I'm not a troll (which I know is often the first sign of waving a flag that screams 'Look at me, I'm a troll!'). For those here that have worked at Target for a number of years, what was (or is) the tipping point for why you feel cynical, ambivalent or angry about our collective future? Please provide as much context as possible (pyramid, job family, etc.) without sacrificing your privacy.
19 replies (most recent on top)
Anonymous110837 here,....I made the comments that characterized one of the previous posts as scapegoating diversity as the problem. I made the observations based on the remark "target went from being a company that rewarded ppl based on results to one where it's now all about diversity."...then the subsequent posts then talked about Tgt India and the issues there. My question is why blame the Indians or other so called diversity intiatives and not the leadership that decided to make an outsourcing decision based on anticipated labor costs savings. Blame the leaders for the failures of this company. Leadership decided to go into Canada, Leadership decided to ignore the Internet until 2013, Leadership decided to build a costly ineffective proprietary pharmacy dispensing system. The leaders get paid to make the big decisions and should be held accountable when those decisions don't work out. I'm not saying the rank and fill are free of of any blame...but the lions share of the responsibility for Target's current challenges are the (mostly non diverse) leaders who led it the past 10 yrs.
re: diversity ... it's more than race, it's a political correct mindset that emphasizes the need to Embrace whatever is considered "diverse" at the moment ... yesterday it was race, today it's sexual orientation, tomorrow some other thing. yes we should all create a workplace that is free of anything that causes distractions (and lawsuits). but if I have personal views on marriage equality that are different than my peers, do I really need to have a committee to help make me feel ok with those views? if my ethnicity is unknown by adoption and my gender identification is slightly more fluid by choice, should I just expect you to not ask obvious questions or be overly offended when you observe that high heels are not something most men wear? No. As long as I'm able to get my work done, that's all that should matter. Gay, straight, believer, agnostic, married, single, DINK, whatever .... do your job, don't be an ass, and things will go fine. (Same expectations I have for myself.).
Anonymous110989: What year was it made part of the Leadership Expectations??? Anyone...Anyone...Bueller?
Anonymous110967: with respect to Target India I'm pretty sure "embrace diversity" started in 1994 at Target when diversity training rolled out to all team members.
Who are we trying to kid here. Those of you who have been with the company long enough to remember the installation of Target India remember that the "Embrace Diversity" mantra started then, to force leadership into accepting Target India team members despite their inability to work without a clearly defined set of instructions and step by step actions to complete tasks. It is not racist to say they were not taught to think for themselves. It is not hateful to say their inability to communicate effectively is a burden on the business. It is a statement of observed effect. Embrace Diversity was Target's way of saying you have to accept the people who we are only paying 1/5th to 1/3rd of what we paid their predecessors to do the same work. You are required to do what you can to make their quality of work meet our expectations or you will be fired along with the team that you built and lost due to our "Transformation." You may think that I sound bitter, but I am not. My life after Target is so much better and all I feel is sadness for the company that could have been what they tried to be. They were there for a short time. Every company is only "one foolish decision" away from ruin and the people who are paid to make those decisions are only human and often foolishly greedy.
110954 is correct, and this has been going on for a LONG time. no offense to my good engineering friends, but I know of one case where we had the opportunity to hire a great engineer, who had the exact knowledge base that was needed. After HR interviewed him, they came back and nixed the hire because he wasn't FFF enough (whatever the hell that is)......even though the head of engineering wanted this guy ("he's an engineer, not a talk show host!). All fell on deaf ears. Ridiculous.
To Anonymous110837:
There was nothing is this post that states "minorities wrecked the whole company." The point is that hiring decisions are no longer based on the most talented people. If the managers don't have the authority to pick the most talented person, regardless of diversity status, then they are no longer solely responsible for the productivity of their team. So their only recourse is to jump on the GTKY/Statuses band wagon and ride that pony until they get the blame for their inability to build a productive team. The root cause of ineffective leadership is either the leader themselves or having their ability to lead (decision making) removed from them. This is not vitriol. This is cause and effect. There is no hate here, it is just observation. You can try to invalidate the information by labeling it as hateful or racist, but you will be missing out on the truth. Unfortunately, the truth is no longer valued like it use to be.
I don't dislike the twittering idiots that blather about their FB posts at work between running to statuses/GTKYs with anyone who will accept their invite - truth be told, they take the heat off the rest of the team by joining the committees and taking all the crap-work the manager delegates - so I honestly do value them. But I was hurt to see really talented people RIF'd - not only this year but going back to January 2014. I don't trust the people in charge of these decisions - they have squandered talent and resources and frankly, I feel betrayed by that. I have no control over senior leadership, I think they are a bunch of knuckle-heads, but I will continue to work hard and strive for excellence because that's how I was taught to work. Until I get my 9:00 AM meeting notice.
I agree with Anonymous110856 - No race issue but rather those that are smart and work hard vs the stupid people that suck up to keep their job.
