I have never worked under an executive leadership team that has generated this level of distrust among its own employees and leaders.
What makes the situation particularly difficult to understand is that we are watching major strategic decisions fail in real time—many of them shaped or implemented with significant involvement from McKinsey and Cognizant. Rather than acknowledging the mounting evidence, reassessing the strategy, and holding the appropriate people accountable, the response appears to be doubling down on the same thinking and the same ecosystem of advisors. The decision to add another SVP whose professional background includes both McKinsey and Cognizant only reinforces the perception that leadership is becoming increasingly insulated from the realities experienced by the people actually responsible for delivering the work. There is also growing perception that internal advancement has become a thing of the past—that developing and promoting proven talent from within is no longer a meaningful part of the company’s leadership strategy.
The experience with Cognizant has been especially troubling. Reports of investigations involving the company only heighten concerns that many employees already have based on their direct interactions. Communications have too often been characterized by shifting narratives, questionable representations, a lack of transparency, and an extraordinary level of confidence by Cognizant staff who claim they can perform the work better and faster—despite operational results and historical experience that repeatedly call that assertion into question.
The people closest to the work are then left trying to manage the consequences: declining confidence, knowledge loss, execution risk, service concerns, employee disruption, and the enormous amount of effort required simply to keep these initiatives functioning.
At some point, this stops being a problem with execution and becomes a problem with executive judgment.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect is the apparent unwillingness of senior leadership to reconsider the direction when the evidence no longer supports it. Good leadership is not demonstrated by continuing to defend a strategy simply because significant time, money, and executive credibility have already been invested in it. Good leadership is demonstrated by recognizing when assumptions were wrong, changing course, and holding decision-makers accountable.
Instead, employees are watching leadership repeatedly double down while the organization absorbs the consequences. That is why trust has deteriorated so significantly. Employees can tolerate difficult decisions. They can tolerate restructuring. They can even tolerate strategies that ultimately prove unsuccessful. What is much harder to tolerate is leadership that appears unwilling to acknowledge failure, learn from it, or accept accountability for the results.
The de facto strategy increasingly appears to be: outsource all strategic thinking to McKinsey, outsource the work itself to Cognizant, and eliminate the institutional knowledge, experience, and proven talent that built and sustained the organization in the first place.
If senior leadership wants to understand why confidence in the executive team has eroded, it should start there.