#leadership

We will miss John Gibbons. He was the best leader, second to Frank Bisignano, that Fiserv and First Data ever had.

His command and control style along with his deep empathy towards our team makes me sad. Wish we could have a few more years of being locked in the office for 10 hours a day and not delivering any real progress for our clients.

Thank you for all that you did for us. We Love You.

Did RV seriously just post on LinkedIn with a picture of his free cup of Starbucks?!!! Seriously an out of touch leader while he makes those of us at non growth centers suffer. Talking about non growth centers… what was the point of shuffling everyone around in Wilmington for the start of 4 days in office? Weren’t we all supposed to be coming in 3 days a week so there would’ve been at least 1 day of overlap. How didn’t everyone have a seat? Are they working on closing floors now to reduce rent?

This company has changed in the last few years. Theres a clique of people hired in by their mates and now theyre slowly dragging the company into mediocrity

STEPHAINE

Selfish
Tyrant
Egotistical
Predatory
Heartless
Amoral
Insensitive
Narcissistic
Evil

It's been over 8 years since we lost our beloved Tom Moran. It was such a huge loss for our community. Below is from an article in Irish America about Mutual of America.

How do we get back to being this kind of organization ? Instead of handing out money that we don't have like it grows on trees, 2 days a year, each associate could volunteer their time at 3-4 local organizations to give back to our communities. We've lost our sense of community, purpose, and moral compass.

/////////////////////////////////////////////
A Man of the People: Thomas J. Moran
By Patricia Harty, Editor-in-Chief

"At the Concern dinner, Elie Wiesel said that while he has come across “humanity” in individuals, the first time he came across it in an entire organization was when he encountered Mutual of America.

Mutual of America is the only corporate board that Elie serves on. He sees us as a unique organization that genuinely cares about making a difference, and that there is, very much, a soul to Mutual of America. In my opinion, that soul was first created by the organizers of the company and nurtured and developed by Bill Flynn in his years there. Hopefully now with my time, I also care deeply about the same issues, which are all involved with making the world a better place. And each and every one of our employees share in that commitment. One hundred percent of our employees participate in some kind of philanthropy, either through volunteering their time or making donations. We are a company that is as proud of what we do outside of the industry as we are of what we accomplish in the industry."

Good to see SC still has the bandwidth to dine with DJT et al to celebrate AI investments, midway thru one of ORCL’s biggest RIFs in decades …

The RIF to fund, at least in part, more investment in … AI infrastructure. Not the best optics.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-basks-tech-leaders-spending-005921620.html

What fun it would be if they introduced an internal ‘anonymous’ blog like this and employees could post to the leadership - would they read it and, more importantly, would they listen.

For anyone thinking the change to Sycamore is going to lead us to better things anytime you need to be ready. They’re preparing to walk the new CEO through the budget for this year but aren’t letting anyone with actual insights into the room. He’s going to be fed a load of BS that can’t be delivered and everyone will be left with the fallout.

Unless the new owners want to actually hear from the few of us that have ideas to reinvent this company, the beatings will continue.

If the creation of a new org chart is created based on feedback from leadership, why bother recreating when part of the problem is leadership? Filtered feedback and no one hears about the inefficiencies experienced from those doing the day to day.

How do we have a bunch of stupid tall men LEAD this company, that don’t have technical degrees. We are ficked.

It feels like Yong-Hee has visited every location, region and remote worker over the last two weeks. Squid Games is real and we know LE and Catz are the ones in the masks calling the shots when it hits RED. The only ones left getting Mr Piggy are the not the workers thats for sure.

MEETING WITH THE FIRST LADY, MELANIA TRUMP. AI INITIATIVE.

Minute 5:08 - AK talks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjnBFBJkK10

"Top tech leaders including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, and Code.org President Cameron Wilson spoke at the White House AI Education Summit, hosted by First Lady Melania Trump. They announced major pledges to expand AI education, train millions of U.S. workers, and prepare students for the future of artificial intelligence as part of President Trump’s AI Action Plan. For more details, watch our story and subscribe to our channel, DRM News.

