#leadership

MOC CFO replaced after just 2 years! Atleast it’s nice to see our competitors actually keeping their leadership accountable!

Politics rule this company. It would be established if they didn’t stop changing technology every 3 months… about the amount of time it takes for a senior leader to be let go or forced into retirement, and bringing in someone new who wants a notch on their belt for implementation.

Let’s also start where they positioned to sell to Cigna and took themselves out of regular insurance without signing contracts. Cigna backed out, most likely pointing and laughing and the stupidity. The email sent by sad-sack senior leadership was confusing, poorly written, and verified there was something fishy going on. If you’re going to lie, Humana, lie better.

Humana: when it takes a year or more to resolve IT issues but 3 months to restructure and change technologies.

As engineers supporting highly complex programs worry about potential 2026 layoffs at L3Harris, it’s worth remembering that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on AlixPartners over four years on a failed attempt to roll out a simple reporting tool.
The money exists. It could have been invested directly into programs—staffing them properly and supporting frontline teams with real expertise. Instead, it was wasted.
Executive leadership should never allow this level of misallocation while employees are asked to do more with less. Defense work is hard enough; it becomes impossible without company support.
It’s time to invest in the people actually delivering the mission.

Your company lacks corporate transparency. Modern forward looking companies practice social responsibility with ESG transparency. In 2026, Rich'
Board needs to get into the 21st century with basic corporate norms. Transparency boots employee morale, confidence, and helps the company address and allocate resources better:

++Full Annual Report w/full audit financials & audit report++
++Corporate Executive Compensation Policy & Disclosures Published w/compensation for all SVPs and above by name & amount++
++Publish Board of Directors Compensation along with outside business interests++
++Summary of Board Minutes & Agendas++
++Board of Directors required to provide update to employees and to meet w/employees & clients through focus groups each quarter++
++Publish Annual Filing w/NYDFS w/all schedules on public website++
++Publish 5 year strategic plan to all employees++
++Post Corporate Tax Return on public website++
++Post all pages of the full un redacted rating agencies reports on the public website++
++require all internal leaders of divisions to hold quarterly meetings with all of their divisions and employees especially in IT, Sales, & Operations++
++Human Resources needs to release all results of Annual Employee Culture Survey within 1 month of survey completion++ no sitting on the survey results.
++360 feedback by associates of their managers and their managers managers++

Remember, the cover up is worse than the crime and it's time to stop covering up. This is not Watergate.

Phillips 66 is in serious trouble, and it’s no longer honest to pretend otherwise. Over the past four years, not a single major initiative has produced a durable, repeatable positive outcome. Some have shown short-term gains on paper, but none have proven sustainable.

The acquisition of DCP Midstream itself was not inherently the problem. The mistake was allowing leadership and operating philosophies from a joint-venture culture where compromises, exceptions, and optics were often tolerated to take control of a legacy enterprise built on accountability, discipline, and execution.

The result has been a leadership model that prioritizes messaging over outcomes and reaction over strategy. Propaganda and internal campaigns may shape narratives, but markets, performance, and attrition do not lie. A company with world-class people and assets is being managed like a short-term experiment rather than a long-term enterprise.

What makes this especially concerning is the pattern: frequent pivots, walk-backs, and directional changes that signal a lack of conviction and operational understanding. This is not innovation, it is instability. Accountability is routinely deferred, while experienced people and institutional knowledge leave at a startling pace.

At some point, shareholders and long-tenured employees alike have to confront reality. Talent loss, cultural erosion, and repeated course corrections are not coincidences; they are symptoms. Cynicism is not the problem here, it is a rational response to sustained underperformance.

Phillips 66 does not have a people problem or an asset problem. It has a leadership problem. Until that is acknowledged, the unraveling will continue, regardless of how polished the messaging becomes.

“When the story feels good enough, evidence becomes optional.”

I'm still not convinced Dan is a bad thing for this place. I think it'll just take some time and pain to get where he needs to be to see the positives. I could be wrong, but I'd rather wait to make my judgement than make it right away and proceed to stress over things I can't change.

Elluott

My hopes and dreams of waking up to the news that GM has been fired are dwindling.

I’m starting to realize that GM most likely made a deal with Elliott Management to be a “bendover, yes sir can I have another, puppet stringed sellout”. If this is the most likely scenario then we are in for long, long dismal time at MDT.

