#advicetomanagement

Money compounds but character compounds faster - Buffet.

(Reputation, Trust by clients and employees.)

I found this interesting. It is from Reddit. So our Accenture replacements don't necessarily come here with solid work experience as they used to expect from people applying to work at TROWE. In between assignments they encourage their workers to learn enough about various things to get past an interview. Learning a few random bits and actually doing something are two separate things.

"I'm on the bench now, I'm been here since 4 weeks I think. I had a call with my PL and she said that I have to study more because I was failing in every interview. I was interviewed twice only, and It was for roles really out of my experience... they want to staff me no matter what. I felt pointed, you know? Like if I fail a third or fourth time, I'm out... The worst part is that I'm a new joiner, this Is my second month here... so I feel frustrated and very disappointed about the company. Need advice :("

https://www.reddit.com/r/accenture/comments/1p2ahlg/i_feel_alone_and_disappointed/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

A good read that relates to us right now

https://onemileatatime.com/news/united-ceo-scott-kirby-confidently-declares-american-cooked/

Replace with Verizon and we can all relate

"The current narrative among [Verizon]American executives is that everything they’re doing right now is to “focus on the customer.” The problem is, that’s not enough. [Verizon] American’s Chief Customer Officer has said that a reliable schedule is just “table stakes” at this point.

But the reality is that even customer experience improvements are just “table stakes,” when you’re competing against [T-Mobile]Delta and [Verizon]United. What else ya got? There needs to be a bigger strategy, and employees need to be excited about it.

The problem with [Dan] Isom at [Verizon]American is that he’s neither some brilliant strategy guy, nor is he a football coach type, like McCartney references. McCartney is exactly right — “once you lose labor, it’s over,” and “it may take a couple of years or whatever, but it’s over.” [Dan] Isom isn’t a football coach, he’s the captain of a lost ship with no navigation that’s just going deeper into the ocean. And maybe that sounds harsh, but c’mon, [Verizon]American lost money in Q3 2025, which is supposed to be one of the better quarters.

It's been a been a bumpy last 20 years here. I will miss many of you! Wish us luck in the job hunt!

Lets find employment where the EMPLOYEES are VALUED FIRST!!

Senior Leaders,
Your tenure has been defined by the distance created between the executive suite and the customer experience. The external environment—the shifting market, the competitive landscape, and the voice of the consumer—is moving at a velocity that has exceeded the speed of our internal change. This is the moment where that gap closes.
The core failure is one of vision:
• The Customer Forgotten: Price escalations and complex plan structures were designed for boardroom reports, not for customer loyalty. The brand damage incurred by these choices is measurable and is being repaired daily by those on the front lines, whose warnings were not heeded.
• The Illusion of Importance: Cross-global travel and protracted, high-level meetings created an illusion of operational necessity. These activities served to insulate decision-makers, rather than connect them to the actionable data required for real growth.
• The Unpaid Debt: A loyal, skilled workforce sought guidance, mentorship, and sponsorship, only to be met with a leadership culture that served itself first. The trust deficit created by this failure to invest in internal talent is significant.
Change is arriving. Some will face profound uncertainty regarding their future employment. You, however, are insulated by the financial structures put in place during this period of detachment. This outcome is the definition of accountability deferred.
The mission now falls to those who remain: to rebuild the brand, re-establish trust with our customers, and implement the authentic, ground-up change that poor leadership made inevitable.

Although it’s encouraging to hear that leadership wants managers to nominate and recognize top performers, insecure managers often block these individuals from receiving praise. Advice to management: why not hire leaders who genuinely care about the well-being of the people they oversee instead of just their own interests?

They’re NOT choosing our uninspiring merchandising & they’re NOT choosing our prohibitively expensive prices. We 👏 aren’t 👏 competitive 👏.

Just once I’d like to see an earnings call that goes “We missed the mark.” Instead of blaming our performance on external factors.

Does the constant begging for AI ideas, use cases, prompts, and more drove anyone else crazy?

