Has anyone had experience with this pathetic excuse for a group ? Folks with ivory tower positions using horrid unworkable processes as an excuse that makes a 2 month project into a 6 month one. Instead of empowering and guiding the groups to effectively complete their projects, the drama queens over here, berate the employees making them feel completely worthless and extremely demotivated. Questions that need to be asked prior to a project being started are asked way towards the end and these endless discussions debating whether it was right to do anything, ends up in a spiraling slugfest. It seems that the exit reviews are more of education sessions for the out of touch business execs and the members of the so called ECT (Extremely Crappy Turds) vs actually exiting and completing a project. Too much silo'ed mentality, red tape and bureaucracy. The women in leadership roles on this team, instead of empowering their employees and fellow women, treat them more like sh-- causing irreparable harm. These hard working smart employees who are already overworked, then leave the company, rather than having to deal with this sh--. The newly hired change management folks just pile on the misery. They have no knowledge of anything and add to the red tape without having any understanding of the project/process. Management is trying to apply processes fit for a $20B company without realizing that we barely struggle to make $5B. Folks who have gone to these meetings feel that they have been ERT'ed (extremely raped today). They agree that these are useless, add minimal value and just prolong the project. RR & AG should closely look at this useless crap and should restructure this ASAP, else Juniper is doomed. Realign the people in to doing something useful. Learn something from Elon Musk, who advocates scrapping useless meetings and non value added sh-- like this. Sorry for venting, but this sh-- needs some real cleanup soon.
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Portfolio management is not a rocket science. Many companies have done this successfully. The process shouldn’t impose a significant overhead, should be nimble and lite touch. Teams shouldn’t feel stressed and frustrated in any way to follow, if implemented correctly. Again you need the right leaders to design and back it up. If not done right, you’ll turn off the project community and be the biggest villain.
Downward spiral was already in motion long before BEO. It was started by weak PLMs, lousy engineering and crappy marketing. Let’s not try to blame it on Any process improvement activities.
Fear stifles our thinking and actions. It creates indecisiveness that results in stagnation. Talented people have procrastinated indefinitely rather than risk failure. Lost opportunities cause erosion of confidence, and the downward spiral begins.
In my experience, as the processes become overwhelming and dealing with management becomes a hassle, teams find very creative ways to circumvent the cumbersome bureaucracy. Might already be happening, you never know. This totally defeats the original intent.
I was just th8nking it would be nice to let AG know about this forum and discussion that has been going on about the BEO.
A nice feature on this site will be to email a thread, annonymously to an email address.
There seems to be an issue with the process, but more so with the people. The process problem is solvable, but how do you solve the people related issues ?
Instead of ranting and raving on this forum, which is not going to solve anything. Instead suggest workable and implementable solutions to management to make this process better.
AG org has around 30 members , more than dozen of them are managers and above . Long live Juniper
S---s
Five Sr Directors for a total of around dozen employees.
How many Directors and above in this awesome group ?
If what you say is true, then the amount of overhead and the level of mismanagement and incompetence is quite staggering.
I was in this group for some time. Had a few observations which I shared with the group's head, but no action was taken.
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VPs tend to delegate to their people and show up intermittently. As such there is no continuity.
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Even when the folks are in the room or on the call, they are busy fidgeting on their phone or laptop or tablet. Not much attention is paid to the content and the same questions get asked multiple times and several weeks later. Mentally manifested in a different reality.
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Some members to enhance their visibility tend to ask questions for the sake of asking questions or for showing the opposite person in a negative light.
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Nobody knows what's going on end to end nor sees the big picture. It's a very silo'ed mentality on how it impacts me and my group. No one wears the one Juniper hat.
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Questions that need to be asked initially whether this is the right thing for Juniper, tend to be asked when the project is nearly ready for deployment.
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Process is overwhelming and doesn't do much to speed up projects.
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PMs are expected not only to manage multiple projects but forced to follow some of the new overwhelming documentation and processes which don't do much for the company.
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The change management folks have no content knowledge and rely and waste the time of actual SMEs, to come up with training. The SMEs can do it themselves faster.
I was laid off from this group, a couple of months ago. Although I don't want to believe it was retaliation, it pretty much seems so.
Didn't realize that simplicity would die a death so soon. Complexity is the new simplicity. RIP simplicity.
The right processes make delivery efficient. But for a company of Juniper’s size, this feels like an overkill.
Just woke up and reading this. Gave me a very hearty chuckle. Apologies blokes. Glad that I am not at Juniper EMEA anymore and don't have to deal with this mess. On second thoughts, you may want to escalate this to Rami. He seems like a honest chap trying to do the right things and might just bring about the necessary change.
Elon just hit the nail on the head. Rami talks of simplicity, building trust, delivering excellence. This looks like a lot of unnecessary complexity, which in turn introduces overhead crap and unfortunately delays projects. As a wise man once said, to be simple, is not simple.
Nice words of wisdom by Elon. It would save so much time & money, if people followed it at Juniper. So many useless educational meetings for the sake of the execs, wastes everybody’s time.
Have zero experience with the group. But my first thought several months ago when we announced its creation, was. . . Oh, no; this is awful; how can you outsource the most important thing there is - execution?
You can't outsource culture. Its hard work to turn this place around. Culture starts at the top - you can't just say, 'this group is now responsible for achieving excellence. . ." This is precisely the opposite way to go about it.
So much winning
My head's spinning
So much screaming
My brain's shrinking
Initially thought of this as a whiny rant, but having being part of the ECT body (left Juniper a couple of weeks ago), I find myself agreeing with the author's comments. The process has major issues and needs significant tweaks to make it work effectively.
I loved the Elon Musk comment below, about dragging yourself out of useless meetings. Hopefully Rami can implement this at Juniper.
— Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.
— Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved.
— Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious if it isn't adding value.
— * It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time. *
Besides the multiple at lower levels, one to a Sr Director and other rumored to a VP. Some folks in this group are good, may be in the wrong roles and need to be repurposed into doing something useful for the company.
Just curious, but did anyone get promoted after implementing this crap ?
In times where budgets are tight and Juniper needs to get products out of the door in an expedited manner, it's unfortunate to hear that scatter brained processes like these are an impediment to agile execution. Learn something from Arista where the urgency is to get products out of the door fast.
Shocking, but not surprised. Arrogant & selfish managers who want to create their own kingdoms, end up hindering the cause rather than aiding further progress. No wonder things are the way they are at Jnpr and everything take a long time.
AG is one of the very few rational and sane execs at Juniper. He did a great job managing and turning around CS. It's still one of the better run groups. Very surprising that this montrosity is happening under his watch. May be he is getting misled by members of his staff or just going senile. You may want to get out of there before you lose your mind. All the very best.
Business Execution Office under AG. That's quite a brutal takedown of that group. I have heard similar such things. You know what comes next. Time to DRAIN THE SWAMP.
This is an epic rant (oops post). what is BOE and who heads this group? This group wasn't there during my time at Juniper.
Can understand your pain. Looks like the poor people have been ERTed by the ECT. Lol !!!!