Everything here is dictated by how leadership thinks analysts will react. We’re always responding, never setting a direction of our own, and it shows in every rushed decision. Instead of building something solid long term, we just keep sprinting after the next headline to keep Wall Street happy.

Happy New Year. Kraft Heinz is a case study in what happens when cost discipline outpaces reinvestment. Years of cost-cutting and leadership churn weakened execution and blurred ownership, opening the door for faster, nimbler competitors.

For Nike, the lesson is simple: efficiency matters, but without sustained investment in product, talent, and clear accountability, competitive advantage slowly erodes. Stop the random reorgs.

This feels uncomfortably close to home. The WSJ’s “ How Kraft Heinz Lost Its Lock on Mac and Cheese—and American Shoppers” is worth reading.
--Kraft Heinz and the Mac-and-Cheese Reckoning

Kraft Heinz has all but owned the supermarket macaroni-and-cheese aisle for decades. So when the first boxes of an upscale brand called Goodles landed on store shelves in 2022, the company wasn’t especially worried.

A call went out in the Chicago headquarters to try it out. Employees bought a few boxes, cooked up the gooey meals in a corporate kitchen and dug in. The verdict: Goodles “Cheddy Mac” tasted good. Other flavors, the testers decided, needed work. The noodle texture was a bit iffy.

Kraft Heinz employees said the market-leading product was due for an upgrade, but with $1 billion worth of it selling every year, executives weren’t in a hurry. Deliberations stretched on for years: More protein? New flavors? More cheese? Goodles has now gobbled up 6% of the U.S. mac-and-cheese market, while Kraft Mac & Cheese is down to 39%, from 45% in 2022, according to data from market-research firm Circana.

When Kraft and Heinz, two of the biggest names in American food, merged in 2015, the combined company was supposed to breathe new life into old brands. Instead, years of cost cutting, underinvestment and corporate chaos left Kraft Heinz’s $26 billion food empire — home to bedrock brands like Heinz’s Tomato Ketchup, Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Kool-Aid — vulnerable to both buzzier premium ones and cheaper supermarket knockoffs.

Kraft Heinz sales have dropped for eight straight quarters. In September, the company said it would split in two, undoing the 2015 deal. Tensions flared in the company’s upper ranks. Many employees were uncertain who was calling the shots and which company they would end up working for, sowing further chaos. On Jan. 1, the company replaced its chief executive, Carlos Abrams-Rivera, with veteran food-company executive Steve Cahillane.

Big food companies are under siege, buffeted in recent years by heightened scrutiny of processed foods, consumer anger over soaring grocery bills and the growing popularity of weight-loss dr-gs.

Kraft Heinz executives overseeing a sprawling portfolio of cheese, cold cuts, lunch kits and boxed dinners face a dilemma shared by other legacy food companies: Fiddle with flagship products and risk losing the loyal customers who made them category killers, or stick with old formulas that don’t interest younger shoppers.

Cahillane, the new CEO, said in mid-December that the industry “is clearly in a challenging moment,” and that Kraft Heinz “has to meet the moment.”

Bankable Brand

Kraft mac and cheese, first sold in 1937 for 19 cents a box, was the creation of Chicago cheese monger James L. Kraft, who got his start selling cheese from a horse-drawn wagon. Marketed as a meal for four, it caught on during World War II, eventually finding broad success as a quick and convenient dinner for families.

For decades, it was one of the most bankable brands in food. After Warren Buffett and Brazilian private-equity firm 3G teamed up to buy ketchup heavyweight Heinz in 2013, they orchestrated a merger with Kraft, creating the world’s fifth-largest food company.

Though Kraft mac and cheese still ruled store shelves, and the company’s Velveeta Shells & Cheese also was a top seller, consumer tastes were shifting away from such processed foods toward fresher, healthier fare. Competition was mounting, with General Mills in 2014 acquiring Annie’s, which made an organic mac and cheese.

In an earnings call after the merger, Kraft Heinz executives called mac and cheese a turnaround opportunity. The company revamped the recipe in 2016, replacing artificial dyes with colors derived from natural sources.

Kraft Heinz executives, many of them from 3G, used an aggressive cost-cutting measure called zero-based budgeting, under which all expenses had to be justified anew each year. The company closed plants and laid off thousands of workers, reducing annual spending by nearly $2 billion. It said greater efficiency would free up resources to reinvest in its brands.

Dividends to stockholders jumped to $3.6 billion in 2016, from $1.3 billion the year before. Kraft Heinz boasted the highest operating profit margin among food companies.

