Thread regarding Cengage layoffs

@qq Yes, please keep firing experienced salespeople. It's fascinating to watch management bring in new employees, throw them into the field, and then scramble to train them while they're already overwhelmed.

Throughout September and October, I kept hearing the same questions from new reps:
"What do I do when faculty don't show up for office hours?"
"Faculty tell me they're not interested. What should I do next?"

These aren't bad employees. These are people being asked to succeed in a complex industry without the experience, mentorship, and institutional knowledge that walked out the door during the reorganization.

What's even more concerning is hearing managers ask experienced reps questions like:
"Where do you find that information?"
"Why isn't that located somewhere else?"
"Why is Salesforce set up this way?"
"Why do we have to enter this information?"

At some point, you have to ask a simple question: how can managers effectively manage a role they don't fully understand?

Educational publishing has a steep learning curve. Customer relationships matter. Product knowledge matters. Institutional knowledge matters. Replacing experienced employees is easy. Replacing what they know is much harder. That's the lesson leadership seems determined to learn the hard way.

Fire all the Lazy people not the ineffective leaders

Or, they could just fire all the incompetent and lazy people in sales. That would certainly fix a number of critical failures. Seems they spent too much time on other parts of the company when they should have first gutted this lame and whining sales team.

@et His age is the Achilles Heal! It’s the fear within him that he carries. You obviously have not worked closely with him. When you spend time with him , the whole agreeable submissive guy he portrays is not really who he is. ,, he is one of the most passive aggressive individuals i have ever worked with.

We will all be forced to do daily thorns and berries or thorns and roses or whatever that mast3rbat0ry cr-p the higherups do on First Friday to seem . . . Relatable? The ET they are people just like us! And also I don’t give a cr-p about what their ask is of us. I never look at MT and think “how can I earn him more money?” Because why should I care what he wants when he doesn’t bother asking us.

Also, NK should not get a pass because of his age. What kind of lame defense is that?

Wait… how close to reality are some of these “fun ideas”??

This is so Sad but so very true. This is what cengage has come too.

under the leadership of MH and Nk. NK gets a little bit of a pass just because of his age, his lack of knowledge about sales, and lack of maturity.

But MH should know better. he has been milking Cengage dry for 14 years and is the real culprit.

Micromanagement is a failed strategy.

How can you forget Slack “mid week reflection 🪞” check ins.

I'm crying!

Let me contribute a few technology-focused suggestions:

• Issue every rep a company smartwatch that sends an alert to management if your heart rate doesn't increase while speaking to a customer. High engagement = elevated pulse.
• Require all laptops to take a screenshot every 60 seconds so leadership can ensure maximum productivity and minimum independent thought.
• Install an AI-powered webcam that measures eye movement during Teams meetings and creates a "Paying Attention Score."
• Create a Bluetooth-enabled badge that records how many times per day employees say words like "customer obsessed," "synergy," "transformation," or "CUI."
• Deploy a geofence around every campus. If a rep enters a Starbucks within a mile of a school, an automatic coaching ticket is generated.
• Put a QR code on every professor's office door. Reps must scan it to prove they were actually there. Bonus points if the professor wasn't even in the office.
• Launch a new dashboard called "PowerBI for PowerBI" that tracks how often employees are looking at PowerBI while avoiding actual selling.
• Provide everyone with Meta smart glasses that livestream campus visits directly to management, allowing real-time coaching, corrections, and morale assessment.
• Introduce a monthly Employee Loyalty Score calculated from Teams status, Salesforce activity, mileage entries, LinkedIn usage, and number of seconds spent muted on conference calls.
• Implant an AI assistant in every laptop that automatically asks, "Have you updated Salesforce?" every 12 minutes until productivity improves.

If morale doesn't improve after all this, I think we're finally going to have to consider the unthinkable:

Trusting employees

This thread is hilarious and terrifying at the same time because a few of these ideas sound suspiciously close to things that have actually been proposed.

Let me add a few more suggestions for leadership:

Mandatory 6:00 AM Teams check-in where every rep must submit a photo of themselves holding that day's newspaper to prove they are alive, engaged, and ready to sell.

Install dashboard cameras in every vehicle so managers can track smiles-per-mile and issue corrective action for insufficient enthusiasm.

Require a Salesforce update every 17 minutes. Not every 15. Not every 20. Exactly 17. That's where peak productivity happens.

Create a "Customer Proximity Score" that alerts managers whenever a rep is within 500 feet of a campus but fails to enter a building.

Issue company drones that follow reps around campus and livestream their activity back to headquarters for real-time coaching opportunities.

Launch "Morale Mondays" where employees are required to rate their happiness from 1-10, and anyone below an 8 is enrolled in mandatory positivity training.

Require all reps to wear smart badges that flash red whenever they go more than 30 minutes without mentioning CUI, PowerBI, Salesforce, or "customer obsession."

Honestly, if morale still doesn't improve after all that, the next logical step is probably a Vice President of Employee Surveillance and a Director of Mandatory Fun.

Excellent!

My faves:
"Mandatory "enthusiasm score" submitted at the end of each day."
&
"Introduce a "trust but verify" program where nobody is trusted and everything is verified."

We really are living in a 1984/Animal Farm/Brave New World.
Revoltingly dystopian reality.