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IBM CEO Arvind Krishna Has Nowhere to Hide From AI

And the stories just keep coming.

AK touted how he could eliminate jobs and replace them with AI. Well, now he stew in the aftermath.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ibm-ceo-arvind-krishna-has-nowhere-to-hide-from-ai-c9ff290f

The once-great tech giant’s place in the new tech cycle is in disarray

By: Tim Higgins | July 18, 2026 5:30 am ET

The problem for IBM Chief Executive Arvind Krishna is that things are going too fast and too slow—all at the same time—and he’s stuck in the middle. That’s a bad place to be in the AI revolution.

Krishna bet big on a hybrid-cloud approach in response to the rise of hyperscalers and has long sold investors on IBM’s role in quantum computing—a next-generation technology he says is three to five years away.

It’s hard to imagine IBM in three years, let alone five, if it has too many more days like this past week.

The stock dropped 25% Tuesday after IBM warned second-quarter results would be far worse than expected. This showed AI isn’t only jeopardizing IBM’s software business, it is making it harder to sell its legacy offerings in an IT market where the new technology is reprioritizing corporate spending away from Big Blue.

It’s the sort of bad dream terrifying plenty of CEOs these days as they try to navigate the revolution. While the biggest tech companies’ cloud businesses have helped position them to adapt to AI, many, like Krishna, find themselves trying to manage legacy businesses even as they struggle to keep pace with emerging, pure-play rivals.

It’s a familiar story that has repeatedly played out in other sectors during prior tech waves. Media, music and cars spring to mind. They all showed that a middle-ground strategy is tough to pull off. Many try, few thrive.

IBM’s current predicament is especially galling given it was once at the forefront of AI with Watson, a natural-language computer processing system that won “Jeopardy!” Big Blue squandered that lead, languished in the following years and today is far, far behind the likes of AI leaders such as Anthropic, which created leading model Claude and is chasing the kinds of corporate customers that once made IBM so dominant.

“IBM trading like Claude mu---red Watson,” Ken Wattana, founder of an AI agentic company called Conto, joked on X Tuesday.

The stock fell harder than it did in the 1987 Black Monday stock-market crash.

For a while, Krishna, an IBM lifer, seemed to be pulling off the middle-ground balancing act. He used his army of consultants to help clients navigate AI while positioning the company to milk its legacy mainframe and software businesses and to offer more tailored AI products.

He essentially bet that corporate clients running critical programs on their own mainframes purchased from IBM couldn’t or wouldn’t migrate to remote data centers offered by Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Instead, Krishna believed his customers would jump at being able to straddle the two worlds. They would gain cloud-computing-like capabilities while keeping certain digital needs in-house. And IBM would be the bridge making this happen.

It was initially a hard sell to investors, but Krishna was well suited for it. There’s something almost statesmanlike about the executive. His manners, his dress, his demeanor.

He even managed to turn a potential liability—at 63 he is older by decades than the executives running emerging rivals—into a selling point. Those extra years, Krishna argued to me in an interview last summer, give him insight into how tech cycles work—the ups and the downs.

“AI is in the first innings,” he said then. “It’s still early to see how the game works out and how it goes along.”

Investors eventually came around. Before this past week, IBM shares had more than doubled since Krishna was named CEO in 2020. That growth pales in comparison with Apple, Alphabet and other tech giants. But it was encouraging to some investors given IBM’s struggles the prior decade.

And Krishna showed he could weather a storm.

In February, Anthropic announced the creation of an AI tool that can rewrite Cobol computer code into a modern language. This seemingly blew a hole in the moat around IBM’s legacy business and Krishna’s hybrid strategy. The stock had what would be its worst day in 25 years—until this week.

Krishna suggested the market had overreacted in February. “I actually think that we were hit in a way that was unfair,” he said on the Norges Bank Investment Management podcast weeks later.

His argument: Rival software companies were at risk to AI while the role of handling client databases and key business functions—presumably IBM’s role—would remain valuable in the years to come.

But he understood investors’ angst. “To give full credit to investors, they’re saying, ‘Look, I can’t decide today…who are the few who might benefit…If I can’t determine that, I’ll take the sector down and then over time that’ll determine itself based on the numbers that you print,’ ” Krishna said.

