If the stock performance is any indication of the success of the layoffs of 2016, it looks like the decision was faulty and a failure. The price during early April, 2006 was about 30 and today it is 28, a negative correlation. Not a surprise to me at all, it is my contention the layoffs were for show only and actually had a negative impact on the business in a number of ways. Will not bore you with the details.
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Life isn’t fair, you have to promote yourself, if not your work will end up in somebody’s elese PowerPoint presentation and you will eventually get terminated for poor performance.
The internal clients of the COEs are just as guilty for the excessive cost overages and not meeting deadlines. They seem to enjoy all the meetings and no one is accountable. No one will buck the system of slick powerpoint presentations of non committal COE Managers.
The COEs are still bashing anyone that was laid off if there were any issues, no one will take responsibility. Too bad when issues existed long before the lay offs.
Internal clients need to wise up and hold the COEs accountable, make them sign an agreement to provide the solution per the specifications!
I learned you don't dare question a Center of Excellence when they provide you something with features that don't work. They tell you to open a ticket even though you asked for it up front, then you wait again. Then they go to the next project with some fancy powerpoint demo.
9xgh post , the NE office is the same way, good analogy.
What a spot on analysis by post 9xgh, perfect example of Williams as a company and there managers.
I worked as a contract professional in a "COE" (that was embarrassing when I told outsiders what that stood for). Since I was a contractor I received the white collar dung work which was ok and perfectly understandable so this is not sour grapes. My time doing that job and observing the others there taught me that there is not enough Prozac in the world to make me want to work there permanently. A depressing bureaucracy was what I observed. Some very good people there but many others not so good but who had a mastery of corporate lingo/jargon/say nothingisms. I also dumped the Williams stock I owned.
I have been rethinking the stock price appreciation history, what is intriguing is how unstable the price performance is. I suspect somewhat market driven and the inability of Williams to divesify. It seems like they always chase new markets in a boom and when times get tough they retreat to their core fee based buisness. A symptom of this is layoffs, they still make money but could be doing a lot better.
When a project was looking like it was going over budget, I was directed to expense my time and not charge to the project so the project would be under budget. No one wanted to work on the real issues the project was facing. It is all a game and the manager that can play that game will succeed at Williams. The stock price is an unfortunate reflection that nothing has changed.
Probably has sometime to do with the lack of stock price appreciation since 2000, this is a deep routed culutural issue, tough to change.
A new buzzword is created for an new mission. The trick is to bash what was done before and take credit for the improvements on paper before any results are completed. The creators gets promoted and big bonus payouts , and move on, before it is possible to evaluate the results. S---ers are left holding the bag to clean up the mess and get all the blame and terminated in some cases. Life at Williams or at any big company.
"Center of Excellence" was a nifty one to hide rework
What would have been great is that ETE came in and cleaned house, Williams needs that to get rid if all the cliques. Maybe then the company will produce something other than catchy work phrases.
Sharing knowledge is a game. If you don’t share anything you will be toast and gone quickly, but unfortunately if you share too much you will be treated like a disposal commodity and get stepped all over. Sounds like you are going to have to walk a tight rope, to keep your job, may be time to look somewhere elese.
Be thankful you still have a job, you will be essentially forced out of the work force once you reach a certain age.
A broader measure of unemployment, which includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment, dropped to 7.9 percent last month. That was the lowest level since December 2006 and was down from 8.3 percent in September.
Have been instructed to "Share Knowledge" with a younger person in the group.
It doesn’t matter they are getting back to being a one trick pony and focusing on their fee based buisness, that’s where they make money.
The show part, is they hired way too many employees during the boom, and then dumped way too many in the bust to make up for it.
Here is a better look at performance, relative to peers. The layoffs are just one part of the puzzle, looking at stock performance since the layoffs, at this time may not tell the whole story, but common sense tells you they may be experiencing another talent crunch as they try to expand again, since this has been a constant theme since 2000, (bust-boom cycle) and that does seem to show in the stock and company performance.
http://financials.morningstar.com/competitors/industry-peer.action?t=WMB
Correction, one year performance has been negative.