#leadership

With Dan acknowledging our customer service is horrible, did customer experience execs (Ken lain, Suzanne Norton) keep their job or were they impacted with the RIF?

It's 2026 & ITS GO time ! GO= Results OR Get Out !Time to put $ & mouth together & stop the gaslighting & BS. Action+Results+Real "Digital Transformation." Clients & Employees want results from the Board & low producing Executives Who have no personality.

++Transparency~Publish Board Minutes & Agenda++employee, retiree, and client representation on board++
++Transparency~Publish Executive Compensation Packages++
++Transparency~Publish full financial & audit report in Annual Report
++Transparency~Publish full Rating Agencies reports on website++
++Transform Website++
++Transform Mobile App++
++Add Brokerage Accounts++
++Add Managed Accounts++
++Add Financial Plans++
++Add Retirement Score Calculator on Website++
++Reduce work loads for Client Relationship Managers & overworked and underpaid segments in Operations++
++New Leadership Over Operations, IT & Sales++
++Rebrand & change corporate name and hire a PR Firm to clean up poor external image++
++Automate all distributions & loans++eliminate paper like it was supposed to be done 15 yrs ago
++More CRM support & stop the wage theft working 60 hours per week++
++Change investments in 401k++
++Allow clients to communicate with Text & Chat++
++eliminate team CX as they SuCX. Use Mediallia to survey the F.u.CK out of participants
fire all non performers

• Streamline workloads for CRMs & Administrations Operations++new leaders needed !
  cut Executive Pay & 3 Year Special Pay Shares
  put laugh track of CFO on corporate website just for s.chits & giggles
• stop running behind competitors & get your as--s together w/system upgrades & legislation
  Implement associate solutions & stop paying consultants through the nose
  Eliminate 50 page performance review process & eliminate monthly webinars**
  ~~stop posting on Linkedin during company time & ban por.n during business hours
  fire heads of sales, it, admin ops, hr, call center, & all current execs & board mbers
  get Andrew cuomo, chris cuomo, & eric adams on board

Trying to get through the NEW yorker

"LBT achieved getting paid a lot of money by Intel. Also increased stock price from 20 to 40. Convinced Trump Intel was too big to fail and not only got him to donate money, got him to Arm twist nVidia to do so too. Also got Intel to donate to his startups. Wow! Increased margins by reducing headcount, either by outright layoffs or by giving employees BE and PIP thereby saving severance package. Increased productivity by telling employees to “laser focus” on working hard.

However, Intel is nowhere in AI. Anybody who is employable enough to find a job at some other company has done that by now."

"I am wondering how much he paid to the government officials to avoid his own layoff and even got the fund to bump up the stock. Remember INTC stock was kicked out the DOW earlier not too long ago and why it is suddenly bump up almost 100% in just a few months (?) Who is behind the manipulation order ?"

How long before intel's inflated stock plunges?

In 2017, I was sitting in a conference room in NYC when the "Digital Transformation" was announced. 9 yrs later, it turned into one of the worst colossal wrecks in recent corporate memory. From a 2023 interview with Life Accelerated, you be the judge if it was all smoke, lies, and video tape:

The Route 66 Failure - Digital Transformation 9 Yrs Later

Life Accelerated - Episode 27 - 2023

Transcript:
Anthony O'Donnell: I'm Anthony O'Donnell, and this is Life Accelerated, a podcast for life insurers striving to achieve digital transformation. Founded in 1945, Mutual of America Financial Group is a Fortune 1000 company providing annuities and retirement products and services. The company has dedicated itself to helping its customers build and preserve assets, not only with innovative products, but through high touch personalized service.
In 2017, the company embarked on a transformation initiative to scale its high touch service through high-tech. That's where the guest of this episode of Life Accelerated comes in. Jeff Donaldson, executive vice president, head of technology and chief digital officer at Mutual of America shares with us how the company identified four core areas crucial to that transformation. Its core record keeping system, CRM capabilities, new data management capabilities and artificial intelligence to improve both management of risk and customer experience.
Jeff also details Mutual of America's Route 66 strategy, which consists of six vital IT strategies paired with six guiding principles. Here's my conversation with Jeff. Jeff, tell us a little bit about Mutual of America, the company's history, its place in the market today, who the company's customers are and how the company has traditionally marketed and distributed its products.

Jeff Donaldson: Well, thank you Anthony, and thank you for the opportunity to join you today. Mutual of America, it's a leading provider of retirement services and investments to almost 6000 employers here in the United States and more than half a million plan participants. We deliver that through our 401K and 403B plans. We were founded 78 years ago back in 1945.
Our roots are in the nonprofit sector, though our client base is growing significantly among small to medium-sized for profit businesses. We've got about 30 billion in assets under administration. As I mentioned, we are here in the United States primarily with about 60 offices nationwide. And our 1000 employees are dedicated to providing high touch personal service to help our customers build and preserve assets for their financially secure futures.