He was correct for a while. A pair of announcements about AI and quantum computing in May helped IBM shares not only recover from their February swoon, but reach new heights in June.

One of those announcements included IBM and the Commerce Department detailing plans to invest billions of dollars to help fund a quantum chip foundry. This would produce the silicon wafers needed to make quantum-computing processors.

IBM has spent decades working on the idea of quantum computing, getting increasingly more serious in the past 10 years. Krishna is targeting 2029 to deliver the first large-scale quantum computer. The technology uses quantum physics to perform calculations that today’s computers can’t even approach. The potential for discoveries in material science, healthcare and beyond are staggering.

Krishna has staked a lot of IBM’s future on the belief that quantum will unlock the same kind of growth potential that was seen with GPU chips. Those chips popularized by Nvidia have been at the heart of the new AI race, powering much of the advances and, in turn, making that tech company among the most valuable in the world.

But some believe the technology won’t be commercially viable for 10 years or more, far longer than Krishna is hoping.

In the meantime, investors are left with, in Krishna’s own words, “the numbers that you print.” Suddenly, for IBM and Krishna, there’s no middle ground in those.


Verizon Board & C-Suite Failed Leadership

As a 40 year Vz employee who was fortunate to enjoy a friendship making career at Verizon I can't help but think HBS is writing a business case for MBA students to examine.

I believe the foundational thesis will be "When meitocracy and execution failure"

To think Ivan achieved CEO status as a formet IBEW Tech and grew up in the most competitive New York Telcom Market in the World, the standard was set.. results are rewarded and winners get rewarded based on results.

Then we transition to a different CEO.. Lowell.. Ivy education, obviously bright in academics but history shows could never build a cohesive strategy and Executive Team and badly mismanaged aquistions, integration (gotta have AOL, Gotta have VODAPhone 40% at extraordinary price), stop funding fiber expansion at significantly lower CapEx that now Vz is playing catch up. You get the point.

Tben tbe huge miss... recommends Hans to become CEO... this is 49% on Lowell and 51% on Board. To hire a Foreign CEO who was removed at Erickson as a failed CFO with zero experience on execution and zero USA market experience is a signicant reason for Vz free fail in stock and market performance. As a resukt Hans biught in an all European C level team to create Marketing programs, Finance, Operational metrics and a huge fail.

Verizon then transitions to a new CEO Dan who is on a running clock with sole focus to eliminate costs vs Customer value in marketplace. Employees are eliminated without regards to performance and skills. Rather on Salary in 90 day increments. Culture is crushed.

What remains is tbe keast experiences C Suite Team in the history of Ma Bell.

Finally, while quarterly results can fluctuate, the one tbing that Verizon has lost and accerated under Hans and Dan is the strategic advantage Verizon had over 100 years... Customer And Employee Integrated culture.

This entire Summary will be the HBS business case for future generations to learn from.


Cost savings replacing Stinkey with AI

We can replace Stankey for around 5k, and save the company $30 million+ per year. This doesn’t even include stock losses this dum--ss boomer has caused.

We give AI The Handmaid’s Tale, Elon’s annotated version of Mein Kampf, and tell it to always make the d-mbest decision possible. Abracadabra, we’ve replaced John Stankey and saved the company 30 mil a year.


Thoughts on things

Seeing all the panic about no raises this year and past cuts. Honestly im not worried about job security at all.
Were going hard on AI with AgentStack and that Autonomous Knowledge Platform. Leadership is putting the money where it counts to actually win instead of little bumps. Cloud numbers looking good and we got cash from the SAP settlement. Feels solid to me.
On a personal note this place reminds me of the strength in the LDS Church. The Mormon Church does such a great job building for the long term, focusing on preparation, self reliance and helping people. Their community is so strong and they invest smart in the future. Tithing, welfare programs and emphasis on education its all about thriving even when things get tough. Grateful for that example it keeps me positive here too. As it says in the Bible "therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself" (Matthew 6:34). And "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13). That faith helps a lot.
Still bullish on my role and the roadmap. No need for everyone to freak out.
Anyone else at Teradata feeling the same?


Has the foundering begun?

