people are let go.

For those let go like myself, it haunts me every day and I feel your pain. I moved on but it took time. The pain, helplessness and uncertainty was real. My advice, network, network, network. Also, keep reviewing and looking into AI. It will be asked of you when you interview regardless of position or title. Don’t let your position on a spreadsheet define your worth.

Sc--w you SF and your overpaid minions who have watched the stock fall apart and a board that let the company go to cr-p with no changes the past few years.

How much do you agree with this statement: “My feedback directly contributes to leadership bonuses, even if it contributes to nothing else.”

Dan promised Wall Street ai-cs tech stack by November. That means more layoffs are coming to reach the $5b .. I expect more leadership departures to be announced soon since last week’s cuts don’t add up to the $500m Verizon wrote off in the sec filing for severances and real estate. Brace for impact.

This would make Verizon truly an AI-first company

All new leadership coming from the outside.. And all from the same group who is moving from Company to Company

Don’t know where we’re going, so we won’t know when we get there

I was listening to a podcast and the discussion was with a management consultant. I think they summed up the issue with Phillips 66 and this management team:

“…the macro implications of a society that is maximizing profit is that it's going to be minimizing other goods that aren't easy to quantify.”

Under Greg, there was a balance to things—a purpose. He cared about people and the legacy of the company. Yes, he was not perfect, but you knew he cared about the company, the industry, and the people.

I believe that is gone. We are just focused singularly on making more money, trying to beat the competition, and just catering g to shareholder interests. It is interesting that, despite that focus, we are falling further behind, while also giving up the soul of the company and are experiencing an erosion of culture.

In our search for profit, Phillips has abandoned its commitment to people, developing people and taking chances on people with promise. Instead, we give people a job description and tell them it is on them to prove they have the skills for the next role. We talk only in terms of shareholder interests, returns on equity/investment, and tell people we must always be focused on beating MPC, VLO and a group of companies that the management team and board are focused on.

Am I wrong? Would like other perspectives. Is Phillips still committed to people and the interests of the communities and customers we serve?

Come to think of it, I have been with the company for 10 years and almost never hear about customers. Why is that?

“You saw our preliminary results… The first step is just to own it.” We already do. Every single one of us on the ground owns our number, every quarter, no matter how the goalposts moved that quarter. So let’s talk about ownership both ways: what exactly do you own here? Not the words “own it” in a Monday message : the actual outcome. What’s the consequence for you when the results miss? Who’s putting you on a PIP?
Nobody around you says this out loud, so I will: we had real leaders who could have told you this a year ago, and they didn’t leave for a better offer .... they got pushed out because they tried to correct you. You don’t get to say “no deflection, no excuses” while the people most likely to challenge the plan are the ones no longer in the building, because they challenged it.
Maybe IBM’s software problem isn’t the market, isn’t the customers, isn’t even the products. Maybe it’s you. Look at the CROs and software leaders actually winning out there right now. do you really think they run their orgs the way you run this one? Reshuffling structure every six months, pushing out anyone who isn’t aligned, surrounding yourself with people too scared to push back? That’s not how growth companies behave. That’s how companies behave right before they lose the people who could have saved them.
And look at how these decisions actually get made: under panic, not conviction. Every reorg lands like an emergency reaction to a bad quarter, not a plan anyone thought through. And somehow, in that panic, we’re the ones treated like zero, like we can’t understand a reorg, like we’re not agile enough, like we’re the ones resisting transformation. We are exactly those things. We adapt every single time you ask us to, on a shorter timeline than any of you have to answer for. What we’re fed up with is taking transformation advice from the worst-performing leadership in the room, delivered in a panic, and then being blamed when the panic doesn’t produce results.
And on that note: when you write “we are putting more attention on software consumption,” who exactly is “we”? You and McKinsey in a slide deck, or you and the people actually sitting in front of customers who could tell you months ago that this was coming? Because from where I sit, “we” hasn’t included us in a long time : it’s included consultants who get paid regardless of whether the plan works, and employees who inherit the plan with no say in it.
“Every Second Counts” is a good line for a kitchen sign. It’s a bad operating model for enterprise software. Nobody sells real value in one or two quarters. Value takes time to build because it’s built on trust, and trust takes longer to earn back than it takes to lose. Nobody deploys software in one or two quarters either, because deployment runs on the customer’s timeline and their business needs, not ours. If every second really counts, the first thing that should buy us is more discipline before changing structures, incentives, and coverage models mid-year : not less.
Here’s my Monday growth message back to you: a leader is accountable to the people below him, not just to the market above him. That means listening to employees and customers before restructuring around them, not after. It means being able to say “I was wrong” and “this is going to take longer than I promised,” out loud, without spinning it into a hype line for the next town hall. We show up accountable every day, on our numbers, on our customers, on our word. I’m asking you to show the same thing back .... not another recap of initiatives, but an honest account of what you got wrong and what you’re doing to fix it, including how it affects the people asked to execute it with less time and fewer resources than the plan pretends.
We’re not asking for perfection. We’re asking for the truth, and for someone to actually be willing to hear it.