Anthony O'Donnell: So I gather service is a tradition at Mutual of America, and it's always been a high touch kind of company. So we need to talk about what's changing when we address the digital transformation moment at the company. Why are you undertaking digital transformation? What are the company's plans and what is driving them?

Jeff Donaldson: Well, absolutely. As you mentioned, we are a high-tech, very personalized service-based company, and as we look at the next cycle of our growth and service, marrying high-tech to high touch or delivering our capabilities at scale is really where we're focused. And we took a look back in 2017 at really what the digital economy meant to us, our clients, to this industry.
And we started to create some awareness and education amongst our senior team with respect to how is it that we could be impacted or impact our products and services with respect to our long-term growth goals, maintaining those high levels of customer satisfaction and of course managing risk. So this all became part of our overall transformation. We embarked on that transformation knowing at the end of the day it would be not only about technology, it's really about our culture, our people, our organization, and of course the product that we deliver.
So I would say that for us doing this started probably six years ago at this point, what is true for us is that innovation has always been a guiding principle of the companies. And as long as we have been delivering these products and services, we have used technology in new and different ways. And we certainly said that we have to continue that part of our DNA and that part of our value proposition as part of our digital transformation.

Anthony O'Donnell: Jeff, let me bring you back to what you just said about an overall transformation. And we've spoken before, and we'll speak more today about the combination of technology and culture, but you're talking about an overall transformation of which technology is an important part. I think that generally, CIOs and other senior officers are talking about how you can never look at a technology transformation as such. It's also got to be a business transformation. So let's just get the context of the transformation and technologies placed within it.

Jeff Donaldson: Yeah, absolutely. So again, when we looked at our long-term strategy and we looked at growth and we looked at improving our customer experience and we looked at managing risk, we said to ourselves, we need to do this. We need to do it at scale, and we need to do this in a way that again, we preserve that caring for our customers, caring for our employees that we're noted for.
And it was really to say, what digital capabilities do we need to build? What new leadership capabilities do we need to build and what playbook do we need to build in order to support those goals to scale, to deliver that high touch? And I think that again, from an innovation perspective, we had to link it to the idea that what got us here today, what got us to this level of our client base, of assets under administration, served us well, but wouldn't necessarily serve us well going forward. So we needed to stop and rethink our process. We needed to rethink our product. We needed to rethink culturally how we do business. And again, we had to do that while preserving who we are and how it is that we service our customers.

Anthony O'Donnell: So we're preserving the perennial value proposition of Mutual of America, but in such a way that it can be scaled to a larger customer base?

Jeff Donaldson:Correct. Absolutely. And so we thought about building digital capabilities that really would lead to more compelling customer experiences. For example, both for our sponsors as well as our participants, and even our individual contract holders. We had to think a little bit about how we were going to leverage our core operations in marketing and corporate communications and our middle and back office and technical services. We had to think about enhancing our business model. Those were all the digital capabilities that we had to consider as we scoped our own digital transformation journey.

Anthony O'Donnell: So when look at this overall transformation, we're also talking about a complete reset of technology?

Jeff Donaldson: Correct. And for us, that really meant four core areas that we needed to address. And again, looking at it from a business perspective, first, our customer relationship management capability, what new tech, what new platforms, what new integrations, what new data would we require to satisfy that? Our core record keeping platform, which we had historically built and maintained in house for decades, what capacity, what capability would be needed? What would we need to accelerate modernization of that platform and how would we scale that efficiently?
We looked at enterprise data, how are we going to unlock that data which had existed to some degree in silos and really view that as a strategic asset? How are we going to deliver business intelligence and advanced analytic capabilities across the company? And then finally, our core four and fourth and final effort was to employ artificial intelligence specifically in the service area, but ultimately how we're going to improve that customer experience, how we're going to manage risk with respect to growth, how we're going to drive efficiencies.
And we started to look at machine learning, cognitive computing, natural language processing. So these four business-led IT initiatives really became the underpin to all of our technology investment. And I think like many insurance and financial services companies, we carried a certain amount of technical debt related to legacy systems. And so we had a significant decision to make and we asked ourselves, did we want to be a technology company that happened to deliver retirement products and services, or are we a retirement products and services company that employs and leverages technology?
And that led us to make some very significant changes in our environment that basically put us into the hybrid cloud computing world. That meant we were no longer going to exclusively build and maintain our own record keeping platform and technologies. It meant that we had to look at enterprise data and artificial intelligence in combination with third parties and partners. So this really was significant, significant culturally for us as well in terms of how we work together.

