#strategy

Louie’s first order of business is to unwind the purchase of Lexmark so that Lexmark can go on to have a great and successful history and not one that was ruined by Xerox.

The server business was always more sticky and now is hugely more strategic than storage.
Years of comp plans for lEMC sales focused on pushing unity, powerstore, powermax etc distracted from the real prize of owning the entire data centre. They never understood apps, infrastructure. Just boxes.
If they had focused on overall sales, share of wallet, Dell would have been even more of a powerhouse than today.
Servers were never as high margin as storage, but highly profitable and close enough to matter.

Meta, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is continuing to shrink its workforce, like many of its peers in the tech industry. After laying off hundreds of employees earlier this week, a leaked document revealed the tech giant’s bizarre plan for several of its remaining staff as it shifts in a new direction.

https://www.thestreet.com/technology/leaked-meta-memo-reveals-companys-bizarre-plan-after-layoffs

How the company plans to address its mounting liabilities remains unclear. At this point, only a dramatic shift in strategy (or perhaps a moment of radical clarity fueled by either opi--ds or OK homegrown ayahuasca ) seems capable of turning things around.

???

Not layoff related so I apologize for that. But it is getting exceedingly difficult to see a winning strategy with this bold move, Cotton.

https://www.thestreet.com/retail/att-puts-loyalty-at-risk-with-stern-warning-to-customers

All in-house solutions, especially those in FPE, are no longer viable. Adoption solutions from the market is faster and allows the use of professional solutions, so adoption doesn't require as many engineers as building. Hence the reorg and layoffs.

No set date, but sometime in the next 6 months. The strategy bet is that if they think I’m leaving in the near future, they’ll be less likey to rif me now. The straws have been grasped at!

Oil is going up again, and that hits way more than gas. It drives up the cost of literally everything tied to construction. Steel, concrete, transportation, labor, all of it gets more expensive fast. It’s not crazy to see 25-50% increases when energy spikes.

And we’re in the middle of committing billions at peak pricing to a new HQ… right as commercial real estate is weakening and companies everywhere are cutting office space.

That’s the part that’s hard to ignore. This isn’t just a bad look, it’s bad timing. You’re locking into a massive, fixed-cost project while the market is moving the other way and the cost to build it is actively rising. (Again)

We could easily be talking about hundreds of millions more than originally expected just because of where energy and inflation are heading.

We’ve seen this pattern before. Big bets. Late timing. Expensive outcomes. Yet another blunder… It’s beyond being bad luck. This is an ongoing pattern of failure.

https://www.wsj.com/video/ibms-ai-strategy-tripling-entry-level-hires-to-drive-expansion/A21BEBCA-9DE3-4E2E-B32B-F7D9B66249B8

By: WSJ Leadership Institute
2 hours ago

While many companies use artificial intelligence to cut costs, Nickle LaMoreaux, IBM SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer, argues that deploying AI-augmented junior talent to reach new clients is the real key to corporate growth. Photo: WSJ Leadership Institute

As I understand, they lay off a bunch of technology teams/devs etc. that support apps and products. Who is then going to work on those? Do they purposefully want to ki-l those products and not offer them to clients anymore? Or do they really hope that a couple thousand new workers are going to be able to keep it up?

Heard about BCC from Sourcing town hall. Is this 3M saying they will hire and replace in these cheap labor markets? Is this the strategy, hire in OUS and EXPECT US government contracts and customers to ignore? Celebrating US250 this year, shouldn’t this be highlighted and treated accordingly? Maybe I don’t know 3M history well yet, but seems like a giant finger to US and its workers while trying to hide it and simply say they are global.

All hands on May 20. What will we learn?

How hard would it be to put together an actual strategy instead of just running the same play over and over - dispose of people, repeat.

Noticing Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s opening some stores on Easter this year… 👀

Makes you wonder—is this just a one-off based on location and demand, or are we slowly testing the waters for bigger holiday openings again?

Easter has always been a bit flexible in retail, unlike Thanksgiving and Christmas, which carry a lot more weight when it comes to staying closed. So this could simply be a strategic move—opening select stores where it makes sense without going all in.

Still… it does raise the question:
Are we looking at smart, targeted business decisions—or the beginning of a shift back toward opening on traditionally “off” holidays?

Time will tell. But it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

Snowflake confirmed "targeted" staff cuts. These adjustments align teams with the company's long-term strategy. The cuts specifically affected its technical writing and documentation team. Snowflake aims for operational efficiency and more AI products. Other tech companies also made layoffs due to AI focus.

https://www.businessinsider.com/snowflake-layoffs-strategy-ai-growth-2026-3

Also-ran technology, trying to play catch-up to the market leaders, struggling to rank 5th or 6th on a field of 3. All the layoffs in the world won't save them.