Senior management protects their turf, you do something to better the company like win a technology challenge and are told that you should have saved it for your own group and not shared it company wide. For that specific reason I have been canceled. No longer an e performer even though no one knows nearly how to do their job and comes running to me. I was told that I should be honored that many take my slides for their own presentations and not giving me credit.

I went to a competitor who now loves my work and also understands their competitive edge over fidelity

Look at Nike’s stock price over the past 50 years. There have been ups and downs, but nothing compares to the decline since 2020. The five-year downward trend is crazy.

It’s hard not to see this as the point where Nike went off the rails. Leadership, business strategy, and company culture all changed for the worse. I wonder how business analysts will explain what happened years from now.

Everyone should tune into 2Q earnings on Wednesday and witness “leadership’s” spin on their reality vs ours and our customers. What’s the anticipated playbook? If like other earnings or townhalls it will go something like this:
1) Credit Hoarding and Blame Deflection: Stankey will take personal credit for all successes, but scapegoat realities or market factors for any poor metrics, failures, or missed targets.
2) Spinning Data: He’ll present metrics selectively to inflate achievements while minimizing or altogether hiding negative data/results.
3) Focusing on Optics Over Substance: He’ll prioritize vanity metrics like PR splashes or superficial growth instead of addressing structural issues or the long-term sustainability of the corporation.
4) Gaslighting Employees: He’ll publicly contradict internal realities; he will claim the company is thriving while employees experience understaffing, canceled projects, and record level layoffs and burnout.
5) Silencing Dissent: He’ll negligently ignore bad news, punish employees (no matter their level) who report operational failures or low morale, and exclude critical voices from high-level conversations.
6) Lack of Empathy for Stakeholders: He’ll dismiss the toll that poor organizational performance (e.g., RTO and targeted layoffs, restructuring) takes on the workforce and quarterly results.

When are we going to be rid of this terrible regime? Any light at all at the end of the tunnel?

“You can’t shrink your way to greatness”

• Seth Godin

Dan, you have highly competent employees, functionally adequate systems / processes / tools, a strong band, and multiple engagement points with most customers. Try reimagining the customer experience and lifting walletshare capture through the assets you have. Reducing your human capital now is just the junkie’s next fix but cannot, logically, achieve increased shareholder value. you know it, we know it.

Rumor has it that Kamal & Mange are out early August

Given the headcount of AEG, we are heavily investing in AI. Our strength in AI chip design lies in the vast internal data within our tools, which can be directly leveraged by AI models, a luxury that customers and other AI chip companies simply do not have. That said, it is striking that neither my team nor neighboring teams appear to be working directly with AEG to integrate this AI into our tool workflows. It seems to me that AEG is another den of scammers. Meanwhile, we are laying off many contributing employees while expanding a group that lacks profitability, clear direction, and a viable strategy.

Has anyone else noticed or heard about ongoing ethics and leadership culture issues in Nike’s Sports Marketing group?
There’s been significant turnover at the senior levels over the past couple of years. Some current and former employees are saying the ethical standards and decision-making in the group still need real improvement, even with new leadership in place.
Wondering if others have seen similar issues or if things are actually getting better.
Appreciate any honest takes.

We have lost market share for years so now LFG has been rolled out moving many specialists to the portfolio teams. Are they replacing the failed portfolio sales and engineering leadership at all levels that are responsible for this.