Anthony O'Donnell: It's kind of like a buy versus build conversation when all is said and done. And so the decision that you made was you're a retirement company, you're not a tech company, and you're relying on partners to do that.

Jeff Donaldson:Correct. But in doing that, to understand that we do have a shared responsibility model, at the end of the day, we are responsible to our clients, to our participants. And so very much vetting our partners and understanding their process and how we were going to work together to achieve that became something that was sort of part of that new playbook I mentioned.

Anthony O'Donnell: And you have multiple partners and the unity of how all this comes together is under your management, not theirs. But this is one of the classical questions that we've seen over the past couple of decades, and it's refreshing and encouraging to see a company say, no, our core competence is insurance, our core competence is retirement products rather than technology, while taking technology as the fundamental key to the transformation along with culture.
So that kind of raises the question of who you are and how you're the right guy that Mutual of America called upon to lead this digital transformation. So how did your career experience make you the right man for the job and how has your role developed since you arrived?

Jeff Donaldson: It's always great to start with a great team, and certainly I joined a great team. I think what I brought to the table was over 33 years of consulting, technology management, operations experience in financial services. And in doing so, I had an opportunity to be part of and/or consult to dozens of companies, which gave me a really great perspective on how they interacted with their customers, how they transacted with their customers, how they maintain those relationships and what worked quite honestly as a result.
And so taking that experience and being able to bring it to a company like Mutual of America provided some of that external input to help inform the process and to give some sense of, again, what was proven. And in doing so, I think clearly while my role was new for the company as a chief digital officer, the message was clearly what the company had been seeing and experiencing. And I think from that perspective, right time, right place to collaborate together. So very fortunate to have had this opportunity.

Anthony O'Donnell: When you arrived, you were chief digital officer. Maybe you can contrast your original responsibilities with where you sit today as a leader at the company.

Jeff Donaldson:Absolutely. So chief digital officer ostensibly looking for opportunities to grow the business and enhance the customer experience through digitization, obviously through the employment of new and emerging technologies. And that was very true and continues to be true. But in the process of collaborating, we worked basically to understand again, all those new digital capabilities that we needed to put in place and what kind of playbook we would need to run and how we would run it and work together.
And in that process over time, I became responsibility for our core information technology team and our information security group. We stood up new teams such as our customer experience team. And so my remit today really encompasses all of those areas. And in working of course with the rest of our senior executive team, I think what we have been able to model is just a new way of working together where a lot of the silos have been taken down between the business and technology.

Anthony O'Donnell: Maybe you could elaborate on that a little bit. We used to talk about the need to align business and technology, and today the conventional wisdom is that they need to be entirely integrated.

Jeff Donaldson:I would say that from that perspective in finding new ways to work together, obviously trust, understanding, prioritization, transparency, all of that had to come into play. And for us, that really meant looking at agile and making that full transformation to a shared business technology agile process. And from there starting to form product teams and a product management capability and getting away from that traditional project management thinking.
And so we went through substantive training, which involved all of our senior executive team on down to our newer associates. And frankly as we went through that and learned together and went through those exercises to appreciate old and new and what the deltas were, it became a fairly natural pivot. And I would say once we got to our product management overlay, it almost seemed like we had always been working together in this manner. So not without time, not without effort, but clearly those two things, agile product management allowed us to work in new and different ways.

Anthony O'Donnell: As we're speaking about your arrival and the evolution of your role and now the way you work between business and technology, you could say that we've glossed over one of the most daunting questions that are faced by Life Accelerated podcast listeners, which is how do you start a digital transformation? So maybe you could talk a little bit in the abstract first about how you were thinking before you arrived or once you knew you had the opportunity. And then talk a little bit about the particulars of the challenges of digital transformation at Mutual.

Jeff DonaldsonI think everybody comes to the table with a point of view of perspective, and I think the first thing that you need to do is both challenge your own and challenge others. And so for us, it was really a journey that started with education and awareness. And again, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, we really started with our senior leadership teams understanding of the impact of digital economy on us in terms of our business model, our financials, our customer experiences, our operations and technology.
And from there, we then began to say, well, again, how could we build digital capabilities in support of our long-term plan and leadership capabilities alongside that, all fine and well, but then you need to sell that to the board, and that's what we needed to do. And so I will say, because we started with this educational and awareness step, our CEO was probably our biggest fu--ingcheerleader with respect to the need to do this and what it would take.
And I think that as I look back on this, there was a board meeting back in 2017 where he and I presented over what seemed to be a very long dinner. It seemed to be almost 20 courses by the time that I had finished my speech. But it's very clear that getting the support of the board of executive leadership is paramount to the amount of success, tantamount to the amount of success that you're going to have here.
But once we had that capability as we imagined again about thinking of our customers and how we were going to deliver this, then we had to get into those conversations around culture and behaviors and norms. And that is something that again, has to start from the top, but also needs to be modeled and demonstrated, and I think that's where we took a significant amount of time with our team to sort of reorient what that experience would look like.