Suppliers no longer expect market conditions to normalize. They are adapting operations for ongoing market instability. This follows tens of thousands of job cuts in 2025. Relentless regulatory uncertainty also prompted this change. This information comes from a recent S&P Global survey.

https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/suppliers/ane-suppliers-survey-0317/

In a stunning display of visionary leadership, Clearlake has decided to let two complete rookies role‑play as CEO and CTO of One Identity.
Their first genius move? Try to fire the entire Identity Manager team and replace decades of hard‑won expertise with an army of low‑cost code monkeys offshore.
Nothing says “strategic innovation” quite like dismantling one of the company’s last profitable products. But hey—let’s just hope the next buyer doesn’t notice the smell of burning cash just yet.

After Thanksgiving Support your small business (Xerox) Sale.

Can anyone share the NN75 store list for 2026? Want to see which stores are being targeted for improvements this year. Hopefully more will be worked on the the southern stores.

Nothing they do makes any sense. How long have they been keeping us on edge with the reorg and layoffs now? And through it all, they keep making these "strategic" moves - strategic, apparently, to someone who hasn't glanced at the news.

That's the only move Oracle management knows, apparently.

It’s hard not to admire the confidence of DXC people who clearly don’t understand technology but are absolutely certain that adding an X to a name makes it cutting edge. Nothing screams utterly clueless than believing slapping an X on a decades-old ideas somehow makes them sellable.

The ironic part is DXC keeps selling “X-as-a-Service” like it’s the future, while every platform they hype shrinks their business. Software doesn’t need armies of consultants. It replaces them. Meanwhile, DXC leadership is too busy slapping Xs on sh‑t-tier legacy services to realize they’re selling their own business to extinction.

So Mike commented today that core consolidation has stopped? What’s this fuss all about. Why did they say core consolidation in the first place? Are they out of their mind?? Said such things such so Jack Henry and FIS can poach our clients?… just so weird. Can he shoot straight with the swaggering compensation package he currently gets?

I'm new to this site. I feel like i havent seen many comments from people in PVS under Tom Ap Simon. He was 100% in charge when I came on in 2020. In 2022, they hired a lady to take over PVS so Tom could focus on higher education. This lady was way more personable and professional than Tom in my opinion. She obviously had a vision, and part of that was to create a new department. She hired a black woman for that department who was very qualified based on previous work experience. Not even 2ish years into the role, this competent PVS leader departed. They did not replace her. They said Tommy boy would absorb and handle both Higher Ed and PVS. A few months after our original PVS VP left, our smaller dept head left abruptly. They did not replace her either and instead shoved our department into another that make 0 sense for half of the employees there.

PVS has a goal to increase enrollment by almost 50%. That is an insane metric and didn't even happen during Covid. On top of that, they so far have hired literally no one on the school facing side of things to support these schools/students. I thing they are eventually going to just sell PVS because it's obvious the powers that be don't understand the actual work that's needed to make this business line successful.

It will pause but not stop. Tweaks will continue as orgs/teams align to the new landscape. Larger ones pick up again next year as the Digital strategy and AI rollout continue to expand in these areas:

• customer service automation
• network optimization
• fraud detection
• sales personalization

Look for these types of roles to increase / hire in the coming year:

• AI network engineers
• data scientists
• cybersecurity specialists
• automation architects

Putting this up so it’s not lost in replies. OP: @e2+1kk9gpsf9

Smoke and mirrors to implement the old wing it by Windstream way is back. Uniti either loves losing customers or we are prepping to sell the whole company

From my perspective, there is little evidence of meaningful leadership within the organization. The senior management team appears largely aligned around maintaining the status quo rather than addressing the significant challenges the company is facing (all 'Yes' men in key roles).

There seems to be little willingness to communicate candidly with JG about the realities in the marketplace. In many cases, customers have lost confidence in SAS, and a growing number are actively exploring or implementing plans to replace our solutions. This trend is likely to accelerate in the near future.

At the same time, the company lacks a clearly defined competitive strategy and the VIYA platform has not resonated with many customers in the way it was intended. Unless these issues are acknowledged and addressed directly, the gap between leadership’s perception and the market’s reality will continue to widen. Just look at the SAS revenues at being flat or declining and one of our biggest competitors, Databricks, has 60-70% revenue growth and over 100% market valuation Y/Y growth. Not once during the company kick-off meetings did our senior management team even acknowledge the competitive battle we are facing in the marketplace nor was any type of competitive strategy discussed/presented. How is that possible? How can management present a revenue growth plan for SAS when we are clearly losing market share rapidly and there is no competitive strategy to address it?