Melania Trump, AI education, White House, artificial intelligence, task force, live news, breaking news, technology, AI innovation, Sundar Pichai, Google, tech leaders, education policy, AI challenge, BE BEST, online safety, U.S. news, global tech, DRM News, youth education."

Sad that this once great company has gone down the tubes in the last five years. Yes, layoffs are a coming because of inept leaders.

When is he in ? What are going to be first decisions ? I heard there’s a big senior meeting mid September. He may attend.

Why was MD not at that tech meeting? So that he could avoid the question of how much money he’s going to invest in The US and how many jobs he’s planning on creating? Because the answer is India?

Both Zuck and Cook are investing 600 billion each.

The numbers for August have been released and if you thought July was bad, think again.

I guess when sales people are continuously lied to and the company makes it almost impossible for those people to make a honest living, you get these results.

It’s a nice touch that they are giving us an extra 1% incentive this month on our sales. I also find it funny that once again the marketing department wants to know if our competition used the tariffs as an excuse to raise prices.

The employees of this company are not happy with the leadership. This new regime has ruined Canon and no one has the ba--s to tell the man that he is continually making mistakes for fear of losing their job.

Send the company survey out in September. Regardless of whether it’s anonymous or not, does anyone really think we will ever see the true results. I think we all, including senior leadership, know exactly what they will see. We will see a company where the employees have lost pride in the company they are employed by. You will see a company where the majority of employees lack trust in leadership.

In the end, the numbers and the profits may look good on paper but we all know those numbers are fabricated and won’t last forever as long as the hard working employees remain unsettled with the current state.

ERP was used exactly as suspected and posted here before. Leaders who "they" want gone were forced to take ERP. ERP is acceptable for the minions to digest whereas terminating leaders can cause chaos. Post leaders you are aware of who took ERP!

Been here for years and I don’t know that I’ve seen real change come of it - certainly nothing in our favor. Senior leaders do not hold themselves accountable to the results, at least not to us. They present on the quantitative data, say they’re carefully reviewing it, then it’s crickets. Rinse and repeat for the next round.

Does the survey just exist to give us an outlet for grievances? To claim they give us the ability to share our thoughts? It certainly doesn’t feel like our voices matter. I’m at a loss.

The founders of EJ (including Ted himself) knew this and used that understanding to build a virtuous cycle of success that became Edward Jones. Trust built commitment, commitment fostered ownership, ownership supported loyalty, loyalty fueled business results…and so on…

At the hands of the abhorrent leadership in place today, EJ is now fully in the throughs of a vicious cycle. To be clear, enterprise reimagined is a symptom of a disease that started when Penny (who has to be among the worst judges of talent) appointed leaders to her exec team who were entirely incompetent to lead the firm forward in a new competitive landscape. Some were homegrown incompetents who Penny was foolishly loyal to (eg Cella, Dolan), others like Chubak were opportunists who actually have sophisticated firm experience but weren’t on the c-suite track in their former companies, usually due to leadership flaws or excessive levels of ego/self interest.

As the firm began to lose market share in core midwestern strongholds, those leaders in turn appointed other weak GPs (with preference to good “order takers” who wouldn’t provide constructive challenge to their insecure superiors). This had the effect of further shielding the realities of the day to day field/HO experience from senior leadership.

While GP returns grew largely due to cost cutting, underlying business performance (net new assets, new clients, FA retention) deteriorated. Leaders who have no track record of successful business transformation responded by pushing change even faster, eroding trust and confidence. Field turnover spiked, more panic set in, assets slowed further…and a vicious cycle had begun by 2022/23.

Enterprise reimagine is hatched in 2024 by the same leaders to mask their own failures, secure GP earnings and further consolidate “control” which these leaders felt they had lost. Similar to other changes, this was slapped together “loose and fast” by ELT members who have never led a restructuring and informed by 30 something consultants who can see the vicious cycle with dollar signs dancing in their heads.

Trust, confidence and loyalty is now even further eroded, effectively destroying the foundation culture Ted established the firm on. Tenured and some newer EJ leaders who challenged the path that brought us here were shown the door.