Anthony O'Donnell: So, let's jump ahead into the work that you've done and talk about your Route 66 plan and the guiding principles that came with that.

Jeff Donaldson: Yeah, absolutely. So you have to have a catchy phrase with any roadmap and for us, that roadmap was Route 66 and as you mentioned, so six IT strategies that we pursued and six primary principles that we wanted to ensure that was threaded throughout our effort. Starting with the strategies, really first thing that we thought of was modernizing our core platform.
I mentioned our record keeping platform and associated applications, and then how we could extend and integrate those supporting applications. The second one we thought about was rationalizing and integrating non-record keeping applications. And I would say that while there was a significant amount of work here, it didn't always mean upending or throwing the baby out with the bath water. The third, IT service delivery excellence, of course excellence in everything that we did defining, implementing, measuring and improving our IT service processes.
Our fourth, standardizing infrastructure. We had one of everything, which of course in terms of consolidating and refreshing and standardizing presents a significant challenge. But of course, we did begin that journey into the cloud and managed services and clearly have gotten some of the benefits associated with it. Sixth and final strategy that we employed was really unlocking enterprise data. I mentioned enterprise data management as one of the core four initiatives we pursued.
We wanted to support and drive digitalization, automation and analytics driven business strategies. This is how we were going to do it by unlocking our enterprise data. So those six led to a number of initiatives, well over 40 different initiatives that we have tackled over the past several years.

Anthony O'Donnell: I wanted to raise a moment that you told me about in a previous conversation. You said, when it comes to rationalizing the record keeping core platform, you said it didn't always mean throwing the baby out with the bath water, but it sometimes did.

Jeff Donaldson:Correct. So I think when we had to make determinations, we put it up against a set of criteria, and of course one, as I mentioned before, whether or not this was really differentiating us, did we need to be in that business of building our own, supporting our own, maintaining our own? So that certainly became one of those criteria and filters as we looked at it, how much technology debt that we had associated with this, how secure of an environment of an application, of a system where we're talking about did we already have some measure of containerization, did we already have some measure of microservices associated with this?
Putting it through the funnel ultimately allowed us to be fairly judicious about what we wanted to retain and build around or extend or incorporate and what we felt that we absolutely needed to move away from. I can tell you that at the end of the day in replacing our record keeping platform and our associated supporting applications, we basically put the mainframe on alert that its days were numbered.
I have never participated in a party that included pushing the mainframe off of the loading dock onto a truck, but I'm proud to say that I have now attended that party and we thanked the mainframe for its service and I think it retired well again, in terms of how we got here and how we serviced our customers at this asset level. I will say the mainframe was a tremendous partner, but again, looking at what we're facing today, the challenges, the changes, and I think we have made the right determinations and of course that compute and that storage and that network power for us all resides in the cloud now.

Anthony O'Donnell: I almost picture rather than a loading dock, the side of an aircraft carrier and a 21 g-n salute as you dump it into the ocean. Anyway, let me bring you back then to the principles. You've talked about the six IT strategies. Now please talk to us about those six primary principles and why they were an important compliment to the strategies.

Jeff Donaldson: The first of the six was a no-brainer for us really, and that was to be customer driven, so we would be laser focused on all the key drivers and needs of the customer and how we, IT could drive results across these initiatives through closer business alignment, as I talked to you before, through certainly agile and product teams. Our second principle, we wanted to be an enterprise enabler.
I think that many organizations look at themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, am I a trusted business partner? Am I an enabler of key initiatives and goals in the enterprise? We certainly want to be viewed that way. We certainly want to be viewed as a core asset. I think there's always the question of can someone take what you're doing and deliver on it better, faster, cheaper? And we wanted to prove that we did provide a competitive advantage.
Our third was being capable, performing to high standards, measuring our value, communicating that. We wanted to be a high performing team. To do that, we also needed to be nimble, and that was our fourth guiding principle. So how could we, from a process perspective, from a people perspective, and importantly from an IT platform perspective, be flexible and react to the changing needs of the company.
I don't think that at any other time in our company's history have we seen so much change. Incidentally, I just wanted to share Anthony, I think it's fun to talk about transformations when you're in the middle of a global pandemic, which is where we found ourselves not too long ago. So trying to achieve these principles took on a whole new meaning as we were working remotely and in new and different ways. Our fifth was being transparent. We wanted a realistic view of IT performance and plans.
We wanted to make sure we understood how they impacted the company, and we wanted to make sure we were all in a collective understanding and agreement of where we were headed. And of course, our final guiding principle, I've mentioned a few times at this point, which is to be innovative, to have that as part of our DNA to continually test, learn and ultimately be able to meet those key business initiatives through industry leading solutions that frankly only can be done if we're constantly in a process of evaluating new and emerging technology. And for us, that is now too, part of our DNA. These

Anthony O'Donnell: Principles are quite inspiring, and this is great content from my perspective as an editor, but they also make one wonder about how the company went from one side of the transformation to the other. In terms of output, how does today's IT delivery compare with the past? You've spoken a lot about methodology, transparency, high performance.

