Thread regarding Cargill layoffs

I had the opportunity to have an excellent career with Cargill spanning 4 decades. My experience was that there was a ton of opportunity for folks to grow a career as long as they delivered results, in the right way, regardless of their background. Whether a person had a degree or not was not critical, what color or s-x you were did not give you an advantage or disadvantage - it was what you did with the skills you had that mattered and what allowed you to keep your job (or not) and to provide opportunities for yourself. Over the decades things changed, and in my opinion, it has been for the worse. I can only speak from a perspective of having had a career within one BU/segment of Cargill's business so my experience may not be the same as other parts of Cargill. To me, a small number of things have changed significantly. One of those was the OVER centralization of governance/decision making ability to Mpls and an over-emphasis on one size fits all. While the intent was probably well-intended (leveraging size, eliminating uniqueness that didn't add value, assuming that talent could be more easily leveraged across parts of the business, enable synergies that added value etc), I believe it has turned out to be detrimental and has negatively impacted shareholders, employees, suppliers and customers. There are countless examples, from strategic sourcing to HR, Finance etc. Shared Services folks who are accountable in Mpls are always able to put together great looking analysis to show $$ saved due to their particular 'Transformation', unfortunately there is little focus on the added costs to that have been imposed on the businesses. One example that speaks 1000 words was a competitor making a comment that the best thing Cargill ever did to 'help' their business from a labor/talent perspective was to transform our HR which made it much more difficult for prospective employees to apply for, interview and secure timely employment from Cargill. A second weakness, in my opinion (at least in my former part of it) has been a significant loss in subject matter expertise, from Corp to sales/field office folks to plant leadership. More leaders than ever don't know where/how to challenge their teams (or even adequately recognize good performance from mediocre) is because they simply don't have the knowledge/experience, in great part due to having being fast-tracked into their roles due to any number of a different factors, be it DEI goals/priorities, educational pedigree requirements etc. Or simply impressing superiors with short term successes accomplished vs a longer track record of accomplishments. This lack of subject matter expertise and understanding of the business is leaving many 100s of million of dollars on the table, but very few leaders are able to recognize it, nor do many spend the time to dig into the details due to instead focusing on many things that the organization prioritizes that do not create meaningful financial value. Nor do the high priced consultants dig deep enough (or have the ability to) into the details of the businesses to identify the massive waste/opportunity that exists with better execution. Instead, the main/only focus appears to be to reduce head count. I'm certain that some of this is appropriate, but it feels like the message is that reducing labor cost by $1.5-2+ billion is the answer. Cargill would be better suited enlisting either some exceptional ex-employess or other industry experts who have the ability to dig into the details and identify opportunites (and provide solutions) to eliminate the massive waste and put those $$ back to the bottom line.
I will leave it at that, but I don't see that Cargill is going to be the best they can be without addressing the business knowledge/talent gap starting with C-Suite executives and evaluating all the way down through the organization. In addition, I believe the organization needs to seriously re-evaluate their priorities in terms of where the business focuses. Yes there are social issues that are increasingly important in this day and age, but you can't take your eye off the ball while doing so because a massive amount of $$ are being wasted in all areas of the business, regardless of market conditions. If in fact the ELT is provided feedback from this forum, I hope that all of the feedback being provided is being seriously debated and considered.