As someone who is very proficient with AI, (through taking classes, learning it, using it, etc,) I’m not sharing my knowledge/competence/learnings with the company at large outside what is required by my position. Why should they benefit from a knowledge base I built on my own time?

Job Architecture is an absolute joke. Thought you should know since it's probably not filtering up from AC or the rest of the ELT.

With all due respect, touch grass.

I've been gone from Nielsen and the industry quite a few years but I still keep tabs. This is a pretty big (expensive) hire by Nielsen. Peter's job will be to take any heat from the industry that comes Karthik's way. Looks like they hired him to basically be a glorified PR guy with the client base. He has a long history and successful track record in ad sales. Whenever Nielsen has hired these big industry g-ns in the past, they fizzle out really quick and take off into the sunset with a big bag of money.

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/peter-naylor-joins-nielsen-chief-client-officer-1236574923/

Look at what we have been doing for the last 3-5 years, outsourcing CSRs, taking away abilities from the retail POS, adding fees, reducing and removing discounts, wasting billions on useless spectrum while cutting off and failing to maintain what is actually used, and then listening to higher ups and C suite employees whine and blame us for poor numbers. The actions that have been taken would make no sense to someone in middle school, yet were taken by millionaires. This is criminally stupid, almost makes you question if they are a deliberate attempt to devalue the company for a future sale.

And what is being done to fix it? More fees and BYOD plus? We lost subscribers again on the consumer side last quarter while literally giving lines out for free with free or heavily discounted upgrades. Who thinks this is working? People being payed millions to make your life more difficult, your quotas higher, and your future uncertain.

The obvious fix would be to stop sc--wing customers with fees and trash customer service and stop giving shady reps easy to hide ways to add lines, but who wants to hear that? Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, but no, lets just cut and outsource more, but we will spend on AI that customers and reps very vocally dislike.

Spend money on US customer service reps and the network and stop sc--wing the customers, all of the money they have saved with these cuts is being lost by the droves of customers leaving for Tmobile, and common sense and a little money would stop that and reverse a good bit of it.

Hopefully the new CEO doesn’t F this trainwreck up any further, maybe he isn’t at his knees in front of Larry Fink like Hans was. Maybe Dan will read this, one of the HR spies in here should put this on his desk.

What if a work study is conducted and the results don’t align with the current hr/mgmt narrative or expectations? What if someone on the inside says she wasnt to use the results equitably?

How might the team ensure that all findings are accurately documented, reviewed, and communicated, regardless of whether they confirm or challenge assumptions?

Could workers establish a process for transparency and verification so that the outcomes are trusted and actionable and calibrated to perf ratings and bonuses.

it’s all of our fault for picking up the mistakes, flaws or fundamental errors from the BTC. stop, Stop, Stop before they take all our jobs. If it’s wrong, send it back and ask for the rework. Don’t fix it for them and unless it’s dangerously wrong, go ahead and let the plants feel the pain.

The Employees and Wall Street dont believe Raul F. "The debut of the Xponential AI framework adds a fresh storyline, but with not a single major analyst rating DXC a 'buy' – unlike its IT services peers – the company’s still playing catch-up.

As digital transformation gathers pace globally, DXC’s stronger cash flow and AI push could keep it in the game for the long haul – as long as it can deliver on its promises."

If the decision is already made, then let’s use the next two days to be advisors to our leadership — not bystanders. we are better than the external consulting companies.

Why did Target really fail?
What are the ground-level truths about where our leadership fell short?
Which decisions over the past 3–4 years should have been made differently — or not made at all?

These days, I swear telling someone your thoughts is like yelling into a canyon. Nothing happens, nothing ever changes, even if it's something that could help significantly speed up things. There's no point in trying anymore. It’s easier to nod and move on than to waste energy trying to fix anything.

You have one piece of honest feedback or advice for upper management at Optum that you didn’t feel comfortable including in your EXI survey because who knows how anonymous those really are, and go:

Cisco cannot help itself!! They confuse everyone! Especially our ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE!