If Project Dolphin is backfiring and employees are no longer being forced between re badging with a vendor or severance (not enjoying that at all, nope), how will they be able to pay off everyone? The remaining Franklin Templeton legacy staff that was scheduled for layoff on 04/27/2026 was re badged over to other Transfer Agent mutual funds, were told that there was no time certain for their continued employment. They were needed to support staffing that was not meeting SLAs. They keep training them to handle more mutual fund clients because even with this talented, tenured help, they are still not meeting goals. It seems likely that they will not be laid off, but who can tell? No savings there, either. Because the business math ain't mathing, Project Dolphin is failing. FIS cannot outrun their sh---y leadership. Glug, glug, glug.


The chipmaker went off the rails ‘when it started to be run by business people’

Pat Gelsinger says the chipmaker went off the rails ‘when it started to be run by business people’. (See: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/former-intel-ceo-says-chipmaker-185823655.html)

Same rule applies to EDA? A software maker derails the moment it is led by a CAE.


How Is This Fair - TIS Leadership?

Can we talk about this? Because I'm struggling to see how this is fair.

INC USUI team, has money for lavish dinners, unlimited upscale travel, "collecting points," cruise dinners, events... you name it. But somehow when it comes to their own TIS USUI counterparts? Layoffs.

Some people got told their roles "weren't sustainable." Weren't sustainable, but the boat outings were?
Make it make sense...........
If there's money for unlimited daily fine dining and over spend, there is money to keep people employed. Let's stop pretending this is about resources. It's about priorities. And right now, the people actually doing the work are not the priority.
You don't get to blow money left and right and then turn around and lay people off like it's a budget issue. That's not leadership. That's a failure of judgment, plain and simple. Shame on your leadership.
To everyone who got impacted, this is not on you. This says nothing about your worth or your work. You deserved so much better than this.
#Layoffs #Accountability #WorkplaceCulture #Leadership


AI and all buzzwords are facade to Cut Workforce

The company has been using AI buzzwords and based on what we have seen internally, nothing has changed. RL uses pre scripted sentences and Sydney, HealthOS, data / information / insights (stop it), make it easy for members but all of the upside has been by cutting workforce or moving work at cheaper contract rates to vendors (nothing to do with AI), and all this has forced rest of the team to pick the load. I am sure there was waste - but attributing anything to AI or technological transformation is BIG overkill. There is nothing new, no real tech or AI strategy that has been shown since RL and gang came in. He just manages up at cost of real frontline workers. We see it every day.

There is nothing new, people are frustrated, new tech leaders are clueless and trying to figure out how to stay relevant by deliberately telling all things are broken, no respect for anyone with prior knowledge. I am sure in another 6 months to a year questions will be asked and leaders will blame each other. Front line managers and engineers / workforce is feeling the pressure and looking for leadership which does not exist. It’s a shame how the company is being run into ground.


Earnings Call: Passing the Baton

Bill drew an analogy to a 4x4 relay race in this morning’s earnings call.

“I feel really good about the baton passing. Think about the 4x100 relay. We’re passing the baton to someone that can run the last lap(?!?!) with a lot of speed.”

Is this him saying that Mike is going to fast track us to being acquired?


IBM Doesn’t Have a Deployment Problem. It Has a Truth Problem.