The culture that was the root of the firm’s virtuous cycle is now gone, the victim of bad leadership starting at the top. Replacing it is a vicious cycle that will now be nearly impossible to break without a sea change of leadership at the top - and an enormous rebuilding effort.

Clients, Associates and Partners, you deserve so much better.

It’s no secret inside or outside the company: Stankey is on thin ice. The board can only cover for him so long with stock price smoke and mirrors while the foundation crumbles.

Under his watch we’ve had massive outages leaving customers furious and regulators circling, along with embarrassing data breaches exposing millions of people’s personal info and destroying trust in the brand. On top of that, his tone-deaf RTO mandate tanked morale, drove talent out the door, and turned AT&T into a poster child for corporate arrogance. And how did he respond? Not with solutions, but with ultimatums in all-hands emails.

This isn’t leadership — it’s a slow-motion collapse. Employees know it. Customers know it. Shareholders are starting to realize it too. Stankey’s “commit or quit” email didn’t motivate anyone; it broadcast desperation. And with every outage, every breach, every resignation, it’s clearer that he’s not the guy to fix this mess.

Don’t be shocked if the board makes a move. At this point, the only real question is whether they’ll act in time to save what’s left of AT&T.

If you had no promotions in the last 3-4 yeas, then this year will be a good bye year for you, this is applicable mostly from the Manager levels, that will be one of the criteria to measure your performance.

Restructuring will blow away many delivery managers, VPS and leadership level that are just busy on internal meetings will be the other area of nailing down

4th quarter will be a painful period for many many..............

( One of my close friend at leadership level at Texas that had 27 years of experience told me the above points a month ago and quit just last Friday and that time I didn't believed him and thought he is a stupid, but now I see how wise he is)

https://www.valleybreeze.com/news/pawtucket-officials-still-haven-t-heard-from-hasbro/article_ad35a301-d9be-4e14-bc01-6966b1f5f8c3.html

And with the state of the company meeting next week and Chris p cocks being too much of a little bi--h to face the Rhode island office so he's doing it from Renton...

Sigh. I'm just tired boss.

"...consistent with Verizon ways, I paid millions to the big 4 consulting firms, hired an internal transformation team, brought in the data & analytics teams and pitted them all against each other to develop an AI prompt. I changed my mind constantly so that the cross functional group would be aimless and confused while I hoarded power. After months of back to back meetings causing divorces, parents missing their kids activities, massive burnout and more - I just did the prompt myself in 2 minutes. I then blamed everyone for wasting so much money, did a reorg and promoted myself. Proud to be a transformation vz leader pushing forward the art of the possible!"
5 hours ago by Anonymous | 2 reactions (+2/-0) | Reply
Post ID: @aq+1k4ay94vk

Detroit Free Press

Pump, dump, and peace out.

We are back to back with calls and we see a group of L2 managers posting memes and mocking each other in the chat room. L3s please make your managers work just like we are.

Ironic to see the awesome company results get posted for Q3 at the same time so many are being fired. My entire group never spoke to an HPE representative yet I’m sure we’re getting fired. Sure seems like uneducated decisions alongside corporate greed.

Dr Brailer is leaving and no public announcement that I kind find. When he joined it was all over the news. Is it a secret? HUM…????

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/insiders-elevance-health-sold-us-120011661.html

Article makes note of the fact that the senior leadership team is NOT buying Elevance stock, in fact they sold 6.7 million in stock. The story indicates that there was a purchase of 2.8 million in the last year but fail to mention that 2.4 million of that was a one time purchase by Gail B in July. SLT better skip buying watches this year and buy more stock to inflate the stock price if they want to get their undeserved bonuses!

EH is a charismatic leader who is adored by the Nike Staff. After all he had pretty bad boots to fill. Post this re org we need to see Nike rebound otherwise it’s just a constant annual thing which will make people just exhausted from their battle scars and leave on their own accord. Best of luck Nike

How many millions of dollars, including stock options to ex-Google/Lyft resources, were wasted on Atelio! Complete waste with nothing to show for two plus years. CEO/BoD, of course, were not impacted at all for their decisions and waste.