But former employees and Wall Street analysts said the company lost experienced leaders and marketing, research and sales prowess. “On multiple levels, they depleted the organization,” said Rob Moskow, an analyst at TD Cowen.

Kraft Heinz struggled to shift from cost-cutting to growth mode. Executives who excelled at trimming costs faltered when it came to building brands, according to former executives and other employees, often leaving junior employees to increase sales of struggling products on slim budgets. In 2019, poor sales and accounting errors prompted the company to write down the value of its assets by $17 billion.

The company brought in a new CEO, Miguel Patricio, who pledged to reinvest in areas like marketing. Less than a year into his tenure, the pandemic hit, and homebound consumers flocked to familiar brands like Kraft mac and cheese. The company expanded manufacturing capacity to pump out more blue-and-orange containers of its signature product and other key offerings.

Kraft Heinz sales climbed by 5% in 2020, boosted by booming online orders. “We have sold nearly 90 million pounds of mac and cheese alone this year, which is equal to the weight of 41 Statues of Liberty,” said Abrams-Rivera, then Kraft Heinz’s president of its U.S. business, during a presentation to investors.

Mac-and-Cheese Challenge

A year earlier, Paul Earle had been walking the aisles of Chicago grocery stores with a notebook and pen when he stopped in front of the familiar blue wall of Kraft boxes.

The veteran consumer-goods entrepreneur had been assistant brand manager for Kraft mac and cheese during a short stint at the food giant starting in the late 1990s. At the time, Earle recalled, he thought the product could be made more nutritious to satisfy Americans’ growing appetite for healthy fare.

Earle had left Kraft and later launched several companies, including ones selling whisk-y and shampoo. At the time of his Chicago store visit, he was hunting for a new project.

He purchased several brands of mac and cheese, brought them home and cooked them. His 10-year-old son, Earle said, spat out a healthier variety from a Kraft competitor. Kraft’s classic version still tasted good and brought back fond memories, Earle said, but it didn’t appear much healthier than it was when he worked there. “I knew there was a way to do it better,” he said.

Earle approached Jen Zeszut, who had run baby food startup Cerebelly. They agreed Kraft Heinz had left the door wide open for a mac-and-cheese challenge.

Goodles, led by Zeszut, pitched itself as a fun, healthier take on an old classic. The company infused its noodles with protein and nutrients from spinach, pumpkin and kale, and said its ingredients and flavors warrant a price that is more than twice what Kraft’s sells for.

While Kraft Heinz and General Mills tried to appeal to children with noodles shaped like SpongeBob and Disney characters, Goodles targeted a different group. Earle and Zeszut believed many young adults were secretly eating mac and cheese, and others would too if it could shed its dorm-food vibe.

The pair sought help from Wonder Woman. Several years earlier, Zeszut had discussed a different business venture with Gal Gadot, an Israeli movie star who has played the superheroine on screen. The actress had passed on the earlier investment, but signed on when Zeszut pitched Goodles.

Gadot became a Goodles ambassador, posting videos of herself cooking and tasting the product for her more than 100 million Instagram followers. She said mac and cheese was her favorite comfort food in childhood, but that established brands weren’t healthy enough for her own four children.

Goodles caught on with consumers. Zeszut said retailers earned a higher profit on Goodles, turning them into fans, too. “It’s a higher-income consumer, it’s a younger demographic,” she said. “It’s exactly who they are trying to lure back to the center store.”

Slow Reaction

Goodles hit store shelves during Kraft Heinz’s pandemic bo-m, when its sales grew for many consecutive quarters. Kraft Heinz executives weren’t overly concerned about the new competition at first, former employees said. Kraft mac and cheese was the category’s leading brand by far, selling more than a million boxes a day.

There were other problems demanding attention. Mac and cheese was losing shoppers to other quick foods such as ramen, and many Kraft mac and cheese buyers were turning to less expensive store brands like Walmart’s Great Value.

Market-share shift, 2022–2025 (through Nov. 2):

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese: –6 percentage points

Goodles: +5 percentage points

Velveeta Shells & Cheese, Private Label, Annie’s: remainder

In 2022, a Kraft Heinz team proposed grabbing shoppers’ attention with more promotions, new flavors and a high-protein variety. Employees put together a proposal for new mac-and-cheese products, including ones using premium cheeses like Gruyere, Gouda and Parmesan, and herbs and spices.

