With Cisco losing market share, the responsibilities of that are squarely on the portfolio leaders, AVPs, SEDs, ODs, SSEMs, RMs, and SEMs. They have failed to hold their people accountable. Due to the failure of these so called leaders, good people have been impacted and will continue to be impacted. The answer cannot be to just add portfolio AEs and SEs. It is time to LR the portfolio leaders with real leaders that can lead the business and hold people accountable.
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Portfolio leadership controls everything so yes it falls on them. They think they know how to sell everything just cause a deal had different technologies in it. Most of the portfolio leadership does not know how to lead.
Oliver is misinformed and is making a pretty bad mistake. Someone told him specialists aren't justified, and he's now wrecking the DC, security and collab overlay teams. May a thousand lice infect his beard.
@OP correct but it's hard to argue with a higher density of portfolio sellers closer to the customers but the majority think Oliver and company have this all wrong. what they will have now is lots of overqualified former specialists on the portfolio teams who also no longer feel the pressure or responsibility or be getting paid to be the specialist. and then the entire portfolio team slips into the same mediocrity because the mediocre leadership remains... then in a year or two when the executive team rotates again, someone will be yelling we need more specialists and rebuild what they are currently taking down, as if it's some great new idea.
Agree with OP, it is clear that Cisco is putting more sellers and engineers on the front lines but none of that matters when the sales and pre-sales engineering leadership is incompetent and they are primarily responsible for losing market share. Putting more AEs and SEs under the same out of touch leadership is only going to turn this into more market share loss. The portfolio leadership has to change and this will happen after Q4. As they collapse the specialist org they will take the best leaders and replace the current incompetent portfolio leadership. This is phase 2 and it happens in Q1.
Yes but also the products su-k
The problem in recent years lies here: almost every layoff sacrifices the lower-level staff, while the leadership, especially OD and above, becomes increasingly secure. Some departments have even had all their employees cut, leaving only the OD, and then a new batch of workers is recruited. The more incompetent the OD, the more they prefer to use obedient subordinates; this reverse selection process has been going on for a long time.