1 Cutting employee benefits does not solve the problem. It demotivates whatever you have left of an organization and reflects an inability to solve the real problem. While you are cutting the benefits of the rank and file, why don't you cut the benefits of the EVP's, SVP's and VP's like car allowances, special health benefits and paid financial planning. There are so many of them, this is where the real money (and the problem) is. Show some real leadership. Take care of the people who made the brands great not the bureaucrats who are destroying it.
2 Adding more bean counters is not an answer. They don't understand the business. They just play with numbers. They add a lot of overhead cost themselves. Fancy MBA's doesn't help us innovate product nor reduce product cost. It cheapens the product. We are a manufacturer and marketer of product not an accounting firm. Get rid of the bean counters. Show some real leadership.
3 The operations people are incompetent. First is the food guys, then its the coffee guys. For years, they don't understand our manufacturing processes and all they do is point fingers as their way of trying to solve problems because they don't know consumer hardgoods. Automation??? Sure make more crap and handle more crap...but it's automated!
4 All talk...all BS all the time. It is a company rooted in politics. Politics because most executives have no clue what our business and brands truly represent. They are smoothing talking con artists who are self-centered putting more weight on style versus substance. The Mattel management is destroying Fisher Price, it will destroy American Girl, it is heading to ruin MEGA.
5 Change the good old boys at the top. Show leadership. Have them (and yourself) no compensation until we've recovered. If you really believe what you are doing is right, put your money where your mouth is.
I will let everyone else chime in...speak your mind. You know they are watching, maybe someone will listen.
More truths to come...after June 20.