Jeff Donaldson: It's much more predictable. I can certainly say that. I would also say that there are fewer false starts because we are better aligned at the beginning and at the end. The work product more closely mirrors the most critical features and functions as we put together in our user stories day one than it ever has.
I think that clearly we have less rework to do as a result, and we have some insights, I think some data driven insights that we did not have before. And so in terms of our efficiency, our effectiveness, our ability to measure the value, we have a whole new set of data points and metrics that we can use to communicate with each other. And so we've got a fairly regular or continuous feedback loop, which I think does differentiate us from where we work.

Anthony O'Donnell: A lot of people talk about having a more industrialized output and they talk about the information economy as being a new industrial revolution. It really sounds like that you've achieved that kind of an approach, repeatability, predictability, consistency.

Jeff Donaldson: And I think with most journeys, we recognize too, that we've reached a milestone, but certainly we haven't reached the end of the journey. And for us now, it's about maturing those capabilities. And I think, of course, at the end of the day, that's going to be measured by our clients. They're going to be the arbiters of how we're delivering our products and services. And so to that end too, this isn't just an internal view of performance, it's really engaging our customers in new and different ways, both directly and indirectly in terms of gathering that feedback, utilizing that feedback.
Our customer advisory panel, for example, which is relatively new, really had an out sized say in how we were going to basically present ourselves to them through our portals. And so I'm happy to report that that too is a maturing capability that we are significantly measuring and what's old is new, but everything from customer net promoter score to other forms of measurement of customer interactions and satisfaction's really driving our service blueprint, really helping us say, what's the next epic? What is the next set of user stories in that epic and what is most important to our clients?

Anthony O'Donnell: As a concluding observation, maybe you could talk about what kind of a company Mutual of America is today as a result of the digital transformation work.

Jeff Donaldson: I'd like to think that Mutual of America is poised to become an even better version of itself. We have long been a leader in the retirement services and investment space. Again, almost 80 years. We've had this reputation providing high quality innovative products, high-tech personalized, high touch personalized service, one that's rooted in our values, integrity and prudence, and reliability and excellence and social responsibilities.
And these new technology investments, these new process and people and cultural investments, I think for us is going to put us into a whole new light of what we can deliver, what we can do for our clients, for our participants, again, to help them secure that financial future.

Anthony O'Donnell: Something I especially enjoyed during this episode was Jeff's answer to one of the big questions our listeners have, how do you start a digital transformation? He was also emphatic on the importance of technology as a tool for business transformation and how any efforts to leverage technology successfully come down to the culture of an organization.
That principle was reflected in how Jeff described the influence of the sixth guiding principle of the Route 66 strategy, which is to make innovation part of the company's DNA. By doing that, he says, Mutual of America will stay competitive by constantly evaluating new and innovative technology. Thank you for joining us for the Life Accelerated podcast. For more relevant content to help you achieve digital transformation, visit equisoft.com/lifeaccelerated.
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Jeff Donaldson, SEVP and Chief Digital Officer of Mutual of America Financial Group, is responsible for leading the company's digital strategy and initiatives, he played a crucial role in driving technological innovation and enhancing customer experiences within the organization. roup is today as a result of its digital transformation work.

Just curious how other store managers supported their teams during the holiday season. Our location did not receive any form of acknowledgment — not even a simple holiday greeting. There were no small gestures of appreciation such as candy, food, or a thank-you, despite the team working extremely hard throughout the busiest month of the year.

Many associates felt overworked and under-appreciated after consistently going above and beyond during the holiday rush. While retail is understood to be demanding, basic human decency and acknowledgment should still be expected in any workplace.

After many years in retail, this level of disregard is disappointing and concerning. The lack of appreciation has significantly impacted morale and reflects a larger issue with leadership and company culture.

For some, this holiday season has solidified the decision that it will be their last Christmas with Macy’s.

I hope I get lucky, and that everyone else does too, in finding something better in the coming year. This has become unbearable. Watching leadership make one bad decision after another, completely incapable of getting us out of this mess while we stress and suffer for it, has become truly depressing.

If you work for a manager who loves saying "it is what it is", you work at a bad place.

You also know you work for a bad place if nobody in the team ever gets promoted, including a TDP convert who is still stuck at level 1A after working on the team for 3 years.