Ford’s crawling with shameless a-s-kissers who couldn’t do real work if their lives depended on it.

I just saw that Leah is leaving AMN after nearly 10 years. That’s a huge loss of knowledge and leadership.

Honestly, it makes me wonder what’s going on behind the scenes. Is anyone else feeling uneasy or thinking about leaving? Are there things happening at AMN that we should be aware of?

Not trying to stir the pot, just looking for honest perspectives from others here. She was the best thing that happened to AMN.

Still supporting many incompetant LL5,LL6, supervision. Why?

LL4- sure want to rid many GSR but living incompetent, arrogant, self serving employment in their own bubble.

Not only did they announce a near 2 million dollar facelift in Round Rock the day after a mass layoff. They have now announced a 25 million dollar EXPANSION to RR. And its their initiative to hire financially challenged people 35% of the staff base they say....WTH so we will get even more unqualified people than we already do....When did it become lets hire to get our name out there in a good light vs hiring the right person for the job. Leadership is a JOKE at Dell, we are going to do this because XYZ company is. Just because someone else is doing it, doesn't mean its right. They are returning to their previous roots when they were nothing but box pushers. Heaven forbid you actually do something that is beneficial to the customer. They try to use AI and fall flat on their faces repeatedly. To me hard to sell people on AI when you can't even use it successfully in house...Their AI engine comes via Nvidia, again no development on Dells part, just push the product out the door. Someone with some brain please buy Dell...!!

“That’s capitalism folks. You either succeed or fail or someone could buy us”

I heard that from CEO in person about 4 months ago.

We have become a case study for students!

ExxonMobil is one of the largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies in the world. So why is this successful 140-year-old company dealing with an allegedly toxic organizational culture?

What is organizational culture?
Organizational culture is a firm’s shared values, beliefs, traditions, principles, rules, and role models for behavior. Also called corporate culture, an organizational culture exists in every organization, regardless of size, organizational type, product, or profit objective.

COVID-19 exposes cultural problems
According to a Bloomberg article, the pandemic was a difficult time for Exxon employees thanks, in part, to low crude oil prices. Salary increases were halted, benefits were reduced, and the company faced layoffs.

Morale was low, so after about a year and a half, Bill Keillor, global IT vice president, wanted to help. His leadership teamed arranged an awards ceremony and promoted it on the company’s internal social network Yammer. According to anonymous reports, the award ceremony, which was largely virtual, turned into a tense town hall with attendees voicing concerns and asking tough questions. Exxon is known for having an authoritarian, top-down culture, so this did not sit well. Allegedly, Keillor snapped at attendees and brushed off their questions.

Turnover
After the event, employee-created memes circulated private chats, slowly making their way across the company. Some joked about quitting, but for others, it wasn’t a joke. The company’s turnover rate is the highest since 1999 when Exxon merged with Mobil. In the last two years, 12,000 employees have departed, less than half of which were from layoffs.

According to an Exxon statement, every company has experienced attrition in recent years due to the Great Resignation, and the oil and gas company does not consider this to be a long-term trend. Revelio Labs, an intelligence company that uses public employment records, says Exxon’s turnover rate is in line with the nationwide average but higher than competitors, including BP, Chevron, and Shell. Exxon disagrees with this analysis.

Inside Exxon’s culture
Bloomberg Businessweek’s investigation suggests there may be a deeper problem at Exxon. The publication interviewed more than 40 employees (current and former) and reviewed dozens of Exxon’s internal documents, and found evidence that Exxon has an insular, fear-based culture that is out of touch with the outside world.

Exxon uses a performance ranking system. Previously, employees were ordered from 1-to-100 on a bell curve, but the system was reworked in 2020 to make the processes more transparent and helpful to employees. Instead, employees are placed in performance categories. Anyone in the lowest category can choose between a performance improvement plan or severances. According to Reuters, about 5 to 10 percent of the company’s workforce is assigned performance improvement plans. Employees in the lowest-performing tier can save their job by improving their performance, but a significant portion of them will leave.

