If the decision is already made, then let’s use the next two days to be advisors to our leadership — not bystanders. we are better than the external consulting companies.
Why did Target really fail?
What are the ground-level truths about where our leadership fell short?
Which decisions over the past 3–4 years should have been made differently — or not made at all?
@OP The Product path was a failure, all lacked business knowledge, a blocker in the name of product mindset,, they forgot the business mindset and guest mindset.
@ac the average target shopper had no problem with dei or lgbt support - if anything we lost them trying to appeal to the 'walmart shopper' who only cares about those issues because they are fed negative propaganda every waking minute AND would never shop at target anyway.
@a9 I have a feeling that this may become yet another PR headache for Target. It seems wrong to have a U.S. based company that get all their profits from American shoppers actively shipping jobs to India.
Also, with the protectionist trends we are seeing in the U.S. it wouldn't surprise me if U.S. companies that are off-shoring will start to come under more scrutiny from the government. This may very well come back to bite them.
From my 20+ years at Target, culminating in a 2023 RIF, here are my opinions on what went wrong. Poor decision-making, lack of decision-making, lack of accountability at all levels, and losing Michael Francis. Examples include: never got Pharmacy right; decades of attempting to get Item right; and outsourcing thinking, strategy, and much of the execution to TII. But, I could be wrong. :-)
@a6 we are already seeing that in our umbrella. We have TII in C-suite positions and we went from they are here to help create a global team to you’re getting lad off and backfilling at TII.
I agree this is going to hurt us in the long run. And people are going to wonder what happened. I don’t know Mike. Maybe it’s having a country that doesn’t respect our culture change it into something they want. I don’t get it and when you voice your concerns or feedback, US is bad and TII can do no wrong
Shifting work to TII and capitulating to Trump.
@a5 Completely agree with everything you said.
I am willing to bet that once you start placing TI people in executive positions, you are going to see an acceleration of teams being moved to India. It is a he-l of a lot easier to manage teams in your local time zone, and aligns with the general cost cutting initiatives.
However, I think this march to cost-cutting is going to hurt us in the long-term. Unless Target starts investing in the future, we are going to become another kmart.
I absolutely love working for Target and I’v been with them over ten years. In the last year, that has completely changed. I no longer recognize the Target a few years ago. Target needs to focus on what Target does best and sell.
My attitude for Target changed when they started accommodating TII over their US team members. All of a sudden US based team members were being laid off and then we would backfill those positions in TII and then started to promote TII int C-suite positions. I don’t dislike the actual TII people. They are great. I dislike with their ability to simulate to Target’s cultures they absolutely refuse to do so. We had no stores in the US. They don’t understand our culture or holidays or how our guest shops but they are supposed to know what’s best for Target because they are paid less? We are a US based company and TII can barely work our hours. I’m convinced they have second jobs while they are working here. I’m not seeing the benefit of their takeover. In our department all they do is plug and play. They can’t explain anything. They can’t walk you through their process and when you question them, they get defensive.
It would be one thing is the C-suite individuals were actually in the US but they aren’t and it’s disappointing to see a lot of good people go only to here placed by TII. Again, I don’t dislike the people. I dislike the way they are trying to change Target as a whole. We were the leader in retail for a reason. Let’s get back to basics.
@OP Here is my take:
In store shopping experience has dropped.
Inside the company:
@OP I like the idea, but you need to have leaders willing to listen and capable of understanding.
I am in Target tech, and at no point since I have been working at Target has anyone other than my direct manager asked me for my input. (Other than surveys which as far as I can tell go straight to the bit-bucket).
There is a complete lack of curiosity and a general acceptance of status quo.
I have a theory that the leaders above SEM do not actually understand what it takes to develop engineering solutions, so they fear engaging with engineers for fear of being exposed.
In a strange way, there is a part of me that is actually looking forward to next week since it might finally be a moment of change for the better. But I am doubtful given past history.
Why do we think they would listen when they appear to be cutting without our input and why should we provide our expertise for free?