Another reorg. Sold as agility, felt as whiplash. Leadership didn’t even wait for the planned date — they tore up a structure barely a year old and rebuilt it mid-year, with zero regard for what that costs the people living through it. The stated reason: “boost software deployment.” The real reason is simpler and darker.
IBM has spent years buying growth instead of building it. Every quarter, another acquisition gets folded in, rebranded as “software strength,” and used to justify the next reorg. Strip out the acquisitions, and the growth mostly disappears. This isn’t a strategy. It’s a treadmill, and shareholders finally noticed — the stock just had its worst single day in the company’s history.
The money to keep buying is running out. Debt keeps climbing. Buybacks have been frozen for years because the company is still “digesting” its last purchase. Cash meant for growth is quietly being redirected to service the last deal, not fund the next one. When a company can’t return money to its own shareholders, it’s telling you something about how thin the cushion has gotten.
And the sales playbook is exhausted. For years, big renewals were “won” by reshuffling the same contract — discount here, markup there, call it a signing. Do that once, fine. Do it a third time on the same account, and there’s nothing left to move. Customers aren’t d-mb. Many are also sitting on mountains of software they were sold and never deployed. Asking them to sign another restructuring on top of shelfware gathering dust isn’t selling — it’s asking for patience that ran out a while ago. That’s the real story behind “large deals failed to close.” It was never about speed.
So here’s what a summer reorg actually buys: nothing, fast. Territory changes take a quarter just to stabilize. Real deals take six months to a year to close. Launch a reorg in July, across a holiday season when half of Europe is offline, and demand results in Q3 — and you’ve built a machine engineered to fail on schedule.
Except failure doesn’t cost everyone the same. IBM books the reorg as a clean, one-time charge and moves on. Sellers absorb the real cost: quotas that don’t shrink to match a broken calendar, commission checks that quietly get smaller because targets were unrealistic from day one, accounts inherited mid-relationship with no memory of what was promised or already burned. When the numbers come up short, it won’t be called “the reorg cost us a season.” It’ll be called underperformance. The same event, blamed upward as strategy and downward as failure — a strategy that costs nothing on the way in and everything on the way out, just not for the people who designed it.
That’s the pattern worth naming out loud: a company that has run out of things to buy, running out of ways to reshuffle what it already sold, paying for both by quietly shifting the bill onto the people closest to the customer.
Another reorg won’t fix that. Only shipping what was already sold will.


Dan/ Alfonso need to quit complaining

I don’t want Dan and Alfonso to get on stage next time and complain about the terrible customer experience on the app or mobile site.

They chose to retain the underperforming team while laying off smart people. How did they decide to keep Adam C over other Senior Directors? And Chris P’s underperforming team remains completely intact.

The buck stops with them going forward. They can’t blame the former leadership team anymore.


IBM's CEO just showed what taking accountability looks like

Talk about some spin. If AK and his cronies in the C-Suite forgo their bonuses for the rest of their undoubtedly extremely short tenures and take a significant pay cut, then that'll show accountability.
And doesn't AK attend the WEF in Davos every year? What advice did he receive from all those geniuses?
Somewhere out there one can hear the echoes of Ginni's hysterical laughter.

https://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-ceo-arvind-krishna-facing-leadership-test-accountability-2026-7

By: Sarah E. Needleman | Jul 15, 2026, 4:56 AM CT

When IBM delivered bad news on Tuesday, CEO Arvind Krishna didn't look for someone else to blame. He owned it.

Krishna, who is widely credited with turning IBM around since becoming CEO in 2020, said in a letter to investors that clients had redirected quarterly capital spending toward scarce infrastructure. Management underestimated the scale of that shift, contributing to the company's second-quarter shortfall.

"These conditions require our teams to execute perfectly, and this quarter we faltered," Krishna wrote. "We did not adapt and move quickly enough, and numerous large deals failed to close on the timelines we expected."

Though IBM's shares tanked in response, current and former tech executives told Business Insider that other leaders ought to emulate Krishna's candor. Owning a setback can strengthen a CEO's credibility longterm, they said, by showing that management understands the problem and is prepared to address it.

"He will develop more trust among his shareholders and employees and customers by being transparent," said former Cisco CEO John Chambers.

Leaders can gain more credibility from how they handle setbacks than from their successes, he added, though they need to move quickly. They should explain what happened, acknowledge what did not go as planned, and outline how they intend to get the business back on track.

"Rule 101 on setbacks: speed and be very visible," Chambers said.

Openness carries risks, though. Leaders facing a setback may not yet have complete answers, and acknowledging uncertainty can leave them vulnerable.

"You have to have the courage to say, 'Here's what I know. Here's what I don't know,' " Chambers said. "And that sometimes exposes you to critics."

Accepting responsibility

Gilad Bechar, CEO of Moburst, a digital marketing agency, described Krishna's remarks as "refreshing." He said CEOs often attribute disappointing results to outside forces such as tariffs or other macroeconomic headwinds.

"Usually you don't see Fortune 100 companies that are owning their situation like that," said Bechar. "They are very afraid of being this candid."

Krishna may have helped contain the damage by characterizing the shortfall as a forecasting error rather than as evidence that demand for the company's products and services had deteriorated, added Bechar. Showing that management understood what went wrong gives investors reason to believe the problem can be corrected, he said.