If SAS were a publicly traded company, the current trajectory would likely invite significant scrutiny from the market and there would be rampant short selling. It's a very sad story playing out in front of so many great employees. I wish I could do more but, unfortunately, no one in power cares to listen.

@ka+1kk76xn44 said it perfectly.

"Most Android phones run on chips from Qualcomm or MediaTek. Xiaomi wants to change that, at least for its own devices."

"The XRing O1... built on TSMC’s 3nm process and holds its own against Snapdragon ... ".

https://phandroid.com/2026/03/05/xiaomis-xring-chip-is-about-to-get-a-whole-lot-more-ambitious/

Increasing bill didn't work
Matching paper bill didn't work
Delaying port outs didn't work and Dan had to back out

That organization cannot solve churn, they need expertise ASAP!!!

I’ve been here long enough to see the pattern clearly, where we start projects with great enthusiasm, teams form, plans get made, and work begins with real momentum. Then a few months in someone in leadership reads an article or hears a new buzzword and everything changes, new priorities appear, old projects suddenly get labeled as not aligned, and the goal posts move so far you can barely see them anymore.

We end up abandoning half finished work and starting fresh on whatever the new thing is supposed to be, and the amount of wasted effort that piles up from that cycle is staggering because hours, weeks, and months of people’s time just get discarded when leadership cannot stick with a direction.

Then leadership turns around and wonders why execution is a problem, even though you cannot execute anything when the target keeps moving before the work ever has a chance to finish.

We've been losing so many people for so long, especially the talented ones. If leadership came up with the perfect plan right now, we couldn't implement it. We're past the threshold. We've lost the capacity and the institutional knowledge to pull it off. That last big push was our final shot, in my opinion. And we blew it.

Now Ed Garden, one of Fortune Brands largest shareholders, disagrees with the new pick of CEO Amit Banati and has a list of his potential candidates that will allegedly be presented at the next shareholder meeting.

While shareholders are critical, tunnel vision focus on share price alone allows for short term goals and does not set up a company for long term success. Share price is the reward of doing everything else correct including, but not limited to, having the right people, the right plan, and executing the plan.

Heard that Pharm Systems is at it again. Another wave of VPs and executives leaving. Others (barely any) updating their LinkedIn profiles to "Open to Work" and probably asking competitors for job openings. Europe, US - they're flying out faster than Tom&Jerry in their private jet to Jackson Hole. The sales organization is wiped out - a printed picture memory at this point. The people who actually knew the clients, knew the product, and knew how to close - gone. Last I heard, they now have project managers hunting for device business. Let that sink in. Somewhere along the way, politics ate strategy alive. Then came the massive bonus and commission cuts - looks good on the quarterly report. The PnL is probably on life support by another travel ban. Then Services? Handed to people with 0 experience whose previous team was actually taken apart and promptly set on fire. Those of us who got out are just sitting here with popcorn, watching, and waiting for the "Pharm Systems Acquired By..." press release to drop.

We need real growth, not by pulling ahead to make quarterly figures. Financial Hocus Pocus always ends in tears.

The asset management industry is changing rapidly, and staying ahead requires more than incremental adjustments.

One area that deserves close attention is the layer of middle management. Many of the managers responsible for executing strategy appear increasingly detached from the company’s long-term mission. When leadership positions become primarily about protecting paychecks rather than building lasting value, organizations inevitably lose talented people who want to contribute meaningfully.

Over the past years, a number of highly capable individuals have left because they wanted to deliver impact and build something meaningful. When those voices disappear, it is often a signal that something deeper in the culture needs attention.

The competitive landscape is also evolving. Firms like BlackRock have significantly expanded their position in areas such as ETFs and are investing heavily in AI and data-driven investment capabilities. Competing in this environment requires not only technology and capital, but authentic leadership and a culture that empowers people to act with conviction.

Strengthening leadership culture should start with divisions such as Strategic Advisers (SAI), where the connection between research, portfolio management, and long-term client outcomes is critical. This kind of review requires diligence and honesty, not narratives that avoid uncomfortable realities.

Organizations that are willing to examine themselves critically tend to emerge stronger. Those that ignore early signals often find themselves losing relevance over time.

The opportunity to reinforce a culture of accountability, integrity, and genuine leadership is still there—but it requires deliberate action.

Sure would like to know why xerox spent millions to buy GIS(a growing/profitable Co.) Only to gut it and turn it into an expense .

Seems like a total waste/bad business decision...
No wonder stock is hovering $1.70

Lexmark next?