ATT Leadership are generally shitheads. Say it isn't so.

So Christmas is over, how many people woke up this morning to the uncertainty of 2026 at Xerox.

Spineless leadership in the CEO, the UK led by a CMO who only thinks about himself, his family, friends and sycophants.

What kind of place is this ??????

Seeing your compensation for this year and last exceeded $70 million, how about saving a few jobs at the next round of layoffs and pitch in a few or at the very least for a decent bonus for those of us remaining…what do you think or has greed gotten the best of you?

I can’t help but notice that nearly all of the new senior executives hired in 2025 are white men and replacing or layering executives of South Asian descent. What’s going on?

Not having to work for the hollowed out dead shell of a once great company.

Not having to act like the id--t leaders in tech have a clue as to what they are doing.

Not having to work with unethical, trashy, leaders in tech.

Not having to pretend that Nike is still cool.

Not having to endure the toxic political culture.

May god help all of you out of that sewer.

If you go to speak up for ethical misconduct by a cabal of leadership reinforced by HR and Speak Up covers is up, what is the next move? Email Farley’s CDSID? Looking for answers. Every time we have holidays I seem to get punished for enjoying time off so I know the worst is yet to come.

CEO and Vps like Shankar was begging customers not go for alternative products . Toxic people.. selfish leadership., Employees weren’t not taken well in this org. CEO should resign Nilesh Arora or fire Prisma BU leaders

After all the restructures and behind-the-scenes changes over the past few years, it really looks like the capable managers have been filtered out. The ones who knew the business, earned trust, and actually cared about their teams are no longer around. What remains feels intentional, like leadership prefers compliance over competence, even if that means morale and common sense take a hit.

I Nominate our CIO for the ‘best cio silicon valley’ award for 2025. He is the reason the company is doing so good. His vision, strategy and hard work is more than all the company execs put together. He truly deserves a huge hug and a bucketful of stock options. That inspite of having such a mediocre team. Hats off Sudhakar.

I am sending warm holiday greetings and a big hug to all of our customers and managers like the HR leader helping us on this board. You have been with us and donated time and comments to help us. Some customers also hit them in their pocket book to stand with us. I am a single mom who feels disrespected and totally frightened and your help is really gratifying and loved by us all. Happy holidays to all of you who stand with us! I saw a nice email from the CEO wishing us happy holidays and it was nicely written. Maybe the grinch’s heart is warming and the changes we need in the changing of bad leaders will come in January. I am hoping for that more than anything.

Bandy the Clown can not even be bothered to send the “troops” a Christmas message. While they usually say nothing and spout BS not to make an effort is an all time low when I thought he could get no lower. Maybe him and the new CMO have decided that internal communication is no longer needed?

Since SB, DC and the EC can’t be bothered I will say it - Happy Holidays 🙂

other than more layoffs and enriching his wealth in his own startup investments?

I see that the new chair and interim CEO align well with BP's legacy of stupid decisions, which are communicated in the worst possible manner.

I wonder why do they hate the employees so much? To drop such news on Christmas Eve - they have no shame.

For Castrol's employees that only brings more uncertainty. Had we stayed with BP - we would know what's coming. Had they sold us 100% - we would know what's coming, just ask Chat GPT about the previous acquisitions, and you can resonably deduce what might happen.

But this partial sell/joint venture? What a f... mess. It's gonna be organizational nightmare. And yet another reorg and structural changes for Castrol's employees.

(To any members of LT that might be reading this: HONESTLY, WE JUST WANNA DO OUR JOBS AND GET PAID FOR IT. JUST LEAVE US ALONE - 6 YEARS OF CONSTANT STUPID CHANGES IS ENOUGH - AND LET US DO OUR JOBS)

I would bet my yearly salary that in years to follow this will be regarded as yet another failure.

Just look at how the market reacted. ZERO movement. the price after announcement is exactly the same as it was before.

This may not resonate with all of you, but I’ve dealt with multiple toxic managers at this company and have needed a lot of external support around navigating this political hellscape until I can get out. Thought I’d share a post I found that made me not feel so alone in my experience. I’m sure at least a handful of people can relate.

“If I were a toxic manager trying to get you to leave:

1. I'd shrink your scope. That project you led for three years? I'm reassigning it. That initiative you built from the ground up? Someone else is taking it over.
   But your workload? That stays the same.

2. I'd make feedback impossible to act on. Vague. Contradictory. Changes depending on who's in the room. You used to know exactly where you stood. Now? You're guessing.

3. I'd stop acknowledging your wins. That deal you closed? Silence. That crisis you handled? Crickets. But that one mistake? I'l mention it. Repeatedly.

4. I'd erode your influence while increasing your accountability. You're responsible for outcomes but excluded from decisions. Expected to deliver but not consulted on strategy.