"If you're in control of the situation, you fully understand everything, and you just misjudge one specific element, it sounds like you're in a much better place," Bechar said.

Public-company leaders may be obligated to disclose material setbacks promptly, but accepting responsibility is a choice, said Jeffrey Puritt, the retired CEO of Telus International, a technology services provider now known as Telus Digital.

Krishna could have satisfied investors' need for information without explicitly owning up to management's mistake. By doing both, Puritt said, he demonstrated the accountability expected of someone in the top job.

"If you're the CEO, you get paid to take responsibility for the business's performance, win, lose, or draw," he said. Blaming others, Puritt added, would have been "a bit of a cop out."

'What you need to hear'

Krishna has spent more than three decades at IBM. He helped orchestrate the company's $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat, which closed in 2019, and became CEO the following year. Since then, he's led an overhaul centered on hybrid cloud, software, and artificial intelligence.

Rod Adkins, a former IBM executive who also spent more than three decades at the company, said transparency is consistent with Krishna's leadership style.

"He has always been what I would call an above-the-board executive," Adkins said. "He will deliver what you need to hear versus what you want to hear."

That approach is especially important at a company like IBM, whose technology supports mission-critical operations, such as banking transactions and systems used by healthcare providers, airlines, retailers, and government agencies.

"Part of the trusted brand is being authentic with your communications," Adkins said. "Transparency, especially today, is a very important leadership attribute."


RTX - Collins Aerospace - Transformation - Really?

My thoughts...
Collins Aerospace experienced a significant workforce reduction on June 11, and there is ongoing speculation that additional layoffs may occur between September and November. Concerns have been raised regarding the effectiveness of the current leadership team, as uncertainty about future organizational changes appears to be affecting decision-making and overall confidence within the company.

Employees have also expressed concerns about operational and product-related challenges, including reported issues affecting certain brake programs. There is a perception among some that senior leaders are not being sufficiently transparent with customers and are shifting accountability to lower levels of the organization. While the company emphasizes its commitment to ethics and values, many employees feel these principles are not consistently reflected in business decisions.

Continued workforce reductions and restructuring activities may provide short-term financial benefits, but they have also had a notable impact on employee morale. Additionally, the loss of experienced personnel risks creating a significant drain of institutional knowledge, which could affect long-term operational effectiveness and sustainability.

While many recognize that organizational change may be necessary, there is a growing belief that meaningful improvement will require renewed leadership and a clearer strategic direction from the executive team.


"Managing 100 calls a day—as required for care managers at Centene’s Sunshine Health

"Managing 100 calls a day—as required for care managers at Centene’s Sunshine Health—is an unsustainable expectation. One has to question the quality of both those interactions and the resulting documentation. Requiring such a high volume of calls, effectively placing quantity over quality and metrics over genuine member care, is fundamentally abusive to both staff and patients. Does CEO Sarah London truly understand the impact of the mediocre leadership culture that thrives on bullying those on the front lines? It seems unlikely, as she appears primarily concerned with her own $20 million annual compensation, regardless of the operational reality on the ground."


Out Live Action Problem

Why is no one talking about the Moana live action movie? We are getting savaged by reviews. And it's true. That movie is so sad compared to the animation. The colors so drab. The rock? Cringe. This place reeks of pure self awareness. While outside of these castle walls everyone else says Disney is formulaic and dated and has lost its creativity. Reduced to sequels and live action remakes. And we sell our dusty old properties to a modern world trying to convince people that it still means something. And when we try to make stories we're trying to please everyone that we please no one and we forget the most important things: story and character development. Case in point: Wish. What. A. Disaster. For a 100 year anniversary film we sure flubbed that one. Why was no one fired for that? Why are they still allowed to make more cr-p? When is someone here actually going to kick all the rerunners out and bring in someone with newer ideas? So we don't do another Toy Story 7. Or Moana 5. Sweet baby Jesus the way people talk around here is like the damn crew of the titanic I swear.


Yet Another Massive Optum Tech Outage

Entire enterprise IT stack for Optum tech down from 10PM to 4AM 100% outage across all cloud providers and regions. Not the first time this has happened. Not the second, or third either. The only way teams got out of it was by completely disabling CloudFlare.

