Thread regarding Cargill layoffs

Unrealistic business growth promises and sales forecasts led the company to its current position. Millions of dollars have been spent on dream projects, most of which have left equipment lying in the backyards or caused business downtimes due to dreaming leadership and their dreaming direct reports. But now, the doers are paying off it. If you continue with the same captain, I'm afraid next ıceberg will tear down the ship.

One can only hope the COEs go away. No real accountability in those areas.

Are COEs going away?

My take

In theory, IOC wasn’t a bad idea, but would have required discipline that cargill and leaders weren’t ready for. I don’t think we can say it didn’t work because we said we tried but we really didn’t — there is way too much optionality in Cargill and uniqueness (often unnecessary) in the businesses so the center organization (what most refer to as “corporate”) that was grown to streamline and help us leverage the size and scale of cargill (leading to be a more integrated operating company) led to too much matrix, too little decision rights and limited accountability. We spent far too much time, effort and resources trying to bring “best practices” to the greater Cargill (because, IOC) and built teams of generalists who don’t understand enough about businesses, our customers, etc (coe type of teams) because they were focused on doing a bunch of stuff mediocre (often worse than) and trying to bring capabilities that biz weren’t ready for and/or weren’t resourced for (people or money). Let’s see if the future food enterprise can pull it off, I think they will be the closest to what ioc could have/should have been united under one leader (I’m skeptical but clearly Brian, the board and family believe Jon is the right person to pull it off). Beyond some of the above, ioc requires prioritization and this hasn’t been a strong spot for cargill, well, ever?

Sorry I meant -Integrated operating company