Under a “design to value” approach the company had adopted, those employees needed to find corresponding cost cuts. They experimented internally with reducing the amount of cheese, mac and cheese’s costliest component, checking the effect on taste, texture, mouthfeel, cheesiness and “cling.”

A year later, another team made similar recommendations to executives, presenting sales data and retailer intelligence about Gen Z and millennial shoppers, many of whom were springing for premium versions. Health-focused options and new flavors like truffle and cacio e pepe, they said, could help coax back younger shoppers.

Executives faced other big troubles. Frequent restructuring and churn among employees led to shifting priorities, stalled projects and frustration among retailers. Brands such as Oscar Mayer and Maxwell House posed even bigger challenges than macaroni and cheese.

Kraft Heinz sales started dropping in late 2023. Consumers were fed up with inflation and hunting for deals. Patricio stepped down as CEO, turning over the job to Abrams-Rivera.

Executives were frustrated with Kraft mac and cheese, which continued to lose market share. Unhappy retailers wanted a growth strategy from Kraft, their biggest mac-and-cheese supplier. Costco wanted healthier products. Kraft Heinz’s sales employees were frustrated too, believing their suggestions had fallen on deaf ears.

Abrams-Rivera acknowledged the mac-and-cheese challenges in an October 2024 earnings call. “We have quite a bit of work to do, and meaningful improvement will take some time,” he told investors.

Employees drew up plans for new flavors, box sizes and store promotions. Internally, they declared 2025 the “year of mac and cheese.”

The company launched limited-edition flavors such as pizza, garlic Parmesan and, recently, apple pie, and jalapeño and ranch as permanent additions.

As part of a major initiative to boost its brands, Kraft Heinz ran more mac-and-cheese taste tests with consumers. Some results were disappointing, and executives told employees to fix it.

Diana Frost, the company’s chief growth officer for North America, said one conclusion was that the product billed in the 1990s as “the cheesiest” could use more cheese.

The company dialed up the cheese. It also introduced a bigger box that it says can feed a family of five for $2, and it updated its packaging to note the product doesn’t contain artificial flavors, preservatives or dyes.

In the 40 weeks ended Nov. 2, Kraft mac and cheese sales declined 4% from the year-earlier period, according to Circana data shared by industry analysts.

Abrams-Rivera said in October that mac and cheese was partly to blame for a 4% sales decline in the largest division of Kraft Heinz’s North America grocery unit. More recently, the company said Kraft mac and cheese sales in the four weeks ended Nov. 16 were up 4% from the year-earlier period.

“We know our brands better than we’ve ever known them,” Frost said. “We are not happy with where results are, but we’re seeing progress.”

The company said it plans to spend more than $60 million to boost Kraft mac and cheese in 2026, including the rollout of a higher-protein, higher-fiber variety that it said will be more affordable than competitors’ versions. It is also working on a premium line featuring fancier cheeses and noodles and bolder flavors.

When Kraft Heinz announced its planned breakup in September, executives said the mac-and-cheese business would be part of the new company focused on sauces, spreads and seasonings, not the other one selling grocery staples such as sliced cheese and deli meat.

Wall Street analysts have questioned the plan for Kraft mac and cheese. Cahillane, the incoming CEO who is slated to lead the sauces business, has said he may reassess the plans for the brands, including mac and cheese.

There is a lot of internal chatter regarding the decision to have the CSTO lead LATAM Foods while maintaining the S&T lead. With a direct report structure of nearly 30 people already, many are asking how this serves the business rather than just consolidating power.

The Financial Questions

The S&T era under Athina’s direct leadership—along with Vikram and G-yatri—has seen a staggering level of spend.

• ROI Gap: Many within the org feel the billions spent on "transformation" haven't materialized into frontline efficiency.

• There is significant frustration over the lack of business justification for the heavy reliance on specific global tech and consulting partners.

The Offshore Oversight Issue

The "India and Mexico Hub" model - While local teams face budget freezes, we see:

• Lavish travel and spending from global hubs.

• A perceived lack of productivity, with local leads often picking up the slack for offshore teams working limited hours.

Culture & Leadership

Is the "PepsiCo Way" being applied at the top? The leadership style and treatment of partners during this spend-heavy era have been widely criticized internally. Instead of an audit into the financial results of S&T, we see a promotion to a CEO seat. How does this align with our goals of being a lean, accountable organization?

Happy new year everyone hope yall have a successful year getting out of OT and landing an actual job in a better / good company. I would say great but even good is better than OT. I will be interviewing over next two weeks. Good riddance OT. They don't know what's going to it them in next week or so. Good luck OT "leadership" trying to fix this.

