No experience left and expertise of the basic understanding business market is the major reason this company can not produce a five year plan much less a ten year plan. That is enormous problem for a company of this size. Although the smaller the company continues to get the less impact that will be. The over weighted in upper management needs to be drastically pruned before they can see benefits of agility that smaller business benefit from.
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"you own it" does not apply to new leadership. It is just something THEY said to existing employees before removing them. For proof look no further than the last town hall meeting where they said nothing but excuses outside of their control when explaining results.
The new corporate headquarters is quite a joke isn't it. Not a good place to work with security cameras everywhere. Associates sitting in each others laps. Not such a unifying workspace is it? I heard the remodel was $50 million + dollars. Hey remember, you own it!
I heartily agree. Not sure what they are doing when they have their executive strategic retreat, but nothing concrete seems to come out of those meetings. The five year plans goes like this - fire any long term associate with valuable knowledge, and replace with a Sears/KMart friend. Repeat annually. Pretend to care about associates under the director level, cut benefits, increase work hours, be stern, make them miserable. Spend millions on a new corporate headquarters that purports to be a unifying workspace, but actually divides and segregates each work group.
It seems too late to me to save anything at Follett. GM cannot support the losses that CM has suffered, and there aren't enough lower level associates to cut to make any huge payroll savings. The new benefits cuts will benefit the bottom line, but for how long?
Great strategy !