We were forced to shift to this cloudflare architecture in 2025 and it has caused more p1s and enterprise impact by itself in this short time than I have seen in my entire career.

RCA? Pssh. We already gave them the cash. They dont care! Theyre claiming the entirety of Optum got flagged by a DDoS rule. Oops!

Leaders like PW who think moving off of the mainframe and full speed to the cloud will solve IT problems are in for a rude awakening.


No Performance & No Purpose

  1. Continued market share losses across beverages and snacks, last four weeks, last 12 weeks, last 52 weeks, last 5 years
  2. GLP-1 adoption accelerating in US, rest of the world is just getting started.
  3. A disappointing M&A track record that generates negative shareholder value
  4. Executive Leadership that you wouldn’t trust to look after your dog and even worse bench of leaders

You can solve the first three but you can’t solve the fourth one. Investors also have just given up.


Adi Sambas = Proof or the Marketing Fiasco known as CK

Over the past 5 years, the share of American legacy males under 40 wearing Adidas Sambas - or really, anything aligned in direct opposition to CK's explosive 'fro - has gone from 1% to 99%.

Whomever thought the 'Believe in Something, Even if it Means Sacrificing Everything' should literally be dragged to an Aztec temple and sacrificed real time during the Super Bowl Halftime show LIVE.

If that doesn't happen, NKE is no longer a going concern.


WE WONT LET YOU DOWN!!!

Miss Chris Leahy! You’re our fearless leader! We support you! All these Dinos are in their way out and we will pick this company up by the bootstraps! It’s their fault these layoffs happened, not yours! Layoffs are no way an indicator of failed leadership

Oh wait, yes they are. You su-k


To the sales people who push this business to the top

Remember, it was you who moved the ball for the company. It was the front line employee who made a difference to the customer base. It was you that made VZW. Not the so called decision makers. That being said, the best way to combat this is to all go work for a competitor, and bring what you brought to make VZW great. Let’s take VZW down by stacking the competition with highly driven, winning-cultured players in the industry.


More Pepsi Castoffs?

Am I to understand we're getting yet another Pepsi person at Paradigm? In charge of MDR and AI Products? What the he-l does that even mean? We're just making up executive positions.

And yet another vendor that is friends with G-yatri doing some bad live podcast that he got paid god knows what to do?

More nepotism happening at Paradigm than the White House.

Maybe I'll look for work at Pepsi, seems to be the only place safe from G-yatri's friends at this point.


New CHRO

Beware the new CHRO Samantha H
My hubby works for Verizon n says she smiles big n projects positivity n then will turn around and RIF hundreds of y’all
If you have a chance, bask her how many people she layed off at Verizon
She and her people are notorious for retaliating against employees too so be careful


This company is a joke!

You are only a number… don’t assume anything makes you safe. The current leadership has 1 priority… Slash and cut.. no master plan, no vision. the AI talk is all a cover to layoff and do stock buybacks.. Best of luck to all impacted today and the ones to come…


Arvind announced his retirement

Now that I have your attention..,

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna tries to run a tight ship, but his legacy is famously marked by aggressive restructuring, massive stock plunges, and replacing human brains with AI.

Oh, Arvind Krishna sat in his chair,
With billions to make and a plan to prepare.
"Let’s fire some humans!" the CEO cried,"
And sweep our old mainframes all to the side!"

He gazed at the servers, the cloud, and the code,
While trimming the headcount along the dark road.
He aimed for the future with bright, shiny eyes,
But instead of a rocket, the stock took a dive!

He promised us Watson would cure every ill,
But the clients just yawned and refused the red pill.
When large deals all stalled at the end of the year,
He wrote us a letter confessing the fear:
“We failed to adapt, yes, we faltered quite fast,
And seventy billion just vanished at last!”

So here’s to the boss who replaced us with bots,
While hoarding his millions and tying in knots.
Just remember to breathe when your mainframe goes down,
And King Arvind smiles from his deep-learning crown.


Merit Increase

Are we really going to silently accept a drop in our real salaries? At the first townhall this year we were told we'd get an update on merit increase by June.
It's mid-July. No update. No explanation. Nothing. Leadership had no problem making the promise publicly, apparently following through with even a basic communication is a different story.