I’ve been here for six years, moved laterally once, and my impression is that there are not many opportunities left to move upward. Even the people who try hard to stay visible with upper management do not seem to be getting anywhere. Why is this happening? You would think a company would want at least some percentage of skilled employees to progress, if only to keep them motivated and to ensure strong voices at the top. I know I may sound naive, but rationally this should be one of any company’s priorities.

It look a lot of Leadership, apathetic employees, meetings, PowerPoints, bad ideas and ineffective and incapable management to accomplish this ! # PEPPROUD

Just kidding! Stock up $2.01 YTD but DOWN $4.10 over the past 6 months. $4.10 × 7.2 billion shares ≈ $29.52 billion in value LOST.

I’ve watched a steady parade of senior leaders come and go, and after a while it hits you that there aren’t any truly new ideas. It’s the same playbook over and over, just repackaged with fresh buzzwords and a shiny new label. I can’t count how many times I’ve thought, we tried this five or ten years ago, they’re just calling it something different now. Once you’ve been around long enough, the pattern is impossible to ignore.

How’s it feel seeing in print our median employee pay went up 1% while Geoff jumped 16% and is the highest paid ceo in med tech?

Over a quarter if a million of personal use of the corporate jet while we get turned down for legitimate business travel between facilities.

Not to mention seeing greg smith get almost $9m to leave ops in total shambles…..

Happy new year, I guess, to us.

Employee Morale and Shareholder Value.

There are more employees across clinical and business operations leaving, most recently there has been many exits from HR.

One of the common themes during exit interviews is the lack of trust due to the the $30 million settlement award against Integris due to the cyber incident in Q4 of 2023.

Our Information Security department was turned into a paper factory due to the bad hire of VP CISO Stacy Stika. Stacy Stika has been given absolute decision-power over technical defenses, yet she have never built a system, cannot read code, and fundamentally does not understand how attacks work. What she does understand is spending time investing in media attention grabs such as submitting her own nomination backed by her friends to the Becker's Hospital Review. Becker's should have verified Stacy Stika could walk through, in technical detail, how she would contain a ransomware attack that bypassed endpoint protection AND was has no negligent breaches linked to her name.

Stacy's leadership has done the following since her arrival:

• Increased stress of clinicians due to mixed messages of security
• Institutionalized Dishonesty
• Taken the focus from care of those most vulnerable

We are tired of of the security glitches slowing us down. We have provided feedback however the people we provided this feedback to are no longer with the company. The Deputy CISO who fixed the problems from the 2023 hack left. We have frustrated clinicians who are the backbone of Integris leaving.

This is how 'layoffs' work here, leadership is restructuring healthcare services which is causing clinical staff turnover with no backfill. Also people are fired after the Glint my voice survey which claims anonymous feedback. If one is not fired for honest employee survey reviews then retaliation begins until the target quits. Worst of all, hiring in IT has more than tripled.

Copper prices: What next for the red metal as LME prices hit record https://share.google/bOYkJWt089UXJMs1w

Will they wait for May-June when the first carve out is announced?

Wells Fargo Technology was once a good place to work, but recent leadership changes have brought a cultural shift that has significantly altered the environment. The new mindset, especially the pressure placed on managers to deliver “inconsistently meets” ratings, has made the organization far less attractive to current and prospective employees.

People getting title promotions after being here 6 months. Many others that are dedicated people that have been here for decades and never getting a title promotion. Favorites and cronies get these promotions.

Is this really happening? Not that I don't think this leadership is capable of it, I just never witnessed it myself.

In the last couple of weeks, two senior managers on my floor have left voluntarily. Their departures weren't part of any announced layoff, and they both gave standard notice. The fact that senior-level people are choosing to leave so closely together has sent a wave of concern through our team. It makes you wonder what they might know about the company's future plans that hasn't been shared with the rest of us. Is this a sign of things to come?

Just make your best guess/bet. Where do you see Verizon 5-10 years from now?

Anybody remember thi
As of today, GM’s market cap is 150% of Ford’s $52 billion.
Why is Farley still employed?

Let me get this straight, Dan is Mr. AI, sits on multiple AI company boards, can clearly see in the the future so much that he slashes 13k jobs because AGI is 10 months away. But he only does email? Wait Mr. AI only does email a century old technology and doesn’t like slack a new technology with tons of AI functions. Yeah I don’t buy his little AI story. Hans was ousted by a coupe and Dan is trying to boost his pockets along with other prominent shareholders before Starlink takes ours and TMOs lunch.