Renaming Firewalls, Routers, Switches, FMC, CDO, HyperFabric, NEXUS HyperFabric, Nexus switch, 6000 series switch, ki-l the Catalyst Brand, bring it back, Just Cisco 8000 series…. ISR, Catalyst Router, 8000 Series Cisco Secure Router, Tetration, Cisco Secure Workload, AMP, Cisco Secure Endpoint, Cisco Smart Switch, WCS, Prime, DNA Center, Catalyst Center….DCNM, NDFC and whatever great ideas are next — Impact, GSX….

For the love of G-d people!!! Quit renaming EVERYTHING EVERY TWO YEARS!! No wonder Gartner and everybody else is so D@mn confused at our strategy!!

Pick a name and stick with it! Use actual NAMES! A PRODUCT DESCRIPTION IS NOT A NAME! Tetration was easy to remember and had a nice ring to it. Cisco Secure Workload is a description! Not a name. Everything becomes acronyms when you name products long descriptions.

Cisco Marketing has multiple personality disorder! Straighten it out now Chuck you big lug!

Dear leaders.

All of these complaints being posted in the open for all to see is embarrassing and preventable. I love and appreciate US Foods who hired me over 20 years ago and is the only company I have worked for outside of a couple small ones. I have raised kids while working here and made friends along the way. I have reached a level within the company where I lead other associates.

My team opened up during a team meeting and they concerned about reporting issues internally and shared this site with me. I spent the better part of the morning reading all of these comments. The articles of one of our newer leader was one of their main concerns. Having met him briefly, I now understand why I had a bad feeling when we spoke and why I did not see him as a good fit for our lovely company. He was smug and a know it all who made comments about what he inherited and some of what he had to do since being here which I felt was inappropriate and which I won't report here because I am old school and don't think his comments belong here. Like them, I don't want to call our compliance hotline because it may get back to him and he seems to be the type to lie and take matters into his own hands. His past shows that, and yet knowing it is out in the open, he remains in a trusted role here.

But reading these posts are hurt me deeply. I ask that our leaders consider clearing the hurdle that is forcing our associates to place our dirty laundry in the public. This can have a negative effect on our associates and customers. It seems to already have and what will come out next. As a faithful leader of this company, I ask our ELT to put the wellness of our associates and trust of our customers first and remove the barrier so our associates and I can once again speak our concerns internally where it belongs and stop hurting our progress as a company. This is embarrassing and must end.

I am confident that IT and our Operations leaders in Montgomery are doing the right things to protect us and that they would let us know if there was a danger in either incident. But when you read these boards, it generates fear and distrust and subsequently causes our associates to flood external sites and fill our customers ears with negative publicity. I urge you to take the only action that would return us to the company I have known for years.

A faithful but worried leader of US Foods

Pepsi has struck again! It seems that Frito managed the change with the job titles in the proper manner. Meetings and communication were had. But, then there is Pepsi who just dropped the bo-b and everyone woke up on Monday morning to a new job title. There was no communication, no discussions and no email communication.

As a Director, I reached out to HR since every single member of my team had a different job title, including myself. I was told that they were unaware and would look into it. Here we are 48 hours later....and still crickets. How is this possible? This organization is crumbling and we deserve better. You heard of "quiet quitting"....well, you just signed us all up to start doing "less" again!

Now, that the cat is out of the bag, just go ahead and announce the reorg, restructure, merger & sale of some of the territories. Offer VRP to these VP's, Senior Directors and the folks who didn't take the VRP last time. We are all here just waiting for the offer. I for one will gladly take it this time.

Now, we wait and see how many days it takes Pepsi HR & the Division President's to show up with communication and speaking points for us to take back to our teams.

Plain and simple...DO BETTER!

Does md answer on teams ? Like if we can give him some good ideas or share with him some suggestions ?

Rumor has it c-suite and EC cuts are next now that the farce of a Board meeting is done. About time they start treating the senior leaders with the same ruthlessness they treat everyone else. AMN continues to use RTO to do layoffs without paying severance and hide poor financial performance. That may seem like good business to the bean counters but what it reflects is a bankrupt ethical culture.