5. I'd isolate you. The meetings happen without you. The Slack channels go quiet. Your team gets reassigned. You're still here-but you're not really part of anything anymore.

Nothing here is fireable.
That's the point.

Because if I fire you, the company owes you severance.

But if you leave on your own?
You get nothing.

So I'll make you think:
"Maybe it's me. Maybe I've lost my edge. Maybe it's just time to go."

And you leave. Believing it was your choice.

————————————

If this sounds familiar, you need to hear this: You didn't suddenly stop being capable.

Your toxic leader sees you as a threat and shifted the game to make you doubt that.

All that strategic thinking they're sidelining? That leadership they're undermining? That expertise they stopped valuing?

That's exactly what you need to build something of your own.

Where your scope doesn't shrink.
Where your voice doesn't get silenced.
Where you're never labeled "difficult" for having standards.

You didn't outgrow your capability.
You outgrew a leader who needed you small.

No more shrinking.
No more second-guessing.
No more playing small under a leader who needed to make you disappear.

You've spent years building their empire.
It's time to build yours.

Years of bad calls at the executive level have drained momentum, talent, and trust. Instead of building on strengths, leadership keeps reacting late and doubling down on choices that never should’ve been made. Now the focus is no longer on growth or innovation, but survival.

His body language was off and he glossed over the questions with one line replies, especially to the question on what the regulators have said or done since the last time they visited Citi.
and Why did E Drew throw the former leadership under the bus and was boastful about the data catalog (which is just a retooled version from a vendor I believe?) and other very average things that her huge team of 50+ have 'delivered'?

Don’t know if anyone has seen the videos but there’s a big potential criminal case forming against PayPal and their subsidiary honey for multiple charges in more than 20+ class action lawsuits. Honey was acquired by PayPal in 2019/2020 for $4 billion when Schulman was still CEO. Investigative journalists have brought to light dirt on both sides primarily due to Honeys practices which now trickle under the PayPal umbrella/leadership.

Do you think this potentially is the reason some higher ups at PayPal are getting a free ticket out and coming here in case any action gets taken against PayPal? Does this question the new leadership at VZ?

In a surprising move, our CEO has appointed a new hotshot CFO with a global business background, replacing a seasoned executive with years of experience at MPC and MPLX. This change could be a response to performance concerns or may signal a significant shift in company strategic direction. If the latter is true, it raises the question: Could more long-standing MPC/MPLX employees face a similar fate in 2026?

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ram-k-krishnan_beveragedigest-futuresmarts-fs25-ugcPost-7408879362046853120-6Dmj?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAA3ydb0BlG1kUto_4T-7uusWBCxY7pPLU_A&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=copy_link

Anyone heard that there are senior leadership changes in APJMEA? My manager was on a call earlier and changes have been announced.

Seems an odd time to make such senior changes to the leadership who have been in place for many years.

Schulman, Happy New Year 2026!!! What keeps you up at night???
Keeping Talent
No Clear AI Plan
Overload of Priorities
Tired Team
No Time to Think
Less Customers due to a lack of Trust
Reputation at Risk
Struggling Middle Managers
Culture Cracks
Conflicting Demands
Technology Moves Fast
Feeling Alone at the Top

New year predictions…?

• Wael runs away
• the board finally reins Wael in
• Wael’s plans for more decimation of the company stop
• We do an about face and start acquiring other businesses
• We decide to only become a trading business like Vitol
• Wael finally takes a bet

Place your bets!

Am one of those who will leave on 2/20 - and the team us now wanting to get all the knowledge. I know is not my manager/directors fault - but they had no shame telling my role was not needed = eliminated

I played nice till now. But 1/1 - dont bother me no ‘mo - figure it out

Cause remind that “VP leader” who made the choiced - my role is not needed. Therefore - you dont need my knowledge

Guess who gonna play the “ am sorry - I dont know the answer to that question anymore”

Someone posted this and is worth the reading:

Verizon has a long history of failed execution:

go90 ( folks from Finance told Lowell NOT to buy INtel TV but, during a golf game - Lowelly wanted to play “big honcho” and sealed the deal over that game. Finance and legal the. Had no recourse but to pay it and close it out). And what a failed project - starting with its name Go90 - the the big bankrupt: aol, yahoo, add hum, finance transformation, VGS, blue jeans, plus play,

Many of us warned them about tmobile and they laughed at us. In an HR all hands we called it out and the silly HRBPs were like sheeps - singing the “tune” that they are forced to implement. And where did that got VZ - a total failure

They’ve been on a downward spiral for ages. This is my fourth bank in 30+ years, and the last competent manager I saw was basically ancient history. Feels like they’re mass-producing these “leaders” in some cheap clone factory with subpar materials.

