Let's begin by saying that a zombie manager would count money, make sure you submit your time card and you submit your engagement pulse and attend regular mandatory trainings.
A real manager or leader would look at the way the team works and it is structured, would look at the skills of the team and watch how they evolve, would look at the market and see what the clients demand, would try to anticipate evolution of the technologies and steer the team accordingly and many others.
Most of the managers I am seeing in Cisco today are zombies, focused on getting their bonus, hypocrites who vote in their engagement pulse that they believe in the future of the company but they sell the RFU stocks asap.
Cutting costs is characteristic for poor leadership and clear sign of incompetency.
And that applies for the entire vertical, from team manager to VP and CEO level
They believe that cutting costs is the way to turn the ship around.
That is well paid idiocy because in the end you will have nothing to cut but the structural and the systemic problems you had are still there.
Liz and everyone below you, I hope you guys copy this.