Company's biggest downfall was implementing DEI in hiring/promotion.

This is what happens when you hire/promote incompetent people just because they are a particular race/ethnicity as opposed to hiring/promoting someone of their merit.

Verizon will be fined millions of $$$ for this and will continue to suffer as you have these people in top positions not knowing nor being qualified for the positions that they are in.

Message to the hire ups and decision makers of Verizon: Hire and promote those who earned it, not because their skin is darker.

Scratching my head on this one…. What kids dad got him a CEO job at Huntington? It shows.

Our IT manager let it slip today saying Leadership wants to cut 20% of low performers in Seattle. The performance improvement plans were created by HR to make them extremely difficult to pass.

What retailer will the Lambert man buy next just to pump n dump liquidate next since Sears and Kmart are almost extinct soon according to the nyc times magazine?

Yes. Next question.

Go figure out yourself. Jokers on this board have no creativities.

Anyone receiving ANY direction from their leaders since 11/20? Our organization has changed and our responsibilities are supposed to change but it's been over 30 days and nobody has provided an ounce of direction.

I am a former trustee and graduate of Johnson & Wales University (class of 1973). I served as a trustee for over seven years and during that time worked to be a proper fiduciary of the university. I applaud your June 23 article “The Rise and Fall of Johnson & Wales University.” The article fully captures my personal frustration with university leadership, most significantly Chancellor Mim L. Runey.

As a first-generation college graduate, I also established an endowed scholarship in my family’s name to benefit students coming from a background similar to mine, who are looking to get into a finance/business-professional role.

When I resigned my role as trustee and chair of the academic subcommittee a couple months ago, it came as a result of frustration not only about moving the academic needle and managing my endowed scholarship but about the loss of over 30 established academic leaders over the years. These leaders were not included in the recent staff/faculty terminations mentioned. These academic leaders were brought in to build and develop key programs not part of Culinary. Most lasted a year or more and then suddenly were no longer part of the university.

The root of the problem at Johnson & Wales is Chancellor Runey. People are afraid to challenge her for fear of retaliation and dismissal. Her friends thrive, but many are just afraid to challenge and speak up for fear of being ostracized. Many of these people have gone on to other colleges and universities to build very innovative programs. Just look at the recent promotion of Joe Greene to president. I have great respect for Joe in his financial leadership. But for Joe, JWU would have collapsed years ago. My point is that the university at the board’s direction should have used the opportunity to build an effective bench with some new talent who could possibly serve as a replacement for Chancellor Runey. The time for fresh talent and ideas is now.

It is a shame that proud graduates, like myself, are watching the collapse of what was a fine institution. The university led culinary arts for many years, only to then fall to a distant second or further behind the Culinary Institute of America and to two-year institutions popping up all over the country. They lost their way and bet it all on one-dimensional education, favoring Culinary and Hospitality. They have all but abandoned the very foundation of their business, education.

This is my first external outreach. I have written several letters expressing these issues to the board chair and vice chair but receive little if any response.

Thank you for caring enough to write this piece. We all hope that the university can find its way, but each day I become less and less certain they will without bold moves.

• Philip Renaud, Johnson & Wales University, Class of 1973

Looking forward to the earnings call. Can we reach 600k customers loss in a year? Blows my mind that failed leadership is not held accountable. Maybe we can have another Kevin Hart commercial where VZ leadership laughs at the competition who are taking all of our customers.

Leadership has bought into the AI hype hoping it will allow them to shed people.
AI is just another a tool...like a hammer.

"it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." ~ Abraham Maslow

Management is handing everyone a hammer and telling them to go pound on everything the see.

Exactly what @bp+1kc37smg0 said.

https://nypost.com/2025/12/28/business/former-ibm-ceo-louis-gerstner-who-revitalized-big-blue-dead-at-83/

Anyone have a leader who requires cameras to be on in every meeting? How is this even enforceable?

Big internal programs like this almost always arrive wrapped in promise and land in phases, pilots, exceptions, “next wave.” Especially at Dell Technologies scale. Even when the intent is real, gravity is real too.

What tends to happen in practice:

Year 1: decks, roadmaps, leadership optimism

Year 2: partial tools, parallel systems, extra clicks

Year 3: the thing quietly becomes “how we’ve always done it,” just renamed