Pay all employees in RSUs only. No base. No PSP. Only RSUs. Let’s see those slackers then.

Disclaimer: due to local regulations, EMEA folks will continue to get a symbolic €1/month base. Ba dum tiss.

JD, hit me up if you need a chief of staff in your next stint ;)

Between leadership that doesn’t seem to know where it’s going, middle management that can’t execute, and expectations that keep getting more detached from reality, the whole thing feels like a circus that somehow keeps getting louder instead of better.

I have a job offer that pays about 10% lesser than Honeywell in a Tier 2 company. In Honeywell, the world around me is crumbling with key functions non existent, R&D dying, and daily churn in leadership. However, for me, I have been nominated to a few leadership development programs for whatever that is worth. It might mean I survive the next round of layoffs but maybe not the one after that. If I leave now, I give up my MIP. Is it time for me to leave? Will I regret leaving or staying?

Well done leadership, really good stuff, keep it up.

https://ir.nasdaq.com/news-releases/news-release-details/annual-changes-nasdaq-100-indexr-2

Dear Team,

As we gather with our families this holiday season – or, more accurately, as those of you within 50 miles of an office get your butts back in here to maximize collaboration and real estate utilization – I want to extend my warmest wishes for a prosperous and metrics-driven New Year.

The winter holidays remind us of timeless values: giving (of your maximum effort), receiving (higher margins for shareholders), peace (on earth, as long as your business unit stays well above the Line of Doom), joy (in hitting quota, even if it means public call-outs in all-hands), and goodwill toward all men (provided they contribute tangible value and don’t just “make air” like those software folks).
Remember the miracle of the season: just as one small acquisition can multiply into trillions in market cap through ruthless simplification, your continued sacrifice of work-life balance turns our portfolio into evergreen revenue streams.

Family time is wonderful, but nothing says “holiday cheer” like knowing your RSUs are vesting while underperforming divisions get divested faster than you can say “perpetual licenses are dead.”

To those celebrating Christmas: may your stockings be stuffed with stock options – contingent, of course, on office attendance thresholds.

To those observing Hanukkah: eight crazy nights of efficiency gains.

To everyone else: focus on what really matters – Q1 targets.

Thank you for your obedience dedication.

Let’s make 2026 another record year of cost-cutting and shareholder delight.

Happy Holidays,

Hock Tan
President & CEO, Broadcom

The company hired me to lead their "Agile Transformation."
I don't know what Agile means.
Nobody does.
That's why it works.

I make $425,000 a year.
To move sticky notes.
From left to right.
On a board.
The board is digital now.
The sticky notes cost $80,000 in Jira licenses.
Progress.

Day one, I said "we need to break down silos."
Everyone nodded.
Silos are bad.
I don't know why.
But destroying them is a career.
My career.

I introduced "squads."
Squads are teams.
But disrupted.
We disrupted the teams into teams.
Different names.
Same people.
Same problems.
But Agile problems now.
Agile problems are strategic.

A senior engineer asked what we're actually changing.
I said, "The mindset."
He asked what that means.
I said, "It's a journey."
He asked where we're going.
I said, "Toward agility."
He asked what agility means.
I pointed at the sticky notes.
They were moving left to right.
That's velocity.
We have velocity now.

The VP of Engineering said two-week sprints don't fit their work.
I said, "That's waterfall thinking."
Waterfall is bad.
Like silos.
I don't know what waterfall is.
But I know it's bad.
She stopped talking.
Waterfall accusations end conversations.

We had a retrospective.
In the retro, we discussed what went wrong.
Everything went wrong.
We put it on sticky notes.
Then we moved the sticky notes.
Into a column called "Parking Lot."
The Parking Lot is where problems go to die.
It's full.
We don't look at it.
That's agile.

Velocity is up 40%.
I defined velocity.
I also defined the points.
I also defined the stories.
We're crushing it.
At the things I made up.
To measure.
Ourselves.

The CEO asked for ROI.
I showed a chart.
The chart went up.
Charts should go up.
This one did.
I didn't label the Y-axis.
Nobody asked.
Leadership is confidence.

We do standups now.
Every day.
We stand.
For 45 minutes.
Standing is agile.
Sitting is waterfall.
My legs hurt.
But we're transforming.

The transformation is now "Phase 3."
Phase 1 was assessment.
Phase 2 was implementation.
Phase 3 is "continuous improvement."
Continuous means forever.
Forever means job security.
I'm very secure.

My contract was extended.
Three more years.
For "cultural impact."
The culture is confused.
But impacted.

Agile transformation isn't about being agile.
It's about transforming.
Continuously.
Toward more transformation.
The destination is the journey.
The journey is billable.

If you could pick the next CEO, who would it be?