A senior corporate advisor says the system should not be feared or a source of anxiety because it helps employees succeed and keeps their performance in line with organizational objectives. On the other hand, some individuals say the ranking system makes employees hesitant to share bad news or unpopular opinions.

According to an analysis by CultureX, an MIT organization that uses artificial intelligence to evaluate organizational culture using Glassdoor reviews, Exxon faces toxicity challenges and ranks below 143 out of the 196 industry benchmarks CultureX measures. The most frequently discussed cultural values, according to more than 1,400 Glassdoor reviews, are agility, performance, and execution.

Exxon on the defense
An Exxon spokesperson responded to these criticisms, saying they were unfounded. The spokesperson pointed to the number of new employees hired every year and how long people tend to stay with the organization. She suggested Bloomberg’s investigation made broad observations with few data points.

Despite these questions about ExxonMobil’s organizational culture, the company is performing well financially with its stock nearing a record high. If there is indeed an organizational culture problem, Exxon will have to address it to attract and retain the best talent.

In the Classroom
This article can be used to discuss organizational culture (Chapter 7: Organization, Teamwork, and Communication), morale (Chapter 9: Motivating the Workforce), and turnover (Chapter 10: Managing Human Resources).

Discussion Questions

Define organizational culture, morale, and turnover.

What evidence is there to suggest ExxonMobil has a negative organizational culture?

If ExxonMobil has a top-down, authoritarian culture, why do you think employees spoke up during the award ceremony about their concerns? Why do you think more than 40 employees agreed to speak with Bloomberg?

This article was developed with the support of Kelsey Reddick for and under the direction of O.C. Ferrell, Linda Ferrell, and Geoff Hirt.

References:
"ExxonMobil," Sloan Review, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/culture500/company/c289/ExxonMobil

Jennifer Hiller and Shariq Khan, "Angst at Exxon as Managers Begin Employee Performance Reviews," Reuters, June 21, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/exxon-cut-us-workforce-by-up-10-annually-bloomberg-news-2021-06-21/

Kevin Crowley, "Exxon’s Exodus: Employees Have Finally Had Enough of Its Toxic Culture," Bloomberg, October 13, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-13/exxon-xom-jobs-exodus-brings-scrutiny-to-corporate-culture

https://www.mheducation.com/highered/blog/2024/06/does-exxon-have-a-culture-problem-march-2023.html

We never see the guy in the parking garages - not in Ross, not in DalPark. We never see the guy roaming the headquarters either. The guy lives in Bluffview, TX - one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of all of Dallas. He gets driven 15 min to the HQ in his Range Rover and parks in private parking. Then proceeds to take his private elevator that lights up straight to floor 4.

Yet, I have to commute from McKinney - a middle class city to downtown and sit in bumper to bumper traffic. I am waitlisted from DalPark so pay 50 bucks per month to park in Ross. But that requires taking a crumby shuttle past the homeless to global HQ. So, I decide to pay double for parking and pay the daily parking fee at Ervay St and then walk over 5 min to headquarters. I pass several suspicious, crazy, and homeless people and realize I don’t have any pepper spray on me. Once I get in HQ, I see impressive led screens then take the elevator to floor 8 where the monitors, keyboards, and mouse haven’t been refreshed since 2010. Just 2 floors above Stankey where the floor was recently redone.

1 company. 2 different people. 2 very different lives. Rules for thee but not me.

APLA will be taken over by GC and NA and then CS will become a new role VP/GM Global Categories. Let me be the first to wish them success in this new role.

John Stanley has we-ponized the 5-day RTO and turned AT&T into a corporate Hunger Games.
🚗 Long commute = the opening obstacle course.
🪑 No desk = fight for survival.
🅿️ No parking = bonus round.
🏢 Sh---y buildings = final boss.
🏴‍☠️ Low morale = the prize.

Stankey wants a market based culture, but it’s a 2 way street and we need to give them the same. Just so the bare minimum to get paid and save any effort and energy you have for when you move on to your next company.