Senior leaders bully SMEs into submission on quality issues, ignore compliance and cut corners that will ultimately harm patients (pay attention clients!). SpeakUp is a joke and the Board doesn’t have a clue that the worst offenders were the ones sitting in that meeting with them including those in charge of the so called quality and ethics programs.

Mark my words this company will not exist in 3 years. It is being run straight into the ground by unethical people.

Ford Motor Company needs to immediately stop offering any implied Warranties on all new Ford vehicles. Start offering all new Ford built vehicles for sale As-Is Where-Is. Ford Leadership needs to wake up and smell the coffee and finally admit that Ford Motor Company builds J-U-N-K.

Selling all new Ford vehicles As-Is Where-Is should immediately end the constant Recalls problem on almost every Ford vehicles built.

Close all Ford Dealerships and buy out the dealerships Ford Motor Company does not own and close them too. After all Ford Dealerships have been closed, Ford Motor Company should sell off the former Dealership buildings and land. Ford Motor Company can then begin selling their As-Is Where-is Ford vehicles across the country at boarded up closed former Drive-In Theaters that Ford Motor Company can acquire on the cheap.

With Ford Leadership putting this plan immediately in effect at Ford Motor Company it will produce positive cash flow and save the company.

Ford can also make a huge profit by marking up all Ford vehicle repair parts by 200 percent from current prices.

With this plan Ford Motor Company Leadership does not need to recruit and hire loser Dave Calhoun by offering him a outrageous salary

I was hired as a campus recruit and designated as an SDL. I'm officially done, and leaving felt amazing. The 18-month rotation wasn't terrible, but managing sales reps and meeting the demands of major customers like Walmart and Kroger was relentless. With so many SKUs across numerous small sets, it was nearly impossible to keep up. I wasn't planning to post, but after reading the investor's advice to the board about reducing SKUs, I couldn't agree more—it's spot on. Pepsi needs a serious overhaul. The management jobs at my location were grueling 80-hour-a-week slogs with unfair compensation.

The MTLs in my location were working from 3AM to 6PM on many days. Their phones don’t stop Ringing and they’re expected to answer it all hours of the night.

One thing I thank Pepsi for: teaching me I never want to manage people again.

Optum tech here. The amount of AI cr-p being posted in chats or through email by managers is ridiculous. Be a leader not a product of a computer because you are graded on using it. My message to tech execs. You will always be a great asset and daily worker using AI daily but you will innovate and lead by not using AI. Feels just like the cloud last year which wasted everyone’s time.

(1) Hard Work Isn't Enough
Results need to be seen. Advocate for yourself - quite efforts get ignored.

(2) Loyalty Won't Pay The Bills
Companies are loyal to profits, not people. Look out for yourself first.

(3) Your Job Title Is Temporary
Focus on building skills, not clinging to labels. Titles do not define your value.

(4) Your boss isn't always right
Leaders make mistakes too. Challenge respectfully when it matters.

(5) Networking is Non-Negotiable
Your skills are important, but connections will open the doors.

(6) Burnout is not a Badger of Honor
Work smarter, not harder. Protect your energy - it's your greatest resource.

(7) Comfort Zones Ki-l Growth
If you are not uncomfortable, you are not growing.

(8) Feedback is a Gift
Even the harshest feedback can teach you something valuable. Seek it out.

(9) You Are Always Replaceable
Focus on making an impact, not being irreplaceable. IMpact builds a legacy.

(10) Perfection Slows You Down
Aim for progress, not perfection. Done is better than Perfect.

(11) Career Progress Is Not Linear
Side steps, failures, and pivots often lead to the biggest wins.

(12) No One Will Hand You Success
Take ownership. Push for opportunities. No one is going to care more about your career than you.

Author's Footnote - The 12 Truths listed below are not just for engineering but apply to all jobs. In addition, I would add the following advice. Be honest, respectful, humble, and guard your reputation and integrity to establish yourself as someone who can be trusted and has credibility.