????? not sure where you're getting a 'race is the problem' out of the posts here (you're looking for an offense that isn't there.....itself indicative of the problem). The 'diversity' camps are more accurately described as the 'competent / want to work' group vs the 'incompetent / put off work / meetings forever / suck up network group'.
To say that Targets's problems have anything to do with diversity is wrong and ridiculous. Outside of a few executives their is very little racial diversity at the top ranks at Target and very little racial diversity at the KMG level and above. While there is more diversity now than in Bob's era the leaders (including the board) that got us here Gregg, Kathee, Jodee, etc are not exactly a symboloff racial diversity. So in summary take your angry, ridiculous (minorities wrecked the company vitriol) argument elsewhere.
I'm afraid the problem may be bigger than BC can address, because it's bigger than Target. The "cultural" problems referred to in this thread are everywhere and Target has just hopped on the bandwagon. You want to see it in full bloom, log onto LinkedIn (I'm hoping that it only represents what's happening in corporate America, and not the business world in general), It is chalk full of the most kindergarten-ready business "wisdom" (recent example: You want to be a good leader? Take the word "Me", cut out the M and rotate it 180 degrees). Wow! Brilliant!......just gag me. And of course people fall over themselves to LIKE all of this stuff. Are you serious? This is America's premier job networking / search engine, and this is what we've come to. Aren't people embarrassed to be posting this grade school drivel? (Maybe your boss will put a gold star on your forehead next). This infantile view of society, the constant self petting - and then expecting others to pet you too, the narcissistic need to share your "likes" (who cares that you like it), has turned many workplaces into very unhealthy worlds. I fear for America. The lunatics are running the asylum.
Leaders are saying one thing and doing another. It's as simple as that.
I agree with most of your statement, but I wouldn't say the political "left". It's more the political correct, or the politically 'wussed' (big difference, as I consider myself "left", but still get in trouble for having opinions that somehow offend people). People are too sensitive to even have (or express) a "political" viewpoint - left or right.......and trust me, most of the execs are hard right.
A couple of thoughts after being here four decades. There is no reward for accomplishments. The GTKY crowd has taken over leadership positions and they promote those similiar to them. The company has been taken over by the political left. We are no longer in the business to increase sales. We are in business to appease the political left. We will soon be following in KMarts footsteps.
I wouldn't say too much of an emphasis on diversity is the issue, per se, but my question has become this: exactly what is wrong with a meritocracy? The idea of promoting those with talent and drive, as opposed to those who can rack up up the most FFF events and volunteer hours might be shocking, but it also leads to having a talented and capable leadership team as opposed to one that's good at planning potlocks and team off sites. There. I said it.
I second everything 110740 says (I had more than 15 years in, before they decided that actual work wasn't important). We went from a company/culture that did a lot of good work (and fast) to a company that TALKS about work, ANALYZES the PROCESS of doing work........everything to feed the metrics machine. I know this is hard for some people to understand, but some of us actually LIKED to work, we liked to be able to point to something tangible that we did at the end of the day.
I know the model doesn't apply in every case, but my thinking was, would most of this makework that is going on last 2 days out "in the real world", especially in a small firm (where profit margins are slim)? Not on your life.
Of course the metrics people and the constantly networking people are the ones who got the visibility and promotions (often taking credit for the work done by the trenches - which to be honest was fine with me, as long as they kept out of my and my teams hair).
And maybe this is a side effect of the culture pushing all of this non-work, networking is paramount, let's talk about every damn minutia - but Target became oh so sensitive (in a bad way), politically correct (in a very bad way), and basically infantalized so no one could deal with any of the harsh realities that were staring us in the face.
I miss the days of Bob U. He was gruff, often profane, but he didn't wuss around regarding decisions. He's be presented with an idea, he's say "DO THAT". Then if it didn't work, he'd say "DONT'T DO THAT". nowadays Target needs 25 meetings, weeks of metrics, 8 layers of management sign-off.............meanwhile Walmart and Amazon have breezed on past. In my mind the problem IS the culture and this monster that HR created. Sad and discouraging..................but then I'm not there anymore. Good luck to you all.
The last post is the best description of what happened and what needs to happen. Wow, well done.
After working for Target over 10 years now, I have observed this company evolve from embracing talent and expecting results to embracing diversity and hoping for results. Leadership was graded on keeping their team happy and informed. That transformed to leadership being graded on their calendar being filled with statuses and team controlled. The Target Culture has moved too far to the left and needs to start its journey back to the right of center. Embrace Talent regardless of diversity status and make tangible results the only metric to strive for. I blame Jodee and her heavy handed HR team who manipulates the Target Culture to fit their idea of success and Tina for her totally useless and delusional "Vibe" concept. Stop trying to fix what is not broken and truly see the cost of embracing diversity when the diverse workforce takes 3 times longer to complete a task. Leading without knowledge of the task at hand is no leadership at all.